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Soc Doc Alumni
Reconstructing a global spiderweb with the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations (Website)
2008
Research interests: Intersection of music and political life, social movements, state oppression, and diaspora, with a particular interest in the Basque Country
Joor Baruah is an audiovisual artist interested in using documentary + idoc, photography, music and new media forms for social change.
Research Interests: Responses to the current racial justice movement in evangelical churches; settler colonialism in the U.S. context; representations of aid workers and populations served by the humanitarian industry and the formation and performance of humanitarian identity; COVID-19; experiences of race- and gender-based disparities in healthcare; the rural American experience; and determinants of audience attitude and behavior change related to encounters with documentary media.
Research Interests: Child Welfare - particularly the psychological ramifications of trauma; Social Justice - immigration and refugee rights; Auteur and Schreiber Theory - pertaining to its application in documentary filmmaking; Latinx Diaspora; Surveillance and Genocide Studies; End-of-life Rights; and unique stories that pertain to the human condition.
expressions of environmentalism, extinction, ethics of environmental policies, fisheries, "bush radio" in Alaska
As a queer immigrant woman of color, Janet Chen works to support underrepresented and marginalized communities. She is a filmmaker, organizer and educator. She has worked at UC Irvine, Outfest and Visual Communications. Janet is currently the Assistant Director of the UCLA Center for EthnoCommunications in Asian American Studies where she co-teaches documentary courses with professor and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña. Janet has also led film and multimedia projects including: Building History 3.0, a Minecraft K-12 curriculum project; Collective Memories, an oral histories project about the beginnings of the Asian American movement; and Translate COVID-19, multi-language PSA videos. She is also a leadership team member for A-Doc (Asian American Documentary Network), a national network that works to increase the visibility and support of Asian Americans in the documentary field. Janet’s most recent short film, Phoenix Bakery: Sweets for the Sweet is currently screening at film festivals nationally. Her latest project is a social media/multimedia project, May 19 AAPI Solidarity, with Jeff Chang (Race Forward) and Renee Tajima-Peña (Asian Americans series). Her research interests include mental health, intergenerational trauma, transnational identities, gender and cultural dynamics.
Research Interests: Cuban culture and performance; Latin America and the Caribbean; US imperialism and interventionism; immigrant identity and integration; education equity; data visualization; community arts and artivism
Research Interests: Film/Media Analysis, Leftist/Socialist Political movements, Transgender politics, Abolition, African-American and Asian-American studies, Korean Reunification and Imperialism/Colonialism studies
Research Interests: Observational documentary, the film essay, autobiographic and experimental nonfiction; american carcerality and abolition/transformative justice; panasian diasporic communities, and queer-of-color feminisms.
Amrit Kaur is a South Asian community organizer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, CA. She hopes to uplift and create spaces for BIPOC humxn beings across the globe with her work as a storyteller and fundamentally change the playing field that favors the stories and narratives of those with power and resources. She is committed to building equitable communities through her start-up organizations called Museroom and Brown Girl Joy, along with her narrative and documentary projects.
Colleen Kelley graduated from Kenyon College with degrees in Film and English. She was awarded Honors by the college’s Film and Theater Department for electing to complete a thesis project of an original screenplay and television series. She also studied film in Wellington, New Zealand. She has edited documentaries highlighting the impact from lack of access to special education in Minnesota’s and California’s public schools. In 2018, Colleen was awarded a Princeton in Africa Fellowship as the Communications Specialist and Videographer with the Nyaka AIDS Orphans Project in Kambuga, Uganda. Colleen drove donor support by highlighting the non-profit school and multiple locally-run community development programs through her original written, image, and video content. After the fellowship, Colleen moved to Lander, WY to work as the Wilderness Medicine Marketing Coordinator for the outdoor education nonprofit, NOLS. In this role, Colleen created videos, blogs, and digital media content to highlight the intersections between conservation, medical preparedness, and outdoor recreation, Recently, Colleen worked as a field canvasser and writer for progressive and Democratic and Progressive candidates running in Montana for the 2020 election races. Outside of work, Colleen is an avid runner, who also enjoys backpacking, biking, and climbing.
Lareau’s research interests include racial justice, allyship, and the legacy and processes of segregation and gentrification.
Decolonial feminist theory, indigenous political movements, preservation of traditional healing practices in the Americas, food justice and land sovereignty in the Americas, Peruvian Diaspora, queer theory, feminist film theory, Latin American studies, and labor studies.
Research Interests: critical race and ethnic studies; visual anthropology; agro-ecology; landscape; diaspora; urban studies; social movements; feminisms
Ethnographic photography essay exploring the cultural landscape of Virginia City, Nevada, the silver-mining boomtown home to the Comstock Lode of 1859. Through analogue photography, sound montage and ethnographic text, Loomis is interested in exploring how Virginia City culturally interacts with its built and natural landscapes and how those landscapes interrelate with the identities of Virginia City.
Environmental, economic, and military injustice in Latin America
Haunting Presences (Video)
2007
Research Interests: US Military base ecologies in Asia, American military culture, experimental documentary filmmaking, performance in documentary, fetishization of Asian women, mixed-race Japanese identity, queer cinema, Asian-American identity, Queer Asian cinema, anti-capitalist filmmaking practices, film as preservation of memories, feminist film theory, US and Japanese pop culture, reality TV
Research Interests: Multimedia projects that examine the complex relationships communities have to their physical and social environments
Finding D-QU: The Lonely Struggle of California's Only Tribal College (Video)
2009
Gender and sexuality in the modern U.S. Military
Imminent Threats: Gendered Bodies in the Military (Creative Non-Fiction)
2007
Using participatory methods to tell stories of people who don't traditionally have the agency to author their own stories is the guiding force in his life. The reason he became an educator is the reason he became a filmmaker.
F*t, H*iry, Di*abled: Resistance, Reclamation, and the Possibility of Bodies (Audio)
2009
Research Interests Identity Development and Agency - particularly in the context of immigration Space and Place - the social and political implications of space, gentrification Cultural Narratives - the selling of the "American Dream" and its impact on segments of the American population and immigrant communities) Teaching and Learning - the intersection of design and pedagogy, access to education
Lara lives and works in Beirut, she is currently enrolled in an MFA in Social Documentation at UCSC. She graduated with distinction from an MBA in Art Management (2016) from IESA in Paris, France, and a BA from the Department of Fine Arts and Art History (2013) from the AUB, Lebanon. She was the Program Coordinator of the Home Workspace Program (HWP) at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, Lebanon from 2016-2020.
I am an aspiring documentary filmmaker who is passionate about the ways that media plays a role in social justice practices. I graduated from DePauw University as a Media Fellow with a Conflict Studies major and a Gender Studies/ Film Studies double minor. My professional experiences include working as an intern with two documentary production companies, Blowback Productions and Mission Critical Productions, as well as a marketing internship with Republic Bank of Chicago. I believe that media is a powerful tool that can be used to make us more aware of the world around us. My goal is to produce films of the kind that are inclusive, encourage us to think critically about conflicts and inspire us to participate in dismantling inequalities.
Documentary and Video Art; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Cinema Studies; Hong Kong Studies
Social movements, prison abolition, decolonization, immigrant rights, criminalization, carceral politics, state violence, black and brown self-determination, latinidad, youth movements, popular pedagogy
Research Interests: Refugees, Roma, human rights, sex trafficking, and immigration.
2022
Neither Lost nor Found : Working Class visibility through the lens of the corner store (Phtography)
2008
Multimedia communications, social movements, social justice. Music and cinema, popular culture and Latin American folklore.
Children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States and their struggle to feel as if they "belong" in the US.