Documentary Filmmaking Masterclass with Yance Ford

Kick off the Unorthodocs. festival in this free workshop with award-winning filmmaker Yance Ford that explores the art of creating a simultaneously personal and political documentary in 2018. Together with fellow filmmakers and documentary fans, you’ll investigate how to a maintain a creative and authentic aesthetic in this highly polarized and political climate, and how to use style and pacing to allow audiences to reflect on the story while they’re living it.

With the triumph of his masterful 2017 debut, Strong Island, Ford has emerged as one of the most distinctive documentarians working today. When the project was shortlisted for an Academy Award (Best Documentary Feature), Ford also became the first openly transgender man to receive an Oscar nomination. The film also earned a US Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling at Sundance.

Strong Island begins as an inquiry into the muted implosion of Ford’s family after his unarmed brother’s death in a shooting, then spirals out to explore larger (and increasingly unanswerable) questions—like how does one sift through decades’ worth of social and familial history and still tell an intimate story? If you haven’t seen it yet, the powerful documentary is currently available on Netflix.

Ford has been recognized on The Root 100, an annual list of the most influential African Americans, and among Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Between 2002 and 2012, Ford produced the critically acclaimed PBS documentary series POV, which was nominated for 16 Emmys during his tenure.

• Complete Unorthodocs. 2018 lineup

Image: Yance Ford, photo courtesy of Netflix.