This session of DOCUMENTARY FUNDAMENTALS is about finishing your next documentary. How can title design and graphics be effectively utilized in documentary? What about my approach to music or working with a composer? What do I need to know about using archive materials? This session will dig in to graphics, music and archival issues that come together during post production.

Sara Jordenö is a NYC-based documentary filmmaker, visual artist, researcher and educator. Jordenö’s longitudinal projects often engage with communities who reside in the margins, focusing on their strategies of survival. In the process of making these works, Sara has collaborated with (and at times shared authorship with) sociologists, activists, community organizers and members of the communities that she investigates. Her feature documentary KIKI, which premiered in the US documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016, has since been shown in over 60 festivals on five continents. KIKI, which was co-written with community leader Twiggy Pucci Garcon and produced by Story and Hard Working Movies, was awarded the Teddy Award for Best Documentary Film at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights at Full Frame Documentary Festival, The German Queerscope Award and Outfest’s Emerging Talent Award, among other awards. KIKI was released theatrically in Sweden in the summer of 2016 by Folkets Bio and the US in the spring of 2017 by Sundance Selects/IFC. For KIKI, Jordenö was nominated for the 2017 Film Independent Spirit Truer Than Fiction Award. In 2016 she was named by Variety and EFP as one of “Ten Women Filmmakers to Watch.”

Gabriel Sedgwick hails from Sweden but lives in New York City, where he has produced several award-winning films that have screened at festivals such as SXSW, New Directors/New Films, Urbanworld, BAM’s New Voices in Black Cinema, and Karlovy Vary, including Lanre Olabisi’s fiction features AUGUST THE FIRST and SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE (both distributed by Film Movement in the US). As Head of Production at Brooklyn-based production company Hard Working Movies, he also co-produced Jeremiah Zagar’s feature-length documentary CAPTIVATED: THE TRIALS OF PAMELA SMART, which premiered in competition at Sundance 2014 and was broadcast on HBO in the US and on television all over the world, and recently line produced Sara Jordenö’s KIKI, which premiered in competition at Sundance 2016, won the Teddy for best feature-length doc at the Berlin International Film Festival 2016, and is distributed in the U.S. by IFC Films. He most recently produced Penny Lane’s short documentary JUST ADD WATER for CNN Films, and is currently in production on a bunch of wacky things. He is a National Board of Review fellow, a Berlin Film Festival Talents alumni, and when not making movies, can be heard emitting falsetto noises in the Brooklyn-based musical constellation Odd Rumblings.

Pacho Velez works at the intersection of ethnography, contemporary art, and political documentary. His current film, THE REAGAN SHOW, explores a prolific actor’s defining role: Leader of the Free World. His last film, MANAKAMANA, won a Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. It played around the world, including at the Whitney Biennial and the Toronto International Film Festival. Pacho has taught at Princeton University, Harvard University, Bard College, Parsons the New School, and MassArt. In 2015, he was awarded a Princeton Arts Fellowship. He is currently Assistant Professor of Screen Studies at The New School.

Peter Levin is one of the founding partners, Executive Producers and primary mixer at Splash Studios. He has supervised and mixed hundreds of feature length films, from documentaries and narratives, to television series and short films and tons of streaming content for the web. Drawing on an extensive musical background, Peter mixes with an ear for clarity, impact and flow. With decades of experience weaving compelling audio for picture, especially with documentaries, he can usually make things sound pretty good. Notable documentaries that Peter has mixed include: Island Soldier (2017), Untouchable (2016), Wilhemina’s War (2016), From This Day Forward (2015), Stray Dog (2014) The Search for General Tso (2014), After Tiller (2013), Brasslands (2013), My Perestroika (2010), Herb and Dorothy  (2008) and Dark Days (2000) among many others. He is about to start work on “The Rest I Make Up” a feature doc about the life and work of writer, teacher and playwright Maria Irene Fornes.

In the last 7 years Peter has ventured out from behind the mixing desk and started filming and producing for Splash. During that time he has produced 30 short films for various clients and has pitched, sold and produced two-1 hour specials for Animal Planet/Discovery.

DOCUMENTARY FUNDAMENTALS! A nuts-and-bolts professional development series designed for the emerging or intermediate documentary filmmaker, Documentary Fundamentals at UnionDocs is a six-part program taking place over the course of one weekend. Buy a SERIES PASS ($125) or choose to attend individual sessions ($25/each). This program has been an ongoing series at UnionDocs for many years. It developed from our experience with documentarians who needed a better foundation across the board to navigate production and distribution as an independent filmmaker in today’s landscape.