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 artists over six months in response to some of the questions we’ve been discussing around this prompt with inputs from important community members too. Stay tuned for the full lineup!

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. We’re thrilled to have the brilliant Rhino Clark spinning some tunes to set the tone for the night!

Program

The Holy Mary amidst ongoing traffic. A basement of deities with the light on 24/7. A collection of trash, or so it seems. “Altar Piece” walks through the neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens, montaging intentional and seemingly unintentional altars in collective shrine.

At the edge of queens, where the city pauses, two landscapes of the same soil watch each other transform. 

Through visuals of fish tanks, captured screen grabs of a childhood computer game, and the halted construction of a luxury housing complex, The Optimum Aquarium explores the ideas of care and compassion in built environments — and the violence of commercial development in New York City neighborhoods.

In the unsleeping city, nightlife venues promise freedom to mixed crowds, while the industrial areas of Bushwick and Ridgewood grapple with a burgeoning nightlife. As the sun rises, the dance floor escapes the boundaries of the club, and the streets beat with the echoes of another party past. 

Kids Movie is a portal into how kids see the world. It documents a series of filmmaking workshops in Ridgewood and Bushwick where kids learn basic cinema concepts and begin to visually explore the world around them. Through the incorporation of their footage, drawings, stories and polaroids, the kids become co-authors of the film.

Barriga Llena, Corazón Contento is a chorus of stories from the organizers of a grassroots food pantry in Ridgewood, Queens—interweaving migration journeys, home-made meals, and the everyday acts of care that bind a community together.

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.

Shakti Mb is an artist and designer from south India currently living in Brooklyn. She runs Two Shiny Coins, an NYC-based experimental studio where the work spans video, software, and the web. Before turning to experimental work, she spent a decade designing software products. She received her MFA in Design + Technology at Parsons School of Design in 2016.

Kiana Fernandez is a Filipina-American interdisciplinary artist focusing on the scavenging of hypersignification and hope in our physical and digital existence. Working across the boundaries of video, photomontage, crowdsourcing, and objects, she attempts to recompose everyday experiences with divine importance. She suggests that these seemingly small occurrences speak to the culture at large, that there is a constant search for meaning and simple love. Her work has been showcased at the MOMA, The Museum of Moving Image, Anthology Film Archives, Nguyen Wahed, and UsagiNY.

LivAcuña is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn. Liv is obsessed with the materiality of film and explores themes of memory, magical realism and the human condition within her work. Their work has been screened at festivals in New York, LA and Chicago. Liv currently works as projectionist at Anthology Film Archives and as a film scanning technician at Metropolis Post.

Laura Alvear Roa is an independent researcher and multidisciplinary artist dedicated to exploring the role of animal bodies in our society and critically examining evolving concepts of humanity. With an M.A. in Animal Studies from New York University and a background in Literature and Philosophy from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, her work bridges academic insight and artistic expression. Laura recently completed a residency in bio art at SVA and is enrolled in the Creative Practices program at ICP.

Mia (미아) Warren (she/her) is an award-winning audio producer, journalist, documentarian and former fish tank owner living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY.

Marshall Hanig (he/him) is a socially engaged mediamaker based in Ridgewood, Queens. He is interested in producing stories where the larger structures shaping our world intersect with the emotional experiences of individual beings and communities.

Jesse Allain-Marcus (he/him) is a filmmaker whose work involves archives and science fiction. Currently, he resides in Brooklyn, NY and works as a freelance documentary editor.

Khatia Maglakelidze (she/her) is an award-winning filmmaker and composer born and raised in the country of Georgia, currently based in New York. She received a BA in film studies from a theater and film university in Georgia. Khatia is a member of the music group Four Lines. The group owns the original music album, “Sound of Wind,” and film soundtracks. Her work has been screened at IDFA, MCM, and other film festivals worldwide and has received awards for Best Cinematography and Best First-Time Director.

Natalia Fuentes Amaya (they/them) is a filmmaker currently creative-developing and producing for the narrative non-fiction production company Signpost Pictures. A screenwriter originally, Natalia seeks to create experimental cinema that blends the boundaries between reality and fiction to challenge meaning and discover unexpected solutions on an ailing planet.

Joshua Troxler (he/him) is a NYC-based filmmaker and film professor whose work has been shown at festivals and galleries worldwide. His films explore memory, trauma, and digital distortion through created and found footage. He is currently making two feature-length experimental documentaries, OF BISCOE and BEULAH LAND, which expand on these themes through the lens of family history and place, unfolding in his home state of North Carolina. As a producer, he collaborates on hybrid and essay films with award-winning directors such as Kirsten Johnson and Martin Lucas and won Best First Feature at the Solothurn Film Festival for pas de deux, directed by Elie Aufseesser. He teaches at Pratt Institute and Columbia University, where he serves as Director of Production for the MFA Film Program and represents the Green Film School Alliance, promoting sustainability in filmmaking.

Jordana Rubenstein-Edberg (she/her) is a documentary filmmaker and community-engaged artist; she collaborates with activists and policymakers to share narratives that challenge dominant histories and imagine liberatory futures. Jordana holds a degree in Human Rights Journalism from Bard College and an MFA in Social Practice from the Corcoran School of Art. Through her documentary production company,

Rhino Clark is a writer and DJ from Harlem. His selections are open format and genre agnostic, but he is drawn to emotional and percussive music — club, breaks, gqom and more. Sounds that inspire movement. Textures that tickle the ear. Tracks that are as much inspired by music traditions past as they are pointing to sonic futures. Rooted in his reverence for African diasporic art forms. He is a resident on 8 Ball Radio where he hosts “Hard R with Rhino Clark” the third Sunday of every month. And he recently started a party series called Raw Forms.