This 2018 MDOCS Forum panel features four maker/scholars working across traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Join Alexandra Juhasz, Toma Peiu and Luiza Parvu, and Jason Fox, for a panel discussion as they re-think the archive as a location of surveillance from which to interpret, intervene, create, and curate.

About the Panelists

Dr. Alexandra Juhasz is the chair of the Film Department at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She makes and studies committed media practices that contribute to political change and individual and community growth. She is the author/editor of scholarly books on AIDS activist video, fake (and real) documentaries, YouTube, and black lesbian filmmaking. She is the producer of educational videotapes on feminist issues from AIDS to teen pregnancy as well as the feature fake documentaries The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1997) and The Owls (Dunye, 2010). Her current work is on and about feminist internet culture.

Toma Peiu is a visual artist, writer, media scholar and educator, based in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and New York. He is pursuing a Ph.D. in Emergent Technologies and Media Arts Practices at the University of Colorado Boulder, and holds an MA in Media Studies from The New School in New York. His interest for diasporic and transnational narratives feeds his observation of public urban space and his creative nonfiction archival narratives. His practice moves fluidly across disciplinary boundaries, between photography, sound, the moving image, and writing, always in search for both meaning and form. He is currently developing projects on the staging of failure in public space; and, respectively, on the effect of environmental and political disaster on population migration and the metamorphosis of public space in the Aral Sea region of Central Asia.

Luiza Pârvu is a filmmaker and educator currently based in Boulder, CO. She holds an MFA in Film Production from New York University – Tisch School of The Arts. She is an experienced film director and editor, working in a variety of formats, including fiction, documentary, experimental, and commercial. Her first documentary feature film, Ubi Bene Ibi Patria (A Place of My Own), is currently in post-production. The film, shot in 2016 across Europe and the US, explores the theme of immigration and issues of ethnicity, gender, and class in the form of an urgent and personal road movie. She produced it with Toma Peiu, as a thesis for her graduate studies at NYU. The films she has directed or edited have been recognized in over 100 film festivals and events worldwide. In 2012, she was a nominee in the Rising Star category at the Gopo Romanian Film Industry Awards.

Jason Fox is a filmmaker and professor based in New York. He has taught in the Graduate School of Cinema Studies at New York University, Princeton University, Vassar College, and CUNY Hunter College. His award-winning work as a director, cinematographer, and editor has screened internationally in film festivals including Sundance, AFI Fest, and Venice, in galleries, and on broadcast television. He has worked as a film programmer in conjunction with The American Museum of Natural History, The Flaherty Seminar, and the Museum of Modern Art, among other venues. He is a recipient of a Union Square Award for social justice, and he is also the founding editor of the peer-reviewed journal of documentary studies, World Records, published by UnionDocs in Brooklyn, NY.

About MDOCS Forum

This event is organized by the John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative (MDOCS) at Skidmore College as part of its annual Storytellers’ Institute’s MDOCS Forum. This year documentary makers who explore the theme of surveil/surveilled through film, sound, interactive media, museum curation, scholarship, etc. connect with Skidmore and community members during the weekend-long event. Join an international group of storytellers to explore these questions in events including film screenings, audio experiences, dialogues, and star gazing. Visit MDCOS website for more information on all of the events taking place at various locations on Skidmore campus from June 7-10, 2018. This event is free and open to the public.