What plays on the nightly news quickly becomes history; yesterday’s news becomes today’s archival material. Often, what’s shot for the news is one of the only preserved documents of a given event, and the only record or representation of how it resonated or was interpreted for the wider public. We invite you into a 3 day workshop that explores the rich history of newsreels and news in non-fiction cinema and the fragility of archiving the news, providing a primer on how this kind of material might be brought into your own work.

We’re joined by a wonderful guide for this engagement, documentary producer Stephanie Jenkins, a renowned archival researcher and co-director of the critically influential Archival Producers Alliance.

The archive and archival images have long been vital tools in the documentarians toolbox, employed for myriad purposes: to compare, to illustrate, as proof, as metaphor. A large portion of what we consider video archives were originally gathered from media organizations, news networks and journalists, otherwise known as newsreels.

Over three days we will dive into questions that arise from researching and using this material like:

When does an image become an “archival image”, how does this qualification change an image’s reception by an audience, and to whom does this archive belong?

What are these images that lie in the contested ground between journalism and documentation, and what does it mean when they’re appropriated for storytelling?

In what way can these documents, that once served a precise purpose, be instruments for historical interpretation, revisionism and appropriation, and how should we handle this material critically and ethically?

With her extensive archival experience (including with Ken Burns) Stephanie will lead us through the histories and practicalities of the newsreel archive, before diving into our city’s news history at the NYC Municipal Archives in the Financial District. The following day we’ll be joined by filmmakers Juanjo Pereira (Under the Flags, the Sun, 2025) and Brian Becker (Time Bomb Y2K, 2023), who will walk us through their hands-on experiences working with newsreel archives. Finally, JT Takagi, director of the Third World Newsreel will broaden our understanding of the newsreel both as an agent of history and as a political tool for the present and future too.

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

Stephanie Jenkins has over a decade of experience seeing documentary films from development to delivery. She has worked with Ken Burns and Florentine Films since 2010, on multiple projects including their eight-hour series Muhammad Ali (PBS, 2021), The Central Park Five (2012), Jackie Robinson (2015), and East Lake Meadows: A Public Housing Story (2020). She was a 2018 – 2019 Impact Partners Producing Fellow, and a member of multiple industry organizations, including the Documentary Producers Alliance, the PGA, and ATAS. In 2023, she co-founded the Archival Producers Alliance and is working with that group on putting guidelines in place around the use of generative AI materials in non-fiction films.

Juanjo Pereira is a filmmaker, researcher, and producer focused on essay films and video installations. He co-founded and directs the Asunción Int’l Contemporary Film Festival. His work has earned awards and featured at Hot Docs Forum, IDFA Bertha Fund, ARCHÉ, and more.

Brian Becker is a New York-based filmmaker who directed and produced Time Bomb Y2K (co-directed with Marley McDonald), which premiered on HBO in December, 2023. The film’s festival run included True/False Film Festival, Hot Docs, Sheffield DocFest, IDFA, Camden International Film Festival, and DocNYC. Brian served as archival producer on Free Chol Soo Lee, MLK/FBI, and Spaceship Earth, and as co-producer on the series Bobby Kennedy for President. Brian is a 2022 Doc NYC 40 Under 40 recipient, Impact Partners Producing Fellow, Points North Fellow, and a FOCAL Jane Mercer Researcher of the Year award nominee. Before turning to production, he worked as a mosquito ecologist.

JT Takagi is the Executive Director of Third World Newsreel (www.twn.org), a media center that works to advance storytelling for cultural and social justice, as well as an award winning independent film maker and sound recordist.  She supervises the archival and preservation activities of Third World Newsreel, which has a collection of 16mm films from the late 1960s onwards, documenting the Black Panthers, the Young Lords and many other movements.  JT’s own films are primarily on Asian/Asian American issues with 4 national broadcasts. As a sound engineer, she has recorded hundreds of public television and theatrical documentaries. Besides this, she teaches and works with community organizations focused on peace and social justice. Her films are primarily on Asian/Asian-American and immigrant issues and include BITTERSWEET SURVIVAL, THE #7 TRAIN, THE WOMEN OUTSIDE, and NORTH KOREA: BEYOND THE DMZ, which all aired on PBS.