Over the course of a year-long UnionDocs Collaborative Studio Program, filmmakers Stanzi Vaubel and Damon Logan began to explore what it means to document.
THIS PLACE (78 minutes, USA, 2014) came out of a filming exercise. Fellows from the UnionDocs Collaborative Studio visited a Latino marketplace, where each member filmed a variety of very long, steady shots. What resulted were 12 individualized perspectives on place. It brought up fundamental questions on reality, the nature of documentation, and the subjectivity that defines what we see and what we don’t see.
Instead of focusing on one character, THIS PLACE weaves together an ensemble, who bridge the worlds of filmmaker and subject. Holistically, the film encapsulates the dynamism of experiences that originates at UnionDocs as a place.
Stanzi Vaubel studied radio and documentary film at Northwestern University. She has worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she designed an interactive website for their youth program, with WNYC’s culture desk, and with the Third Coast Festival’s Re:sound. Her work has been spotlighted by the Third Coast Audio and her short film on Occupy Wall St. won Directors choice at the Black Maria Film Festival. In 2013 she produced a radio series called The Gift for Chicago Public Radio. THIS PLACE is her first feature film.
Damon Logan grew up in Minyip, regional Australia. He studied Economics and Physics and later, while working as a financial trader, Documentary Film at AFTRS, Sydney. Damon’s first short THE LITTLE THAI FIGHTERS premiered at London International Documentary Festival in 2012. After teaching filmmaking in remote Central Australia, he moved to New York as a fellow of the UnionDocs Collaborative Studio. THIS PLACE is his first feature film.
