Today’s documentary landscape is rapidly evolving with new avenues and pitfalls around every corner. DOC FUNDAMENTALS, our annual six session professional development series, responds each year to the changes we see in the field and is geared towards preparing emerging and mid-career independent filmmakers with all the foundational knowledge they need to complete a feature documentary.

We’re overjoyed that this year’s Documentary Fundamentals course is led by Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster, co-directors of the award-winning biographical documentary Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, a beautifully lyrical homage to revolutionary poet Nikki Giovanni. Winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, the film travels through the poet’s life, from her childhood in Ohio to her time in New York City during the height of the civil rights movement, from building a family of her own to encounters with literary icon James Baldwin. You’re invited to follow along and trace the trajectory of this recent documentary hits all the way from development and pre-production stages to post-production and through its successful festival run and distribution.

Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project will serve as a case-study across all the sessions including DEVELOPMENT & FINANCING, ARCHIVAL & VISUAL LANGUAGE, WORLD BUILDING IN THE EDIT, MUSIC & SOUND DESIGN and FINDING AN AUDIENCE for your documentary. Each session features a range of exciting, advanced and award-winning professionals from the field and many from this film who represent all aspects of producing a documentary feature. It is perfect as a primer or a way to refocus and rethink your project in today’s changing landscape! You can attend all sessions with a SERIES PASS or just tackle the hurdles where you need help with a single session.

The full series pass includes access to all of the 2025 Documentary Fundamentals sessions listed below and the public screening of Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project. You can also tailor your Doc Fundamentals attendance to your personal needs and select each course a la carte for $35/session.

About Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project

Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project is a visionary documentary that explores the life and work of legendary poet Nikki Giovanni. Blending archival footage, personal interviews, and imaginative visuals, the film journeys through Giovanni’s powerful contributions to art and activism—from the civil rights era to the Afrofuturist future she envisions. As she reflects on race, gender, space travel, and Black liberation, Giovanni invites viewers on an intimate, poetic, and deeply human voyage—one that dares to go beyond Earth to imagine new worlds.

About Doc Fundamentals

UnionDocs has developed this ongoing program for documentarians, after receiving countless requests from folks who desire a better foundation for navigating the modern landscape of independent filmmaking and has received feedback that this course does the trick! Each year we select an array of guests that represent the best of the field with contemporary approaches to navigating with best practices.

“Overall a great balance between breadth & depth; I feel very encouraged & equipped with the basic knowledge of how turn my projects into more serious endeavors.”

“The focus of the sessions on brass tacks issues like funding, logistics, legal & business matters, organizing production flow, and how to find & work with collaborators was excellent; it’s the most helpful information that can be shared in such a relatively limited amount of time & it conveys a trust in session participants that they will find their own way through”

“I really enjoyed the concept of breaking a single documentary down over several focus points. Looking forward to future courses! Thank you!”

Schedule

Bios

Emmy award-winning filmmaker, artist, and author Michèle Stephenson draws from her Haitian and Panamanian heritage and experience as a social justice lawyer to transform non-fiction storytelling. She creates emotionally powerful narratives of resistance and healing that emphasize the lived experiences of communities of color across the Americas and the Black diaspora. Through a Black Atlantic perspective, Stephenson reimagines storytelling to provoke thought and inspire action against systemic oppression, weaving together fiction, immersive, experimental, and hybrid forms. In 2023, her films Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project and Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games were Oscar-shortlisted, with Going To Mars winning the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the prestigious Emmy Award for Outstanding Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. Black Girls Play received significant accolades, including the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Video and Best Short Doc at Tribeca. Her feature American Promise earned three Emmy nominations and won the Jury Prize at Sundance, while Stateless was nominated for a Canadian Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary. Stephenson co-directed The Changing Same, a magical realist VR trilogy that premiered at Sundance’s New Frontier XR Program, won the Tribeca Grand Jury Prize for Best Immersive Narrative, and was Emmy-nominated for Outstanding Interactive Media. In 2024, she received the NYWIFT Nancy Malone Muse Directing Award and is currently in post-production on a feature on the Black Power movement in Canada. She is a Guggenheim Artist Fellow, Creative Capital Artist, and member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Emmy award-winning filmmaker Joe Brewster is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who applies his medical expertise to explore social issues through his cinematic work. He made his directorial debut with The Keeper (1995), drawing on his experience as a prison psychiatrist at the Brooklyn House of Detention, and the film received numerous awards, including Spirit Award nominations. Over the past three decades, Brewster has directed and produced narrative and documentary films, as well as immersive media. His feature documentary American Promise (2014) earned three Emmy nominations and won the Jury Prize at Sundance. His film Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project was Oscar-shortlisted, won the 2023 Sundance Grand Jury Prize, and received over 30 awards, including two Cinema Eye Awards and the prestigious Emmy for Outstanding Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games (2023) won the Cinema Eye Best Short Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Video, and was also Oscar-shortlisted. Brewster’s groundbreaking room-scale production The Changing Same premiered at Sundance and won the 2021 Tribeca Grand Jury Prize for Best Immersive Experience. His subsequent AR/VR projects include O-Dogg: On Othello, featuring Tariq Trotter, which premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Brewster has also produced documentary works for PBS, HBO, Amazon, Al Jazeera, Vice, Sundance Channel, Comcast, Disney, and the World Channel. He has received fellowships and grants from the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, BAVC, MacArthur Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. He is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and has won multiple Emmys.

Hannah Shepard holds interdisciplinary degrees from The University of Galway and Fordham University, where she was a teaching fellow in the History Department and a Loomie Prize winner. She has conducted research in libraries and archives in the United States and abroad, worked as an educator at the Museum of the City of New York, and as a script reader for The Public Theater and The Druid. As an archival producer, Hannah has collaborated with many documentary filmmakers including Nancy Buirski, Brett Story, Joe Brewster, and Michèle Stephenson. In 2019 she was nominated for the FOCAL Jane Mercer Researcher of the Year Award. Her fiction has been published by W.W. Norton, SmokeLong Quarterly, Fiction Southeast, and Spout Press.

Greg Harriott is an Emmy award winning cinematographer whose body of work spans commercials and award-winning narrative and documentary films. Greg’s DP credits include The Cave of Adullam which won Best Documentary and the Audience Award at Tribeca in 2022, Black Girls Play: The Story of Handgames which was shortlisted for the 2024 Oscars and won Best Documentary Short at Tribeca in 2023, and Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project which was shortlisted for the 2024 Oscars and won the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary at Sundance in 2023. In 2013 Greg won a Daytime Emmy for filming Born to Explore with Richard Wiese.  During his four years lensing the show, he summited Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, tracked lions in the Serengeti, filmed orangutans in Borneo, and traveled across five continents.

Regi Allen is a two-time Emmy® Award–winning senior video editor and creative director, boasting over 25 years of experience crafting high-impact visual narratives. Based in Washington, D.C., Regi has collaborated with MTV, Discovery Channel, ABC, HBO, Netflix, Disney, and more. In 2023, Regi contributed editorial expertise to two standout documentary projects:
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project — This HBO Documentary Films feature earned the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, was selected for the New York Film Festival Main Slate, included on the Oscar shortlist, and later won the Primetime Emmy® for Outstanding Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking, among over 30 international awards sundance.org+12thegrio.com+12press.wbd.com+12. Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games — A short documentary in ESPN’s “30 for 30” series, co-directed by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, it garnered the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Short-Form Documentary, the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Video, won Best Short Doc at Tribeca, and was included on the Oscar shortlist facebook.com+15espnfrontrow.com+15maysles.org+15. After leading London-based Niceandcreative for three years as Creative Director and Senior Editor, Regi returned to the U.S. to refocus on specializing in short-form creative editing, integrating emerging AI tools to elevate storytelling. He is now open for immediate freelance or full-time engagements.

Sarah Enid Hagey is a film editor and sound designer. Working as an artist and filmmaker in the field for over 20 years, her work has screened at such institutions as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, MoMA, and The New Museum and premiered on HBO, CNN, PBS, and at festivals both nationally and internationally including SXSW, Berlin, Toronto and Locarno. She is the recipient of a Cinema Award from the National Board of Review and her work has garnered a James Beard Award for Visual and Technical Excellence, and an Emmy.

Estelle Kelly is a film industry professional from Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from New York University, Estelle has spent the past 15 years working in film distribution, first at boutique distributor The Cinema Guild, and is now the VP of Educational and Non-Theatrical Sales and Distribution at Kino Lorber, a leading art-house film distributor based in New York.