Collaborating to Advance Narratives of Resistance through Documentary Film

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: Marriott St. Louis Grand

Room: Crystal Ballroom

Floor: Grand Tower, 20th Floor

This session explores the use of documentary film to bring narratives of oppression to a wider audience by elevating the voices of those with lived experience. The session explores how clinicians can collaborate with community members and those with media expertise to create educational tools highlighting resistance to oppression for a wider audience. Suffolk University Law School’s Housing Discrimination Testing Program has collaborated with members of the community and Suffolk University’s Communication, Journalism and Media Department to make a documentary called “Roxbury.” The film highlights one community’s struggle to rise above decades of discriminatory housing policies and claim agency in a shared vision of a better future. Panelists, including Dan Weidknecht, the director of the documentary, will present a clip of the film and then engage in a conversation with attendees to share ideas about such collaborations. The learning objectives for the session are to provide participants with the tools to conceive of, fund, and create their own educational tools that could include a documentary, public service announcement, media campaign or web-based multi-media project. The session also will focus on how to effectively collaborate with those outside of the clinic to produce such content.