John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative - MDOCS

01/30/2025

We are excited to announce that, beginning in May 2025, Daesha Devón Harris will take the helm of the Storytellers' Institute as its Interim Director. Well-known as an artist and activist across our region, Daesha has become an invaluable member of the MDOCS community as well, first as a faculty member teaching Documentary Practices in Photography, then as a Storytellers’ Institute Visiting Fellow in 2017, and ultimately returning each summer since 2019 as the Institute’s Senior Fellow.

We are thrilled to continue working with Daesha in this new capacity and cannot wait to see where she steers the Institute as it heads into its 11th summer!

01/15/2025

12/11/2024

Shout-out to our friends at RIDM for giving us the warmest of welcomes in Montreal a few weeks ago! We came, we saw, and left inspired by all of the incredible films and filmmaker panels we got to experience during the opening weekend of the festival. We kicked off our weekend with a powerful master class with filmmaker Kim O’Bamsawin, followed by Marianna Milhorat’s “Just Above the Surface of the Earth”, to a panel about documentary filmmaking in Mexico, followed by Carlos Rossini’s, “Ciudad,” topped off with a program of experimental films and crafting with La Lumière Collective family event on Sunday. We could not have asked for a better way to spend a weekend in Montreal!

Thank you for the photos taken by Jade-S. Vachon-Côté (2), and Maryse Boyce (4&5)

12/09/2024

MDOCS students are bringing stories into spaces on Skidmore campus - “Corner and Stones,” was the culmination of semester-long research projects by students in Angus McCullough’s “Making Questions: Creative Research Lab.” Each artist followed their own line of inquiry, exploring their topic through academic research and material experimentation, resulting in six unique installations that reflect a diversity of approaches and techniques. From a bedroom in crisis, to a plastic sanctuary, and a light capturing contraption, the projects offer up alternative approaches to understanding complex issues in the world at large. Photos 1-4: Elise Milner's "Plastic Sanctuary," Javier Soto's “Untitled - migrant erasure in saratoga springs,” Kartik Vaish's “Kaash,” and Renée Fritschel, light capturing device. In addition to this display of mixed-media stories, on Fri, Nov 22, a large timeline was installed in the Zankel Music Center lobby for Skidmania, designed by MDOCS Student Assistant Francis Davies with content created by Prof. Sarah Day-O’Connell’s "Thinking About Music" course telling the story of music during the 1970s. The displays in both spaces show the power of embodied research through public communication and display. Congratulations to all of the faculty and students involved in these projects!

11/19/2024

Please join us this coming Thursday the 21st from 4-6pm in the Case Gallery for their installations, with topics ranging from multi-layered projections about the erasure of migrant labor and identity in Saratoga, to the fuzzy boundaries between what is trash, what is nature, and what is human. There’s even a full rap album in there, too.

10/31/2024

Join us for our last screening event of the semester - Mon, Nov 4 @ 6pm - SONG OF SALT + Q&A with filmmaker Baiada !! Set in an isolated mining town on the outskirts of Death Valley, "Song of Salt," described as the “the perfect observational documentary,” (Film Threat) is an immersive glimpse into the struggles and celebrations within a tight-knit community as its residents, suspended between the past and the future, face the present realities of an eroding economy.

See you there!!

10/23/2024

Ryan here❗️taking over MDOCS to make sure you all come to this 🎞️screening 🎞️ I curated 🫶 featuring aliens! Le****ns! weird taxidermy! an old lady killer 😱! And MORE.... so you can START HALLOWEEN EARLY 🎊🎊🎊🥳 Did you know Saratoga is home to talented filmmakers 🤔⁉️ come hang out with them at our 💀spooky💀 screening of short-films by local artists Saratoga Arts ‼️ pregame halloweekend with FREE food (bring your ID 🥂🪪) and transportation 🫶

Uncover Saratoga's film scene and meet members from the 518 Film Network 🥳🥳🕴️who knows, maybe you could work with one of these filmmakers on your next project❗️ I will see you there 🫡 (or else 😡)

🚨 Don't forget 🚨 use code: SCREAMMORE to secure your free ticket for this event at www.saratoga-arts.org/events

10/23/2024

We can't wait to join the 518 Film Network at Saratoga Arts for this spooky event! Featuring a program of fantastic regional films curated by Ryan Thompson '26. ALL Skidmore students invited to attend, and we hope to see our filmmaker friends there as well!

10/15/2024

Audio Documentary Producer and founder of Bright Sighted (and amazing instructor of Intro to Audio Doc), Christine O'Donnell, has three shows nominated for The Signal Awards!! Two more days to cast your vote to support these incredible podcasts - "A Vote For Yes" (Self-Improvement & Self-Help Category) and "The Other 3 Years" (Documentary, Sports and Athletes Shaping Culture categories).

I just voted for this finalist to win a Signal Listener's Choice Award. You should too.

09/26/2024

Applications open for an interim director of the MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute - This hybrid role combines leadership of the Institute with a half-time teaching load in MDOCS as a visiting artist-in-residence.
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‌We're looking for a nonfiction professional and educator who will teach three courses per year and direct the Storytellers' Institute in summers 2025-27, framing the conversations and convening the space that will shape and advance the work of a diverse cohort of nonfiction practitioners, both in and outside of the academy.
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‌Full position description and application linked below — apply by Oct. 15. Direct any questions about the position to [email protected]. Please share widely with your networks!

Link: https://eodq.fa.us6.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX/job/2198/?utm_medium=jobshare

09/24/2024

Thank you to all of the incredible community organizers for joining us for the pre-Summit gatherings this past weekend in Albany (AVillage, The Radix Ecological Sustainability Center) and Troy ( Sanctuary for Independent Media) as well as MDOCS Artist-in-Residence Kahstoserakwathe Paulette Moore and Jojola. We left inspired and uplifted by the important work you all do. Don’t forget to join us TONIGHT for the PlaceKnowing Solutions Summit - Tue, Sep 24 @ 6pm, Skidmore College – where everyone will reconvene for a roundtable discussion, bringing tools and context from global struggles to our local context.

For more info: https://mdocs.skidmore.edu/placeknowing-summit/

09/17/2024

Join us and guests Dr. Ted Jojola and Kahstoserakwathe Paulette Moore for a presentation and conversation to discuss how place-knowing concepts connect with land restoration concerns in current-day North Central Troy, informed by a series of case studies with Indigenous communities, and having walked the Sanctuary campus with local land stewards. They will talk about how changemakers can engage Indigenous planning methods as they remediate contaminated and neglected land and make way for healthy communities.

Taking place at the Sanctuary on Sunday September 22 from 6-7:30pm.
Register at MediaSanctuary.org

image description: headshots of Kahstoserakwathe Paulette Moore and Dr. Ted Jojola, both outdoors, are connected with a blurry, green, plant background.

09/16/2024

We are excited to welcome Kahstoserakwathe Paulette Moore, Fall 2024 MDOCS Storyteller-in-residence. For the past year, Moore and the media collective The Aunties Dandelion has collaborated with Skidmore students and faculty through the MDOCS Co-Creation Initiative. This semester, she will teach “Art & Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving,” co-facilitate a Racial Justice Learning Community with Angela Beallor (MDOCS), and visiting classes in Environmental Studies and Sciences (ESS) and Philosophy. In connection with the new podcast series PlaceKnowing with Dr. Ted Jojola, MDOCS and ESS will host a series of events featuring Paulette Moore and Ted Jojola at the The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy on Sept. 22 and the PlaceKnowing Solution Summit at Skidmore College on Sept. 24. These events will bring Capital Region environmental justice advocates in conversation with Indigenous planners/media-makers at the intersection of environmental stewardship, Indigenous knowledge, and storytelling. See sites below for more information and we hope you will join us for one or all of these events!

https://www.mediasanctuary.org/event/placeknowing-and-ruderal-ecologies/
https://mdocs.skidmore.edu/placeknowing-summit/

09/13/2024

Tue, Sep 24 @ 6pm, Skidmore College – Join us for a roundtable discussion culminating a weekend of dialogues between Capital Region environmental justice advocates and Indigenous planners/media-makers - building on the new PlaceKnowing podcast series to bring tools and context from global struggles to our local context.

Participants include: The Aunties Dandelion University of New Mexico, School of Architecture + Planning Aj Schneller Angela Beallor The Radix Center AVillage The Sanctuary for Independent Media

Sponsored by: Humanities Action Lab National Endowment for the Humanities Mellon Foundation

04/29/2024

Congratulations to Storytellers’ Institute Director Sarah Friedland on the theatrical run of her feature documentary film co-directed with Rami Younis! Lyd in Exile - اللد في المنفى , a film about the once-thriving Palestinian city of Lyd, is a “science fiction documentary” that depicts the Palestinian city both with and without the 1948 Nakba, when over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and villages. Listen to their interview below on Democracy Now! where they share excerpts from their film and discuss the vision behind the project.

https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/29/lyd_sci_fi_documantary_1948_nakba

04/28/2024

Our 10 year anniversary highlighted in Skidmore’s last issue of SCOPE! Thanks for the recognition of the work we’ve been putting in, of the alums who have been a part of this program over this decade – special congrats to Eli Ruben, Lisa Fierstein, Shana Kleiner, Hadia Bakkar, and Sanjna Selva, who get some love in the article -- and to EVERYONE who has been a part of our community.

04/10/2024

Get Ready Skidmore! The Golden Acorns Are Here!

The MDOCS Golden Acorn Awards celebrates student creation throughout each year in Documentary Studies courses and around campus. Golden Acorns are awarded to faculty nominations of extraordinary student projects coming out of Doc Studies courses and self-submissions of independent doc work from any and all Skidmore students.

Be sure to submit BEFORE April 26th

Submit you best non-fiction work and we hope to see you there to celebrate all the amazing work students create!

Use the links to apply!

Take a look at some past winners work!
https://www.skidmore.edu/mdocs/golden-acorn-awards/2022/index.php

Apply here!
https://form.jotform.com/240917386489068