DOK Industry Podcast 2024
Power of the Pipeline
This conversation is a celebration. It’s a dive into creative liberation and all that can be possible with the right resources and validation delivered with care. It’s also a follow up on a 2020 DOK Leipzig podcast collaboration called “Who is Missing from the Coming of Age Narrative.”
Shakira Refos, host of this episode, always wanted to investigate the power of pipeline programs, different types of mentorship models, artist in residencies, fellowships etc. In this conversation, we explore the power of the pipeline while chatting with a filmmaker who is in the beginning of her career and an established filmmaker in the middle of her breakout success.
Length: 52'06''
Recorded on June 27 and July 2
Moderator: Shakira Refos
Shakira is an educator from The Netherlands who joined the California Film Institute’s Education Department by way of the Sarasota Film Festival and Sundance Institute. With a deep passion for storytelling, Shakira attributes her drive for community, justice and common sense from the cultures of her Mother and Father hailing from Suriname and Trinidad respectively. Her career has been dedicated to empowering young independent thinkers through the exploration of art history and creative expression—prioritising equitable praxis through engagements with film as well as demystifying the path for BIPOC students to becoming film fest administrators and curators. You’ll often hear her shouting “WE NEED MORE BLACK PROGRAMMERS!!” from the rooftops of her current home and office in the Bay Area, CA to anyone who will listen… .
Guests
Lanaa Dantzler was born and raised in West Philadelphia. She's sixteen-years-old and currently majoring in creative writing at the historic Phila HS for Creative and Performing Arts. Lanaa is a proud Black Girls Film Camp alumni. Dantzler wrote, directed, and starred in her first short film, Five Angry Black Girls (2023). The film will be screened at Essence Film Festival 2024 this July.
Filmography:
Five Angry Black Girls, 2023, Writer and Director
The Jubilee Project, 2023, Writer and Director
As You Are, 2024, Writer and Director
Screenings:
Essence Film Festival 2024, July, Five Angry Black Girls
Contessa Gayles is a film director, writer, DP, editor and an Emmy-nominated producer. She tells stories about identity, socio-political movement, healing, Black liberation and the radical imagination. Contessa’s feature-length documentary visual album, “Songs from the Hole”, world premiered at SXSW 2024, where it won the Audience Award, Visions category. She premiered “The Debutantes” at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival in documentary competition. Her documentary short, Founder Girls, premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and broadcast on BET. Previously, she was a producer at CNN, where she directed and produced award-winning original series and documentaries, including the feature documentary, “The Feminist” on Cellblock Y.
Filmography:
“Songs from the Hole”, 2024, Director
“The Debutantes”, 2024, Director
DOK Industry Podcast 2024 is realised in partnership with POC2 Programmers of Colour Collective and What’s Up With Docs Podcast, and supported by Docs-in-Orbit and film.macht.kritisch - The podcast about the *other* cinema.
DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the MEDIA sub-programme of Creative Europe. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
