UFVA 2025 VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

Innovative Research by International Film and Media Scholars 

Paper Presentations:

 

Ting Luo, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China 

Self-Referentiality as Self-Promotion: Chinese Studios’ Self-Reflexive Films in the Republican Era

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Javad Nematollahi, Ph.D. Candidate,  Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

Fear and Trembling: Exploring Surveillance in Iranian New Wave

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Aloy Deb Barma, Research Scholar, Mizoram University, Aizawl, India

(Not Quite) Far from the Center: Reframing the “Peripheral” through Kokborok and Bengali Screen Cultures of Tripura

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Chikwurah Destiny Isiguzo, lecturer, Abia State University, Uturu, Nigeria

New Nollywood: Auto-mobilizing the Ordinary in Rogba Arimoro’s Tokunbo (2019) 

Panel: Documentary Ethics: Best Practices and Case Studies

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Documentary filmmakers will present on best practices in documentary ethics, the Documentary Accountability Working Group’s Framework, and how they’ve dealt with  ethical issues in their own work including portraying interviewees living with dementia, the ethics of filming family members, documenting the BDSM community, negotiating power dynamics between filmmakers and interviewees, renewing releases over long production times, and the ethics of music licensing.

 

Panelists:

Natalie Bullock Brown (Cracking While Black)

Kyle Henry (Time Passages)

Augusta Palmer (The Blues Society)

Adam Sekuler (The Flamingo) 
 

Panel: Resources for Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression

 

Academic freedom has become an urgent issue in many of our institutions. The Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression Committee gathers knowledge on threats to academic freedom, and works with the UFVA Board to suggest relevant actions such as institutional support for members. Committee members will share resources and provide background, and we welcome insights and concerns from UFVA members. 

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Panelists: 

Patricia Aufderheide

Betsy Kalin 

Laura Vazquez

Workshop: UNLV Film’s Proof of Concept Program: Bridging Academic Learning and Professional Collaboration - Collaborating with Professional Directors to Create Co-Curricular Filmmaking Opportunities in Film Education 

 

This workshop offers filmmaking educators a comprehensive, actionable blueprint for integrating professional filmmaking collaborations into a higher education setting. The focus is on UNLV Film’s innovative Proof of Concept Program, where students work alongside professional directors to produce short films designed to support feature-length funding efforts - in one week’s time.  Attendees will gain insight into:  The structured pre-production, shooting, and post-production workflows used to balance academic schedules with professional project demands. Strategies to enhance student engagement and skill development while meeting the filmmaker’s creative and logistical objectives. Tools, schedules, and workflows adapted for academic contexts, showcasing how to achieve high production value on limited budgets and timelines. This session will also feature a practical discussion on adapting the program’s framework to other institutions, addressing constraints in financial, technical, and scheduling resources. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies to implement similar collaborative programs, fostering professional-grade experiences for students and expanding their institutions’ impact on the filmmaking industry.   We will also screen our pilot project’s POC project “A Very Lovely Girl,” written and Directed by Rod Blackhurst

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Workshop Presenters: 

May May Luong, Visiting Assistant Professor & Interim Director of Production Operations, UNLV Film

Adam Paul, Assistant Professor in Screen Acting, UNLV Film

Tom Bjelic, Assistant Professor in Sound Production

Panel: Getting started with new media: Tips and strategies for repurposing current projects and designing new ones

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Are you a filmmaker who wants to get started with new media techniques? Want to try something new but not sure how to get started or how steep the learning curve will be? In this panel, new media artists explain how we’ve incorporated new storytelling technologies into our creative work and teaching practice. Tips and strategies will be shared for repurposing current projects and designing new ones. If you want to explore new storytelling technologies, keep your teaching practice current, and learn more about the New Media Caucus and annual UFVA New Media Gallery, then please join us for this warm welcome to teaching new media! Members of the UFVA New Media Caucus will talk about the UFVA New Media Gallery. You’ll learn about VR, stereoscopic immersive video and strategies for repurposing older work with Prof. Rebecca Ormond, remixing audio and video in MaxMSP with New Media Caucus chair Jennifer Zaylea, interactive video design with Prof. Laura Zaylea, and dance video installation with Prof. Heather Coker Hawkins. Join us! 

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Panelists:

Prof. Jennifer Zaylea, New Media Caucus Chair

Prof. Rebecca Ormond

Prof. Heather Coker Hawkins

Workshop: Teaching students about loudness and LUFS

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Workshop description:

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Workshop Presenter:

Dawn Schot Klotzbach, Lecturer, Course Coordinator for Media Production, University of Minnesota

Panel: Launching New Programs: Lessons Learned

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With the approaching demographic cliff, some administrators are encouraging their faculty to develop new programs to attract students. This panel will bring together UFVA members at various stages of the process to discuss some of the lessons they’ve learned along the way. Panelists will share their experiences, in both university and community college contexts, of developing, launching, and managing in-person and online film and media programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. They will discuss how they got their initiatives off the ground by benchmarking peers, measuring demand, drafting a proposal, gaining budget approval, developing curriculum, securing accreditation, recruiting students, managing faculty, and assessing their result, etc. They will also offer tips and advice for colleagues considering launching new programs at their home institutions and offer some best practices for success.

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Panelists:

Elizabeth LeDoux, Bentley University

Christopher Boulton, University of Tampa

Stephanie Tripp, University of Tampa

Eileen White, Queensborough Community College

Nicky Koschmann, University of Arizona

Yuri Makino, University of Arizona

Workshop: Getting Students To Understand "Truth" in Documentary

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Workshop Description: 

Truth in documentary filmmaking can be ephemeral. By definition. Documentarians are not journalists and as such, they do not seek objective truths. Rather, they tell nonfiction stories that illuminate truths about the human condition - emotional truths about the human experience. Truths with a point of view. That said, nonfiction storytellers rely on real-life events and tangible evidence to illuminate these emotional truths. And therein lies the difficulty that students - and even filmmakers of great renown - confront when the make their final cuts in the editing room. How do documentarians walk the tightrope between “creative nonfiction” and “created nonfiction?”  

 

This interactive workshop explores the challenges – and posits some of the solutions – to the ever- pressing questions of truth telling – both in documentary storytelling and non-fiction visualization. In an era when AI can add, amend, and even create of whole cloth the imagery that the audience sees, and “agendas” have come to enshroud the stories that documentarians render, what are the requisite guardrails with which we can arm our students as they go into the world as the next generation of documentarians?  

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Workshop Presenter:

Nina Gilden Seavey,, Research Professor Emerita of History and of Media and Public Affairs, and Founding Director, The Documentary Center, George Washington University 

Panel: Contemporary Film Practices: AI, Shaping Performance, and the Visualization of Domestic Violence

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These presentations cover a range of contemporary film production topics, including how Artificial Intelligence provides new tools for filmmakers, pedagogical approaches for exploring the director/actor relationship, and the visualization of domestic violence in the making of the short film, The Donkey, the Dog and the Cat.

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Panelists: 

David Tarleton

Adria Dawn

Alex Mendez Giner

Sandy Siquier

Workshop: Making Great Films with Your Mobile Phone 

 

Workshop Description: This workshop uses the lessons found in Bart Weiss new book Smartphone Cinema. A practical guide to working with your phone. We will go over the black magic camera app (with settings) and an additional selection of gear to work with. 

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Workshop Presenter:

Bart Weiss

University of North Texas

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