Handball Court
Across the street from UNDO
352 Onderdonk Ave
Ridgewood, NY

We’re back with our annual Preview in the Park that this year debuts a new collection of 7 fresh new short films grounded geographically in our relatively new neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens.

You’re invited to join us in celebrating with us on the Handball Courts across from UnionDocs on Dekalb Ave to take in this dynamic and far-ranging collection of new local stories from the artists in our Collaborative Studio (CoLAB).

We’ve found our proximity to the borough boundary of Brooklyn and Queens notable and a good starting place for local engagement. This cross-section opens many questions around what the New York Times has called a, “historic interborough murkiness” and with a wave of media attention calling Ridgewood one of the hippest neighborhoods in the world, the never-ending rise of median rents in Brooklyn creeping to Queens, these demarcations and questions of neighborhood and borough identity are brought into sharper relief.

The short documentaries in this program were developed by twelve film and audio makers over six months in response to some of the questions we’ve been discussing around this prompt with inputs from important community members too.

Through this research, the intrepid artists in this year’s CoLAB have conjured delightful stories, and challenging narratives mapped to this particular borderland; from deep listening and collecting of oral histories from the community around key landmarks and historical flashpoints, to careful observations of surprising ecosystems and everyday tapestries of labor, expression, transit and movement, to reflections on public space, and the common histories and present day impacts on our shared futures.

After the films, we’ll invite folks across the street back to UNDO to celebrate and keep the party going with festive drinks, dancing, and music ‘til late.

RSVP & COME THROUGH!

Program

ABOUT THE UNIONDOCS COLLABORATIVE STUDIO

The UnionDocs Collaborative Studio is a fellowship program for non-fiction media research and group production. It seeks to bring together individual talents, voices, and stories to create multi-dimensional documentaries. For the past 10 months, fellows have been immersed in research, idea generation, planning, recording, edits, critiques, and re-edits. Teams were formed around a set of select proposals, which all moved through the stages of production in tandem. In addition to this production work, fellows engage in masterclasses, seminars, and workshops on the history, theory and practice of documentary arts.

Destiny Arturet has been exploring stories about niche hobbies, small communities, and collective interests even before she picked up a camera. A graduate of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, her short film Welcome to King Friday’s Dungeon was selected for the 2023 Camden International Film Festival. She recently completed FilmNorth’s Inclusive and Socially Conscious Filmmaking Lab and is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia.

Anna Cardovillis is a documentary filmmaker from Nairobi, Kenya.

Margaret Cirino is an audio producer at NPR. Her job involves a little bit of everything – pitching and sourcing, sound designing and reporting stories on everything from climate change in city parks to support groups for folks transitioning in their 60s. She loves covering reproductive health and queer/trans issues and culture. Cirino has produced four different podcasts: Life Kit, Short Wave, TED Radio Hour and How I Built This.

Meijuan Foo is an interdisciplinary artist working in the intersections of film, dance, poetry and painting. Through movement of imagery and language, she is interested in the spaces in between and within, unpacking the unseen to bring the invisible into the realm of consciousness and ultimately drive transformation. Born and raised in Singapore, she is currently based in Brooklyn, NYC.

Sophie Kazis is a Brooklyn-based audio documentarian. She’s Project Manager for the ACORN Oral History Project, an audio archive on the national community organizing group. Previously, at Vice News, she produced podcasts including American Terror, about the rise of far-right extremist groups. She attended Transom, after getting her start in community radio–first at Oberlin College and later helping to launch an LPFM station at a Boston youth arts organization. Sometimes she makes music too.

Valerie Neck is a NY-based documentary artist who is drawn to capture the poetics in the everyday, or the infraordinary. Her style of filmmaking reflects colorful life experiences, from being an army paratrooper in Italy to rescuing a street dog in Laos to supporting the dying as a hospice social worker in rural Oregon. She has been described as blending the documentary gaze with mysticism, and using the camera to paint impressionist portraits of the world that both enchant and bedevil her. Her debut film, All That Is, premiered at DOC NYC (2021).

Colin Nusbaum is a documentary film director, editor and cinematographer who focuses on intimately observed and beautifully crafted stories. His work asks more questions that it answers.

Colin’s films have screened at the Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, HotDocs, Sheffield, DOCNYC, Full Frame and many others.

Colin earned a BA from The College of Wooster and an MA in Media Studies and Film from The New School. When he is not making films, Colin enjoys cycling, ceramics, canoeing, and practicing aikido.

Jeff Oliver (he/him) is a writer, director and media educator. His work centers on moments of the comedic, horrific and the absurd. His 2021 short film, The Beast of Torpor, premiered at the Portland Art Museum in collaboration with the Montavilla Jazz Festival. His most recent film, Thirsty Thursday, premiered at the 2024 Portland Horror Film Festival.

He has been awarded grants by the Oregon Community Foundation, Regional Arts and Culture Council and Oregon Film. Since 2012 he has taught filmmaking workshops with organizations like Buck’s Rock Performing and Creative Arts Camp, Hollywood Theatre, Movie Madness, Open Signal & Outside the Frame.

He is in pre-production on a new documentary, We’re All Gonna Make It, about mental health and the history of the standup comedy community in Portland, Oregon.

Pia Rios is a Peruvian interdisciplinary researcher and educator with a Philosophy, Media Studies, and Anthropology background. She holds a B. A in Philosophy from Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru and an M.A in Interdisciplinary Studies from NYU. She is currently studying Anthropology and Education at Teachers College. She enjoys thinking about how we express and construct our identities, preserve and create history, and reading/watching stories of resistance.

Justin Scheer is a writer and filmmaker based in Brooklyn.

Andrew Thomas is a documentary film editor and director based in Brooklyn. His most recent films screened at Tribeca, and DOC NYC. With a penchant for portrait style documentaries on artists and untold community histories, Andrew strives to create films that are engaging, cinematic and artfully crafted. He is a member of the Alliance of Documentary Editors, The Video Consortium, and with over a decade in New York, still carries a continued excitement for finding stories and uncovering more about the city.

Vida Zamora is a Documentarist and Writer delving into the intricate tapestry of intersectionality, dialectics, and historicity through an unyielding lens firmly rooted in resistance and dissent. Their process confronts entrenched roles and doctrines through direct address and action, democratizing mediums historically unavailable to marginalized voices.

Vida advocates for “Kuxlejal” life-affirming processes through Mutual Aid as a world-making practice, yet vocalizes through a disciplinary width span that borrows from decolonial and socialist theories.