Oct 2, 2026 at 10:00 am – Oct 4, 2026 at 4:30 pm
Tell Don’t Show:
Adventures in First-Person Filmmaking
With Charlie Shackleton, Alan Berliner & Joanna Arnow
Sometimes it’s worth just telling it like it is. In documentary filmmaking, “show don’t tell” has become an oft-repeated mantra in an effort to expel any perceived didacticism, but how might a subjective perspective complicate a film, and invite the audience to actively question its authority? When a non-fiction filmmaker embraces their first-person point of view, what can their personality, positionality and biases reveal about the subject of a documentary?
Across the 3 days of this workshop, essay filmmaker Charlie Shackleton will lead participants in an excavation of how first-person cinema can both offer a generative framework and be a creative technique; considering its rich proponents, revelatory applications and profound potentials for documentary. Here we’re not looking at film that centers the filmmaker as the subject, but rather where the filmmaker employs their own character as a filmic tool; their sense of humor, cadence of speech, or the performance of the filmmaking process itself become a part of the creative methodology. By inverting the traditional idiom of “show don’t tell”, this workshop celebrates personality, perspective and explores the idea of subjectivity becoming the primary mediator of the reality portrayed on screen.
We’ll be joined by a diverse range of guest practitioners, each with their own distinctive filmmaking personality or approach to imprinting personal identity on their work. Charlie will discuss how the construction of an on-screen persona can facilitate a film’s intended direction. Alan Berliner will reveal how his personal life has become inextricably linked to his creative work. Joanna Arnow will expand on the fictionalisation of her personal life.
Participants will be encouraged to experiment with different ways of incorporating their own personalities as a creative strategy to uncover new understandings of their material, each given the opportunity to engage in constructive group discussion by sharing a work-in-progress from their own practice.
Come through!
Details
Open to everyone, though the workshop setting is best suited for filmmakers, film producers, journalists, curators and media artists.
Give us an idea of who you are and why you are coming. When you register you will be asked for a short statement of interest that should briefly describe your experience and a film project (it would be great if you have a project in progress that you would present to the group during the work-in-progress critique sessions), plus a bio. There’s a spot for a link to a work sample (and CV, which would also be nice, but is not required).
$295 early bird registration ends on Sep 22, 2026.
$350 regular registration.
The deposit is non-refundable. Should you need to cancel, you’ll receive half of your registration fee back until Sep 22. After Sep 22, the fee is non-refundable.
No animation software is required for participation in this workshop.
In order to keep costs down, this workshop is a BYOL, i.e. bring your own laptop. Students must be fully proficient using and operating their computers.
To register for a workshop, students must pay in full via card, check, or cash . After the early bird registration deadline of Sep 22, course fees are not refundable or transferable and any withdrawals or deadlines will result in the full cost of the class being forfeit. There will be no exceptions. To withdraw from a course please email info-at-uniondocs.org.
In the event that a workshop does not receive sufficient enrollment, it may be canceled. Students will be notified at least 48 hours prior to the start of a cancelled workshop and will be refunded within 5 business days. If we reschedule a workshop to another date, students are also entitled to a full refund. UnionDocs reserves the right to change instructors without prior notification, and to change class location and meeting times by up to an hour with 48 hours prior notice.
Please note: Participants are accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Schedule
Friday, October 2
10:00am – 10:30am Welcome & intros
10:30am – 12:30pm Intro session with Charlie Shackleton
12:30am – 2:00pm Lunch
2:00pm – 4:00pm Session with Guest (TBC)
4:00pm – 4:30pm Wrap Up Discussion with Charlie additional exercises / discussion
7:30pm – 10:00pm Screening of Zodiac Killer Project with Charlie Shackleton
Saturday, October 3
10:00am – 10:30am Warm up, inspiring references, case studies
10:30am – 12:30pm Session with Alan Berliner
12:30am – 2:00pm Lunch
2:00pm – 4:00pm Session with Joanna Arnow
4:00pm – 4:30pm Wrap Up Discussion with Charlie, additional exercises / discussion
Sunday, October 4
10:00am – 10:30am Warm up, inspiring references, case study, eye training.
10:30am – 12:30pm Creative feedback session with Charlie
12:30am – 1:30pm Wrap up and conclusion with Charlie
Each day follows this general structure, with some minor variations and substitutions:
Warm up, inspiring references, case study, eye training.
Presentation by guest speaker + individual work-in-progress critique
Share / Discussion / Exercise
Presentation by guest speaker + individual work-in-progress critique
Workshop Exercise + Critique
Charlie Shackleton is a nonfiction filmmaker working across film, television, radio, and immersive media. He is one third of the London-based production outfit Loop. His latest film Zodiac Killer Project premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the NEXT Innovator Award.
Alan Berliner’s uncanny ability to combine experimental cinema, artistic purpose, and popular appeal in compelling film essays has made him one of America’s most acclaimed independent filmmakers. The New York Times has described Berliner’s work as “powerful, compelling and bittersweet… full of juicy conflict and contradiction, innovative in their cinematic technique, unpredictable in their structures… Alan Berliner illustrates the power of fine art to transform life.” In 2024, Berliner received a Visionary Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award from DOC NYC. In 2025, Berliner received the Pennebaker Career Achievement Award at the Hampton Doc Fest Film Festival. His experimental documentary films, BENITA (2025), Letter to the Editor (2019), First Cousin Once Removed (2013), Wide Awake (2006), The Sweetest Sound (2001), Nobody’s Business (1996), Intimate Stranger (1991), and The Family Album (1986), have been broadcast all over the world, and received awards, prizes, and retrospectives at many major international film festivals. The San Francisco International Film Festival called Berliner, “America’s foremost cinematic essayist.” The Florida Film Festival called him “the modern master of personal documentary filmmaking.” Over the years, Berliner’s films have become part of the core curriculum for documentary filmmaking and film history classes at universities worldwide and are in the permanent collections of many film societies, festivals, libraries, colleges and museums. All of his films are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Berliner is a recipient of Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Jerome Foundation Fellowships, and has received multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He’s won three Emmy Awards and received seven Emmy nominations from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In July of 2013, Berliner was awarded the Freedom of Expression Award by the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. In 2006, the International Documentary Association honored him with an International Trailblazer Award “for creativity, innovation, originality, and breakthrough in the field of documentary cinema.” Berliner had also been a recipient of a Distinguished Achievement Award from the IDA in 1993. In 2002, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture presented him with a Cultural Achievement Award in the Arts, and he was the recipient of the Storyteller Award from the Taos Talking Picture Film Festival in 2001. Berliner has received retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), and many other museums and film festivals around the world.
Joanna Arnow is a filmmaker and actor based in Brooklyn. Her first fiction feature “The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed” screened at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, TIFF, New York Film Festival and received the 2024 Cahiers du Cinema André Bazin Award. The film was released by Magnolia Pictures. Her other films include personal documentary feature “i hate myself :)” as well as narrative shorts “Laying Out” and “Bad at Dancing” which won the Berlinale Silver Bear Jury Prize. Joanna received Indie Spirit nominations for Best First Screenplay and the Someone to Watch Award, and recently completed a six month DAAD Artist-in-Berlin fellowship.
