We’re excited that this year’s Documentary Fundamentals series centers on the kinetic and timely Emergent City by Kelly Anderson and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg—a film that combines skillful interviewing with the urgency and incisiveness of vérité storytelling, both immersing the audience in the unfolding events while guiding them through each with revealing insights from the participants. In this session, co-directors Kelly and Jay will be joined by cinematographer Sean Hanley as they discuss building their visual storytelling style, crafting original imagery, and interview techniques to bring the film’s narrative complexities to life.

This session will be all about shooting your next documentary. Learn about the practicalities of shooting unpredictable events and preparing a camera that’s alive to the moment. What kinds of aesthetic considerations are taken into account? What kind of equipment do you need? What kinds of conversations go on between a cinematographer and a director before and during an observational film shoot? How does the framing of an interview, both editorially and cinematographically, impact the narrative? Join us to enrich your understanding of observational filmmaking. 

Buy a Series Pass

DOCUMENTARY FUNDAMENTALS: A professional development series designed to give the emerging or intermediate documentary filmmaker an inside look at the filmmaking process from pre-production planning to post-production and distribution. Over the past few years, UnionDocs has developed this ongoing program for documentarians that desire a better foundation for navigating the modern landscape of independent filmmaking. This six-part program takes place over the course of one weekend at UnionDocs. Buy a SERIES PASS ($175) or choose to attend individual sessions ($35/each).

Instructors

Kelly Anderson is a Sunset Park based documentary filmmaker whose most recent film is Rabble Rousers: Frances Goldin and the Fight for Cooper Square (w. Ryan Joseph and Kathryn Barnier). Her 2012 film My Brooklyn, about the hidden forces driving gentrification, was broadcast on PBS’ America ReFramed. Kelly produced and directed Every Mother’s Son (PBS, 2004, w. Tami Gold), about mothers whose children were killed by police, which won the Tribeca Audience Award and aired on POV. She produced and directed Out At Work (HBO, 2000, w. Tami Gold), which premiered at Sundance. Kelly chairs the Department of Film and Media Studies at Hunter College (CUNY).

Jay Arthur Sterrenberg is a New York City based filmmaker, editor and co-founder of the Meerkat Media Collective whose work has screened at Sundance, Tribeca, IDFA, CPH:DOX and broadcast on PBS, HBO, Netflix & Hulu.

Jay’s two decade documentary editing career began with collaborations with DCTV’s Jon Alpert & Matt O’Neil on the HBO documentaries Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery (2008), Wartorn (2010) and Oscar nominated Redemption (2012). He also edited the Oscar shortlisted films Dark Money (dir. Kimberly Reed, 2018) and After Maria (dir. Nadia Hallgren, 2019) and a has had a long collaboration with filmmaking duo Shaul Schwarz & Christina Clusiau – Narco Cultura (Sundance 2013), Emmy-winning Trophy (CNN Films, 2017), Emmy-nominated FLY (Nat Geo, 2024) and the 2020 Netflix doc series Immigration Nation, which won a Peabody Award and Best New Documentary Series at the Independent Spirit Awards.

As a director, his films find cinematic ways to explore process & democracy. A believer in collective filmmaking, he co-directed many independent films with the Meerkat Media Collective including Stages (2010), Consensus: Direct Democracy at Occupy Wall Street (2011) and Brasslands (2013). His solo directorial debut was the observational short film Public Money (POV, 2018) which paved the way for the feature-length collaboration with Kelly Anderson: Emergent City (POV, 2025).

Sean Hanley is a documentary cinematographer versed in longitudinal vérité projects but with a knack for creative non-fiction and experimental techniques. His work has therefore screened across a spectrum of festivals, from Sundance to MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight. Recent credits include Judd Ehrlich’s Jane Eliott Against the World (2026, Sundance), Debra Granik’s series CONBODY vs. Everybody (2024, Sundance), and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg and Kelly Anderson’s Emergent City (2024, Tribeca). He has held a long and productive collaboration with experimental documentarian Lynne Sachs starting with Your Day is My Night (2013, MoMA Documentary Fortnight), Tip of My Tongue (2015, Closing Night of MoMA Documentary Fortnight), and Contractions (2024, NYTimes OpDocs). He is a member of the Documentary Cinematographer’s Alliance and the Meerkat Media Collective.