Doors 7:00p
Program 7:30p
Tickets $12

UnionDocs
352 Onderdonk Ave
Ridgewood, NY

On June 24, we’re delighted to host scholar John Durham Peters and filmmaker Courtney Stephens for an evening of conversation about divination, chance, and fortune in the American mythos. John will explore the divinatory dimensions of weather, forecasting, and watching the sky, while Stephens will present on cinematic configurations of chance and control.

A discussion will follow their presentations, moderated by writer Julia Gunnison. The event will inform an ongoing research project on the entanglement of documentary and fantasy that Stephens and Gunnison are undertaking through the UNDO Fellowship.

Program Duration: 60 mins

Bios

John Durham Peters teaches and writes on media history and theory. He taught at the University of Iowa between 1986-2016. He is the author of Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (1999), Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition (2005), The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (2015), and most recently, Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History (2020), with the late Kenneth Cmiel (all published by the University of Chicago Press). He is working on a media history of weather, and has advised or co-advised over three dozen doctoral dissertations.

Courtney Stephens is a writer/director of four features and several short films.Terra Femme, composed of amateur travel footage shot by women in the early 20th century, was a New York Times critic’s pick and has toured widely as a live performance. The American Sector (with Pacho Velez) follows slabs of the Berlin Wall installed around the US. John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (with Michael Almereyda) explores the life of psychedelics pioneer John C. Lilly and Invention, is an award-winning work of experimental fiction about an esoteric healing device. Her films have been exhibited at MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, The Barbican, Walker Art Center, BAMPFA, and film festivals including the Berlinale, Viennale, New Directors/New Films, Locarno, Rotterdam, Visions Du Réel, Thessaloniki, IDFA, True/False, Hong Kong, and the New York Film Festival. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and grants from California Humanities, the Sloan Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art.

Julia Gunnison is a writer, editor, and arts administrator based in Brooklyn, New York. Her essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Reverse Shot, Screen Slate, and Bright Wall/Dark Room, and her interests include nonfiction film forms and cinematic interpretations of urban space. She is an alumna of the 2024 Film at Lincoln Center Critics Academy, and the 2023–24 Reverse Shot Emerging Critics Workshop. She is the co-founder and editor of Syllabus, a weekly publication for nontraditional syllabi.  Julia is currently the Artist Initiatives Manager at Creative Capital, and was previously Coordinator for the Sundance Documentary Fund. She serves as a grant application reviewer for the Sundance Institute, the International Documentary Association, and the Catapult Film Fund.