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Jan 23, 2026 at 10:00 am – Jan 25, 2026 at 1:30 pm
Thinking out Loud:
Voiceover in Documentary
With Stefan Pavlović, Su Friedrich, Miryam Charles and Philip Cartelli
Join us for this intensive 3-day workshop led by filmmaker Stefan Pavlović, as we explore the expansive possibilities and creative potentials that voiceover offers to non-fiction filmmakers, from writing to performing, from research to recording. Together we’ll work through what it means to pair voice with image, and how narration can be a tool for investigation rather than just explanation.
While traditional uses of voiceover and narration can be associated with authority, a “voice-of-god”-like method for dictating or illustrating to audiences, we unpack this time-tested (but perhaps overused) technique and look towards how artists are reimagining the use of voice as an open-ended creative tool. We’ll consider the voiceover as a method for research, a key used to open up an image, to propose new significance, rather than to explain, define or limit its meaning; thinking out loud to make sense of ideas. In this workshop we’ll explore the possibilities generated by adopting a conversational relationship with our images, approaching the use of narration as a means to test, challenge and transform the material through the act of speaking with, to, and beyond it.
How can our voices become productive material during the research and development phases of filmmaking? When do we start speaking with our images and how? How can our voices be used to alter our images, and how might they affect both the significance of existing images and the generation of new ones? What’s at stake when voiceover is implemented, what kinds of problematics can it raise? These are just a few of the questions we’ll be addressing over the weekend, as we challenge the creative boundaries of voiceover and narration in non-fiction filmmaking.
Alongside Stefan, we’ll be joined by a succession of guest artists and filmmakers whose own adventures in voice might inspire new creative avenues in participants. Miryam Charles will join us to discuss her creative relationship to language and narration. Su Friedrich will walk us through a storied career investigating voice, identity and trauma. Philip Cartelli’s diverse practice tests and pushes the boundaries of language’s relationship to the image.
Practically, participants will be encouraged to experiment with different ways of employing voiceover 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.
Seats are limited, so sign up today!
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 January 14, 2026.
$350 regular registration.
The deposit is non-refundable. Should you need to cancel, you’ll receive half of your registration fee back until January 14. After January 14, the fee is non-refundable.
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 January 14, 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.
Schedule
Friday, 23rd of January
10:00am – 10:30am Welcome & intros
10:30am – 12:30pm Intro session with Stefan Pavlović
12:30am – 2:00pm Lunch
2:00pm – 4:00pm Session with Miryam Charles
4:00pm – 4:30pm Wrap Up Discussion with Stefan additional exercises / discussion
Saturday, 24th of January
10:00am – 10:30am Warm up, inspiring references, case studies
10:30am – 12:30pm Session with Philip Cartelli
12:30am – 2:00pm Lunch
2:00pm – 4:00pm Session with Su Friedrich
4:00pm – 4:30pm Wrap Up Discussion with Stefan, additional exercises / discussion
Sunday, 25th of January
10:00am – 10:30am Warm up, inspiring references, case study, eye training.
10:30am – 12:30pm Creative session OR work-in-progress with Stefan.
12:30am – 1:30pm Wrap Up Discussion with Stefan, additional exercises / discussion
Each day follows this general structure, with some minor variations and substitutions:
10:00a
Warm up, inspiring references, case study, eye training.
10:30a
Presentation by guest speaker + individual work-in-progress critique
11:45a
Discussion
12:30p
Share / Discussion / Exercise
1:00p
Lunch (on your own)
2:00p
Presentation by guest speaker + individual work-in-progress critique
3:15p
Discussion
4:00p
Workshop Exercise + Critique
5:00p
Wrap Up
Bios
Stefan Pavlović (b. 1989) is an award-winning filmmaker currently based in Amsterdam. His debut feature film Looking for Horses (2021) has been screened at over forty international film festivals, and won fifteen prizes, among others, the Burning Lights Competition at Visions du Reel, Jury Prize at Sarajevo Film Festival, Grand Prix at RIDM, Best Film at Kasseler Dokfest.
Stefan was awarded the Prins Bernhard Documentary Stipend in 2021 and was selected for the Berlinale Talents program in 2022. He is a programmer at the Eastern Neighbours Film Festival in The Hague, the Netherlands.
Stefan received his BA in film directing at Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles and his MA at the Netherlands Film Academy in Artistic Research in and through Cinema.
He is currently developing his second feature length film with Momento Films and artTrace Foundation.
Su Friedrich has directed twenty-seven films and videos since 1978, which have been featured in thirty-one retrospectives at major museums and film festivals including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Buenos Aires Festival of Independent Cinema and the National Film Theater in London and they have been widely screened and extensively written. Her work is the subject of two recent books: Su Friedrich: Interviews, edited by Sonia Misra and Rox Samer, Univ. of Mississippi Press (2022) and Su Friedrich by Barbara Mennel, Univ of Illinois Press (2023.) The films have won numerous awards, including Grand Prix at the Melbourne Film Festival, Outstanding Documentary Award at Outfest and Best Narrative Film Award at the Athens International Film Festival. Fifteen of her films are available on DVD and VOD streaming from Outcast Films and her two most recent films are at Icarus Films.
Philip Cartelli is a filmmaker, producer, and researcher whose work has been exhibited at Locarno Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Visions du Réel, Torino Film Festival, FID Marseille, and Film at Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real, among others; distributed by Grasshopper Film, Kinoscope, and Tënk; and published in Ethnologie française, Ethnologia Europaea, Film International and Cinema Scope, among others.
He holds a PhD in Media Anthropology from Harvard University (where he was a member of the Sensory Ethnography Lab), a PhD in Sociology from the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris), and he was a participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program – Studio Program. He has been a resident at MacDowell, Camargo Foundation, and Iméra – Institute for Advanced Study.
He is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Wagner College in New York City and head producer at Nusquam LLC.
Miryam Charles is a filmmaker of Haitian origin living in Montreal. Her films have been shown at various festivals in Quebec and abroad. Her first feature, Cette maison, premiered at the Berlinale, then presented at the AFI Film Festival, and was included in the TIFF Top 10 and Sight and Sound‘s Best Films of the Year in 2022. Her work has been shown at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, the Everson Museum and the Palais de Tokyo.
