School of Media Studies

Doc Studies will have a showcase at this year’s DOC NYC festival, featuring four films. There will also be a Q&A with Amir Husak, Assistant Professor and Director of Documentary Studies, and the students filmmakers. The showcase will be screened online November 11-19, 2020.

Also, big kudos to our remarkable Doc Studies faculty – Silvia Vega-Llona, Rafael Parra, Peter Sillen, Deirdre Boyle, Ted Robinson, Erin Greenwell and our exceptional program associates and student assistants of Fall 2019/Spring 2020 – Mariana Sanson and Thalia Noboa. Special thanks to our outstanding program assistant, Marcos Echeverria Ortiz, who helped compile the films.

About the showcase: 
The New School Documentary Media Studies program provides an opportunity to study documentary filmmaking—production and theory—in a small, tightly focused program. The program culminates in a student documentary festival, Truth Be Told, at the end of each school year, at which certificate students’ films are publicly screened and discussed by the filmmakers and faculty. Certificate holders are qualified to enter documentary media professions as editors, field producers, cinematographers, directors, researchers, and through industry positions in media distribution, museum programming, festival organization, and broadcast productions. (TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 81 MIN) OK Boomer | Director: Amrit Cheng

Teenage activists Alex and Marcus lead a movement to integrate NYC’s high schools, which are among the most racially segregated in the country. (USA, 26 MIN) 

Parklife | Director: Lillian Xuege Li

A chronicle of life in Manhattan’s Columbus Park, where groups of Chinese seniors congregate on a daily basis.  (USA, 18 MIN)

Hidden Costs | Director: Claire Haughey

50 years after the second largest oil spill in US history was discovered under North Brooklyn, the same community resists the construction of a fracked gas pipeline that destabilizes local business and puts public health and safety at risk ahead of a global pandemic. (USA, 21 MIN)

Nine Days a Week | Director: Maliyamungu Muhande

Street photographer Louis Mendes began his career in 1953 in Harlem as a door-to-door baby photographer. Now a New York legend with 37 photographer apprentices, he reflects on a life of hard work, survival, and creativity. (USA, 16 MIN)