If you would like to be added to the workshop’s waitlist e-mail: [email protected]

Join us for a three-day workshop with acclaimed filmmaker and scholar Jessica Bardsley to explore the intersections of autofiction and film practice.

Borrowing the term “autofiction” from literature, this workshop investigates the cross-section of autobiography and fiction, considering how this rich territory can spark inspiration for filmmakers. We will explore the innovative, self-reflexive strategies filmmakers have invented to grapple with the complex relationship between self and representation. Embracing this tension, we will share possibilities for reinvention and imagination, looking closely at how filmmakers have used the devices of cinema to mediate personal experience and situate themselves in worlds both real and imagined.

We’ll ask questions like, how can the moving image help us to question the narratives through which selfhood emerges? How can the self be crafted to probe larger social and political questions?

Featuring renowned filmmakers and visual artists who will share their own relationships to this framework, we’ll leave inspired by a number of unique approaches and methodologies. Su Friedrich (Sink or Swim, Today) will dive into how she has used fiction to refract experience through the lens of social identity. Laura Huertas Millán (El Laberinto, Sol Negro) will expand on her practice of fictional, decolonial (auto)ethnography and the strategies she has invented to explore her family history. Caveh Zahedi (In the Bathtub of the World, I Am A Sex Addict) will discuss casting himself in his own work and depicting his real relationships on screen, while Jennifer Montgomery (Art For Teachers of Children, Transitional Objects) will unpack the use of fiction as a space to politically reframe personal experience.

Together, we will consider the scripting and performance of the self in film, but also the ways that images themselves function as fictions that are lived in everyday life.

This workshop is open to filmmakers, film producers, journalists, media artists, scholars and anyone who’d like to delve into the edges of documentary.

Seats are limited, so sign up today!

NOTE: This workshop will require in-person participation from all participants. Each participant must present proof of vaccination. Any and all questions, please reach out to [email protected].

Details

Schedule

Details

Schedule

Details

Schedule

10:30a

First Workshop Session

12:30p

Lunch

2:00p

Second Workshop Session

4:00p

Wrap Up

Bios

Jessica Bardsley (she/they) is an artist and scholar working across film, writing, and studio art. Her films have screened across the U.S. and internationally at festivals like Sundance, CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, EMAF, RIDM, True/False, and on the Criterion Channel. She is the recipient of various awards, including a Princess Grace Award, Grand Prize at 25FPS, the Eileen Maitland Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Best Short Film at Punto de Vista, and numerous Harvard Film Study Center fellowships. Her first feature film, The Cave Without a Name, was a finalist for the 2022 Venice Biennale’s Cinema College.

Her research and writing have been supported by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies. She received a Ph.D. in Film and Visual Studies from Harvard University and an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is Assistant Professor of Experimental Film and Media at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Since 1978, Su Friedrich has produced and directed twenty-four 16mm films and videos, including I Cannot Tell You How I Feel, Gut Renovation, From the Ground Up, Seeing Red, The Odds of Recovery, Hide and Seek, Sink or Swim, Damned If You Don’t, The Ties That Bind, and Gently Down the Stream. Friedrich is the writer, cinematographer, director and editor of all her films, with the exception of Hide and Seek, which was co-written by Cathy Quinlan and shot by Jim Denault. Her films have won many awards, including Grand Prix at the Melbourne Film Festival, Outstanding Documentary Award at Outfest and Best Narrative Film Award at the Athens International Film Festival. She has received Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundation fellowships, numerous grants from the Jerome Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council of the Arts and The Independent Television Service. She was also a recipient of the Alpert Award in the Arts.

Caveh Zahedi is an autobiographical filmmaker whose feature-length films include The Sheik and I (2012), I Am A Sex Addict (2005), In The Bathtub of the World (2001), I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore (1994), and A Little Stiff (1991). He is also the writer/director of the web series The Show About the Show as well as the writer and host of the podcast 365 Stories I Want To Tell You Before We Both Die.

Photo credit: Renato Cruz

Laura Huertas Millán is a Colombian artist and filmmaker based in Paris, France. Selected in major cinema festivals such as the Berlinale, Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Rotterdam International Film Festival, New York Film Festival and Cinéma du Réel, her films have been awarded at the Locarno Film Festival, FIDMarseille, Doclisboa and Videobrasil, among others. More than twenty retrospectives and focuses on her work have been organised internationally, in cinematheques (Toronto ́s TIFF Lightbox, Harvard ́s Film Archive, Bogota ́s cinematheque, Austrian Film Museum, Tabakalera); museums (CA2M, CCA Glasgow, OCA Norway); film festivals (Mar del Plata, Rencontres du Documentaire de Montréal, FICUNAM, Curtocircuito); and non-fiction seminars (The Flaherty seminar, DocsKingdom). Her films have been featured in solo exhibitions at the MASP Sao Paulo, Maison des Arts de Malakoff and Medellin ́s Modern Art Museum; in biennials such as the Liverpool Biennial, FRONT Triennial, Videonnale and ScreenCity Biennial; and screenings in museums such as the Centre Pompidou, the Jeu de Paume, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Her work is part of private and public collections such as KADIST, CNAP, Banco de la República de Colombia, CIFO Miami, and FRAC Lorraine. Since 2019, she is part of the curatorial and research collective Counter Encounters, which has developed projects at the Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern. 

Jennifer Montgomery’s film titles include One Species Removed (2012), The Agonal Phase (2010), Deliver (2008), Notes on the Death of Kodachrome (2006), Threads of Belonging (2003), Transitional Objects (2000), Troika (1998), Art For Teachers of Children (1995), I, a Lamb (1992), Age 12: Love With a Little L (1990), and Home Avenue (1989). Most recently, she collaborated with the artist Josiah McElheny on a short film, The Light Club of Vizcaya (2012). These films range from experimental essays to experimental features, and are distributed by Zeitgeist Films, Waterbearer Films, Women Make Movies, and Video Data Bank. Her work has shown at international festivals, as well as the 2008 Whitney Biennial (NYC), MoMA (NYC), the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago), the ICA (London), and the Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis). She has been the recipient of many grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Teaching experience includes professorships at Bard College, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, Columbia College Chicago, and Hampshire College. She has also held long-term lectureships at Barnard College and the Cooper Union School of Art.