Documenting Social Movements

 
 

MAY 8 / 5:00PM - 6:00PM / WEEKEND 2

DOCUMENTING SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

DA BULLOCK, NADIA SHAAWARI, LORENZO SERNA

PANEL MODERATED BY SADIE LUETMER

LOCATION: PF MAIN GALLERY 144

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As documentary filmmakers, video journalists, and "movement media" -- roles that increasingly blur, overlap, and traverse legal, ethical, cultural, professional, and political definitions -- what are our relationships to social movements and conflicts in a time of mounting political turmoil? We know that the subjects of our work are at risk of backlash and targeting, from "frontline" activists to community members organizing to protect one another or meet their own needs. We know, too, that storytellers themselves become targets for repression and forced complicity. When we aren't prepared to handle and resist this our work can deepen the risk for our subjects. 

We also believe that stories play a crucial role in how social movements articulate themselves and act on the world, and that people need stories about struggle to be informed, learn, heal, grapple, and grow in their own capacity to participate in and imagine alternative social worlds. Our role in this both ties us to and places us in tension with the communities we cover -- communities that in many cases we are also a part of. 

This panel aims to facilitate a conversation among panelists and attendees about the layers of responsibility that come with this work, the current climate of intensifying repression, and how both creators and communities can develop practices for making decisions about risk, ethics, and meaningful storytelling.

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SADIE LUETMER
SADIE LUETMER

Sadie Luetmer has worked as a journalist, researcher, videographer, and multimedia creator since 2011. In 2017 she began applying her skills to documentary cinematography and filmmaking. Her work has appeared in outlets including The Progressive, Al Jazeera English, AJ+, Democracy Now, Unicorn Riot, and More Perfect Union, as well as a number of documentary films and artist collaborations including Finite: The Climate of Change and the Anthropocene River Project.

Luetmer aims to ground her storytelling work in a commitment to interrogating and redistributing agency, access, and impact in cultural production. This has led her to work in community with organizers, artists, journalists, and researchers to explore the strategic and cultural roles of media production in struggling for a more just world. She takes on documentary film as a practice of both radical listening and complex labor, inherently a process of collaboration between filmmakers and subjects to generate truthful representations of social, material, and natural worlds.

 Luetmer completed an undergraduate degree in International Human Rights at the University of Minnesota and a Master of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology at the Central European University.

D.A. BULLOCK
D.A. BULLOCK

D.A. Bullock is an award-winning filmmaker and social practice artist in the field of story-based organizing. His films have been featured at national and international festivals including Toronto International Film Festival & Chicago International Film Festival; winner of Best Film at Urbanworld Film Festival.

In 2011 Bullock founded Bully Creative Shop, a feature film, documentary, media arts and digital content social enterprise. Bullock is a 2014 McKnight IFP Media Artist Fellow, 2015 MN State Arts Board Grant recipient, 2016 Intermedia Arts / City of Minneapolis Creative Citymaking Artist, 2017 Bush Fellowship recipient and a 2022-2024 Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellow.

Bullock is formerly a faculty instructor co-director of HECUA’s Making Media, Making Change program. He has recently worked as the Storyteller in Residence for Pillsbury United Communities and as a Narrative Strategist with Reclaim The Block. His cinematography work can be seen currently in the ARRAY Releasing documentary film VANISHING PEARLS available on Netflix.

NADIA SHAARAWI
NADIA SHAARAWI

Nadia Shaarawi is a filmmaker and videographer dedicated to storytelling with social impact. A 2023 Docs in Action Film Fund recipient, she is directing TJ United, a labor documentary on Trader Joe’s workers.

From 2021 to 2022, she worked as a multimedia journalist for BLCK Press, covering policing, environmental justice, labor, and housing. Her work has been featured in Sahan Journal, Unicorn Riot, More Perfect Union, and the documentary The People’s Way. Now a Producer and Cinematographer at Line Break Media, she has contributed to advancing advocacy campaigns, supporting local short films, and launching grassroots political candidates.

She holds a B.A. in Strategic Communications with a minor in Social Justice and is an alum of HECUA’s Making Media, Making Change program, where she studied under D.A. Bullock, Joua Lee Grande, and Erin Walsh. In 2021, in partnership with Media Justice, she contributed to Copaganda Clapback, a media literacy curriculum focused on misinformation and strategies to combat it.

LORENZO SERNA
LORENZO SERNA

Lorenzo Serna (they/them) is a Chicane queer journalist, documentarian, and creator who’s been on the frontlines of multiple international movements. From the streets of New York City to the rural plains of Standing Rock, they’ve organized processes and assets to coordinate media coverage of mass mobilizations by creating horizontal workflows and non-hierarchical methods of content creation – often in the middle of conflict zones.

Serna is a co-founder of Unicorn Riot, where they spent five years of their professional media career sharing and teaching frontline live video workflows, and the importance of centering frontline voices.

 Now the Director of Tactical Media at the NDN Collective, Serna continues to work on decolonizing media and pushing oral storytelling in live video productions through nonextractive media methods centered around consent.

 They hold a Masters of Arts and a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of North Dakota where they studied creative writing and narrative construction. Their decisions and actions are rooted in their gratitude and knowledge for all of those who came before them, who fought for them, in hopes of leaving a better world for the next generations.

 
PanelPublic FunctionaryWeekend 2, May 8