About KTQ Labs

Once a month we gather members of the Kartemquin community together for the critique and discussion of a work-in-progress by an independent filmmaker. These intimate feedback sessions are open for incomplete projects at any stage of production, whether short fundraising demos or feature-length rough/fine cuts. This free program has helped over 150 projects progress towards completion. Films that have participated have gone on to premiere at festivals including Sundance Film Festival, New York Film Festival, SXSW, Hot Docs, Full Frame, DOC NYC, Vienna International Film Festival, and True/False, and to be broadcast on Netflix, PBS (POV, Independent Lens, and America Reframed), OWN, and the Sundance Channel.

ROLEPLAY is a feature documentary that follows a year in the life of a group of American college students as they confront the sexual violence and toxicity on their campus with an artistic experiment, using their experiences to craft an original theater piece aimed at spurring dialogue, healing, and culture change. Juxtaposing cathartic rehearsal scenes, observational portraits of college life, and the performance itself, ROLEPLAY explores the nuance and contradictions of what it means to come of age in our complex times.

For more info about the film: roleplay-project.com

Katie Mathews is a filmmaker and researcher whose work explores the intersection of identity and the places and spaces we call home. She is currently directing the feature documentary Roleplay about art’s power to transform toxic culture, chosen for the 2019 Points North Fellowship. Katie recently produced and story edited Mossville, (Dir. Alex Glustrom) a feature documentary about environmental racism that premiered at Full Frame where it won the Human Rights Award and has been recognized at festivals around the world for storytelling and a commitment to social justice.

She also co-produced blood peach, (Dir. Zuri Obi), a Tribeca Film Institute If/Then short that unearths stories of enslavement, and directed and produced Post Coastal, an NEA and Smithsonian-funded documentary series about Louisiana coastal communities and climate change. She holds a BA from Northwestern University in Communications and is currently an MFA Candidate in CUNY-Hunter College’s Integrated Media Arts Program.

Darcy McKinnon is a documentary filmmaker and Executive Director of NOVAC, the New Orleans Video Access Center, which has been supporting community-based media in Southeast Louisiana since 1972. A native Floridian and decades-long resident of New Orleans, McKinnon is interested in work that highlights the unique cultures and social issues of the Gulf South. She is a co-founder of ALL Y’ALL, with Elaine McMillion Sheldon.

McKinnon’s prior work in documentary includes the film “Maquilapolis”, “Live, Nude, Girls, UNITE!” and “Animals.” She produces documentary work with Southern filmmakers, and is currently in , in production on “The Neutral Ground” with CJ Hunt, a documentary about New Orleans’ struggle to remove Confederate monuments, in development on “Commuted” with Nailah Jefferson, which explores the impact of Louisiana’s criminal justice dysfunctions through the portrait of the life of one woman, Zuri Louis’ “Blood Peach” and Katie Mathews’ “Roleplay.” McKinnon’s work has been broadcast nationally on POV and Cinemax, and her current projects have received support from SFIFF, CAAM, Chicken and Egg, Firelight Media, ITVS, Black Public Media, Sundance and Tribeca.