Thinking Outside the Documentary and Journalism Box

By Leah Aulisio-Sharpe ’22, August 7, 2020

Professors organize international convenings to discuss approaches in educating students in challenging times.

The first convening featured academics from across the globe.

The Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) and the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) at Ithaca College have launched a new global initiative to convene scholars, producers, makers, and journalists to explore ways to adapt and mobilize the methods of nonfiction co-creation during the coronavirus pandemic and nationwide protests against racial injustice.

The first convening was held on July 9, with scholars and practitioners from more than 20 colleges and universities from across the globe coming together.

“The goal of co-creation,” said Patricia Zimmermann, professor of screen studies and co-director of FLEFF, “is to move away from the single authored, top-down structures of traditional media practices, and focus instead on collaborative projects told with the subjects and their communities in order to offer more participatory, democratic and ethical ways of producing documentary and journalism.”

The pandemic and protests have added additional challenges to this task yet have also opened up new field-changing opportunities to reset and restructure.

“The twinning of the pandemic and protest has propelled a massive disruption in communications education in nonfiction realms. This is an exciting turning point — we have to rethink all that we do,” said Zimmermann. “Because everything we used to do may not work anymore.”

“We realized we can contribute to this ecology of emerging institutes, labs, and conversations about cocreation documentary and journalism in the UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, and elsewhere. It’s so exciting because Ithaca College is a part of this international network committed to reimagining nonfiction theory and practice now.”

Patricia Zimmermann, professor of screen studies and co-director of FLEFF

As a result, the first convenings took on some big-picture questions in documentary and journalism, such as rethinking which teaching methods are scalable and sustainable in a remote learning environment; empowering students to produce high-quality work with low-end, accessible and sometimes amateur technology and equipment; and reimagining the production process and traditional newsrooms, which have long had problems with race, gender, class, sexuality and power relations.

The convenings also discussed how theorists and historians of nonfiction media could expand the material they teach to include these less budget-intensive, community-driven projects on unresolved social and political issues in order to deepen immersion in these vast documentary ecologies beyond the highly resourced American-centric models.

The ultimate goal is to help faculty invent new ways to plan their documentary and journalism courses to better serve students, communities, and the constantly evolving international discipline of nonfiction practices and theories during these unprecedented times.

PCIM and FLEFF plan to continue hosting international convenings once a month. The next one is scheduled for August 20.

“We realized we can contribute to this ecology of emerging institutes, labs, and conversations about cocreation documentary and journalism in the UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, and elsewhere,” Zimmermann said. “It’s so exciting because Ithaca College is a part of this international network committed to reimagining nonfiction theory and practice now.”