Melissa Georges
Chair, Content and Clearance Group, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz
Crisis and Opportunity: Making Docs in a Turbulent Era (Nov 14)
In a time of upheaval, how do we turn disruption into a chance to redefine documentary storytelling and who gets to decide what comes next? This day takes an unflinching look at the forces reshaping the field, from AI and ethics to political pressure and shrinking funding. Together, we’ll ask what’s really happening and explore the opportunities we can build in response.
Each PRO Day Pass grants access to a single DOC NYC PRO day comprised of several panel discussions and all day access to the Festival Lounge where you can enjoy complimentary breakfast and happy hour. Today’s happy hour is co-presented by Frankfurt Kurnit.
To experience the DOC NYC PRO lineup, purchase an individual PRO Day Pass (via the Buy Day Pass button) to hone in on a specific topic, or benefit from discounted pricing when you purchase Multi-Day Pass Packs to an assortment of conference days.
10:00-11:15AM
Defending Documentaries / Defending Democracy
For more than sixty years, the landmark Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan has safeguarded the press and documentary field against political retaliation, but those protections are now under renewed threat. This conversation with Frankfurt Kurnit attorneys Melissa Georges, Victoria Cook, Lisa E. Davis, and guests James West (Center for Investigative Reporting), and Keith Brown (Firelight Films) explores both the stakes for filmmakers and the new financing and distribution models emerging in response; from philanthropic investments like the Ford Foundation’s support of Caste to double bottom-line strategies that fund both production and legal defense. Panelists will examine how the field can adapt, build resilience, and defend free expression in this shifting landscape.
Co-presented by
Melissa Georges
Chair, Content and Clearance Group, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz
Melissa Georges is Chair of the Content and Clearance group at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz. She advises award-winning film, television and documentary producers, directors, writers, podcasters, comedians and animators on complex legal issues, such as defamation, fair use, copyrights and trademarks, rights of publicity and privacy, and parody and satire, in order to get their projects cleared and distributed. She also assists in helping her clients obtain Errors and Omissions insurance (E&O).
Victoria Cook
Partner, Frankfurt Kurnit
Victoria Cook
Partner, Frankfurt Kurnit
Victoria S. Cook is a partner at Frankfurt Kurnit and a member of the Entertainment Group. She focuses on motion picture and television work, representing award-winning filmmakers, writers, directors, actors, television producers, film financiers, and television networks. She is immersed in both the independent and Hollywood worlds, and her clients often work in all aspects of the entertainment business — from major studio films to cutting-edge political documentaries. Ms. Cook was recently recognized by Variety in its 2020 Legal Impact Report and it’s 2020 New York Women’s Impact Report. She appeared in Variety’s 2019 Dealmakers Elite NY Issue and it’s 2019 Legal Impact Report as one of the country’s top 50 “game changing” entertainment lawyers. Crain’s New York Business named her a NYC “Leading Woman Lawyer,” and the New York Law Journal included her in its inaugural “Top Women in the Law” list. She has been named a “Super Lawyer” for the New York area by Super Lawyers magazine and a top lawyer in entertainment law by Best Lawyers. She also was recognized in the 2020 edition of The Legal 500 for her expertise in entertainment law matters, and in the 2013 edition of The Legal 500 for her expertise in copyright law matters. She received the “Women Who Dared” award by The National Council of Jewish Women in 2017.
Lisa E. Davis
Partner, Frankfurt Kurnit
Lisa E. Davis
Partner, Frankfurt Kurnit
Lisa E. Davis is a partner in the Entertainment Group at Frankfurt Kurnit. Lisa represents businesses and celebrities in the film, television, publishing, music, theatre, and sports industries. She advises on a full range of transactional matters – focusing on film (both feature and documentary), television, publishing, live stage and branded entertainment. Lisa has been ranked as a New York-area “Super Lawyer” since 2007 and was featured on the cover of Super Lawyers magazine in a piece on her career and advocacy for racial justice. Best Lawyers in America, Crain’s New York Business, The Hollywood Reporter, The Legal 500, and Variety have all included Lisa on their lists of leading entertainment lawyers.
James West
Center for Investigative Reporting
James West
Center for Investigative Reporting
James West is Executive Editor at the U.S.-based Center for Investigative Reporting, publisher of the acclaimed magazine Mother Jones and the public radio show Reveal, heard on more than 500 stations across America. For over a decade leading the New York bureau, James has launched thriving video and social channels, podcasts, and innovative news formats, and produced stories that toppled Donald Trump’s modeling agency, exposed brutality in America’s private prisons, and uncovered animal abuse on Animal Planet sets. He began his career producing flagship news programs for Australia’s leading public broadcasters, and earned a journalism master’s from New York University. At CIR, he helps steer work that, just this year, earned Webbys, National Magazine Awards, duPonts, an Emmy, and a Pulitzer finalist nod.
Keith Brown
Firelight Films
Keith Brown
Firelight Films
Keith Michael Brown is currently Executive Vice President of Content for Firelight Films, the premiere documentary film company for stories that reach and engage diverse audiences. He also serves as executive producer and producer on its films. He is the director and producer of the short film A New Day Begun”: The Black National Anthem marking his directorial debut.
Prior to Firelight Films, Brown was Senior Vice President of Programming for CNN Headline News and served as a senior documentary and news executive for leading cable and broadcast networks including CBS, NBC, BET, Paramount and PBS. Brown is a founding board member and consulting producer of Shine Global, the award-winning nonprofit film organization focused on children’s issues. His leadership in the industry has garnered numerous awards, including an Academy Award and two nominations, national Emmy Awards, NAACP Image Awards and Peabody Awards among others. A best selling non-fiction author, Brown is also an emerging visual artist who has dedicated his career to telling stories about under-represented communities and people.
11:30-12:45PM
Artful Resistance: Creative Ways to Tell Political Stories
Making political documentaries today comes with plenty of challenges: censorship, shrinking funding, and deepening divides. At the same time, there are opportunities to reimagine what political storytelling can be, and the possibilities that open up in turbulent times. Moderated by Lois Vossen (ITVS), Petra Costa (Apocalypse in the Tropics), Vivek Chaudhary (I, Poppy) and Violet Du Feng (The Dating Game) look at how political films take shape under pressure and how filmmakers are finding inventive ways to move projects forward, even when the landscape feels uncertain.
Lois Vossen
ITVS
Lois Vossen
ITVS
Lois Vossen, founding executive producer of Independent Lens on PBS and YouTube, leads the programming of 25-30 original documentary projects made by independent filmmakers each season. Independent Lens documentaries including I Am Not Your Negro, Philly DA, Newtown, Tower, and The Invisible War build empathy and empower people to better understand themselves and each other. Awarded Best Series by the International Documentary Association (IDA) six times, Independent Lens has received 11 Academy Award nominations and 75 Emmy, Peabody, and duPont–Columbia University Awards. Vossen was inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) Silver Circle, and honored as Nonprofit Leader of the Year by the Anthem Awards.
Petra Costa
Filmmaker
Petra Costa
Filmmaker
Petra Costa has been telling stories in the crossroads between the personal and the political and trying to understand the unequal society we live in, focused in her home country of Brazil. Her latest documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics premiered at the Venice Biennale in 2024 and won best documentary at the Havana and Montclair film festivals. Previously she directed, The Edge of Democracy, which was nominated for an Academy Award and was listed by the New York Times as one of the best 10 films of 2019. It won the Peabody Award, Spirit Awards and best director at DOC NYC.
Violet Du Feng
Filmmaker
Violet Du Feng
Filmmaker
Violet is an Emmy winning filmmaker, a doc branch member of AMPAS and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. She has directed, produced and executive produced 13 documentaries including the Oscar Shortlisted HIDDEN LETTERS with broadcast in 15 countries. Her producing credits include DEAR MOTHER, I MEANT TO WRITE ABOUT DEATH, SINGING IN THE WILDERNESS, CONFUCIAN DREAM, MAINELAND and PLEASE REMEMBER ME.
Vivek Chaudhary
Filmmaker
Vivek Chaudhary
Filmmaker
Vivek Chaudhary is director, producer and writer whose films have been shown and awarded at prestigious film festivals like Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival, Busan International Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival among others. His work has been supported by top film grants like IDFA Bertha Fund, The French National Centre for Cinema (CNC), Hong Kong Asian Film Financing Fund and DMZ Docs Industry.
As a filmmaker, he is very interested in microcosms that shine light on bigger issues, by following intimate, personal stories of people, who with their quiet integrity face up to systemic injustices.
His debut documentary, a mid-length film titled Goonga Pehelwan (The Mute Wrestler), won the Indian National Film Award in the year 2015 and was screened at various film festivals all over the globe, picking up a dozen awards. The film’s continued activism was instrumental in changing national sporting policies for deaf sportspersons in India.
His debut-feature documentary I, Poppy premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival, where it won the Best International Feature Award, qualifying the film for the Academy Awards. The film has then picked up the Busan Cinephile Award at Busan Intl Film Festival. The film continues its run across top-tier film festivals across the globe.
Vivek has written his first fiction feature, which has been developed with mentorship from the NFDC Screenwriters Lab. The film is currently in pre-production.
2:00-3:15PM
Through Whose Eyes? The Power of Perspective
Stories about Black and Brown communities are shaped by production teams from outside their community, raising critical questions about authorship and representation. But what happens when BIPOC filmmakers find themselves within these teams, advocating to ensure that their film participants are portrayed with dignity? This panel brings together moderator Natalie Bullock Brown (The Documentary Accountability Working Group), filmmaker Shola Lynch (Number One On the Call Sheet), editor Jason Pollard (Unbanked), and producer Susan Margolin (Monk in Pieces) to examine the ongoing fight to maintain ethical representation in documentary storytelling with collaborators across lines of race, class, and nationality.
Special thanks to community partner the Documentary Accountability Working Group for their support of this panel.
Natalie Bullock Brown
Producer, Documentary Accountability Working Group
Natalie Bullock Brown
Producer, Documentary Accountability Working Group
Natalie Bullock Brown is director of the Documentary Accountability Working Group, a collective she co-founded in 2020, which produced a framework that provides guidance for documentary filmmakers in accountable storytelling, and a syllabus to teach that framework. Natalie is also a 2023 Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center Documentary Film in the Public Interest Fellow; a 2023 DOC NYC New Leader; and a 2021 Rockwood Institute JustFilms Fellow. Natalie is director/producer of a documentary work-in-progress that explores the impact of messaging about beauty and aging on Black women. She also served as a producer for award-winning filmmaker Byron Hurt’s PBS documentary, Hazing, his NOVA film, Lee and Liza’s Family Tree, and his soon-to-be-released short doc, Men of Courage. Natalie is executive producer for filmmaker Resita Cox’s upcoming film, Basketball Heaven, and was an associate producer on documentary filmmaker Ken Burns’ 10-part PBS series, Jazz.
Jason Pollard
Editor
Jason Pollard
Editor
Jason Pollard’s involvement in the film industry began as a young child when he accompanied his father, acclaimed film producer/editor Sam Pollard, to different edit rooms as Sam magically turned strips of celluloid into complex and wonderful stories. He graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts with a BA in Film/TV and an MA in Cinema Studies. Since graduating, he has worked his way up from working on documentary films and TV series to editing many acclaimed documentary films, including 2007’s Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, Sing Your Song, which premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, Slavery By Another Name, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and the Netflix documentary Get Me Roger Stone which premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival. Since then, he has edited on doc-series like Who Killed Malcolm X? and Rapture for Netflix and worked with Henry Louis Gates on his Black Church and Black Gospel series for PBS, Byron Hurt’s Lee and Liza’s Family Tree for PBS/NOVA, co/edited Louis Armstrong’s Black and Blues for Apple TV, and co-produced, co-directed, and co-edited Ol’ Dirty Bastard: The Tale of Two Dirtys for A/E.
Shola Lynch
Director
Shola Lynch
Director
Shola Lynch is an award-winning American filmmaker. Her latest documentary, Number One on the Call Sheet: Black Leading Women in Hollywood, premiered on Apple TV+ in 2025. She best known for the critically acclaimed Free Angela & All Political Prisoners and Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed. She is honored to train a new generation of storytellers as the Diana King Endowed Professor and the Director of the Documentary Filmmaking Program at Spelman College. From 2013 – 2024, Shola served as the Curator of the Moving Image & Recorded Sound Division of the NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In 2016, Shola became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Currently, Shola is completing a documentary about Reverend Jesse Jackson. She is also working on a passion project about the American sprinter, icon, and still World Record holder, Flo Jo. Shola believes deeply in the value of preserving history and its power in storytelling.
Susan Margolin
Producer
Susan Margolin
Producer
Susan Margolin is a pioneer of digital film distribution and a creator of independent films with 25+ years’ experience. Margolin co-founded independent film distributor New Video/Docurama Films in 1992, and ran the company until she sold it to Cinedigm in 2012. As Co-President there she distributed critically acclaimed, award winning films including Destin Daniel Crettin’s Short Term 12 and Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering’s Academy Award nominated The Invisible War. In 2016 Margolin launched St. Marks Productions. She produced Nancy Buirski’s A Crime on the Bayou (Starz) and The Rape of Recy Taylor (Starz), Alexandra Codina’s Paper Children (YouTube Originals), Trish Adlesic’s Tree of Life and Executive Produced Judith Helfand’s upcoming Love and Stuff, Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl’s Obsessed With Light and Cheryl Miller Houser and Cynthia Wade’s Generation Startup (Netflix). Margolin serves on the board of directors of Chicken & Egg Pictures, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, BAFTA NY (emerita), and the Documentary Producers Alliance, and on the advisory boards of Hamptons DocFest and NYWIFT. Margolin is a member of the PGA, BAFTA and AMPAS.
3:30-4:45PM
Whose Voice Is It Anyway? AI, Authenticity, and the Grant Application Process
What happens to authenticity when time becomes the most valuable and scarcest resource? As grant, lab, and fellowship applications pile up, many filmmakers are turning to generative AI to keep pace. Institutions, meanwhile, are left to parse what’s real, what’s templated, and what’s lost in translation. Moderated by Sean Weiner, Elaisha Stokes (Chicken & Egg Films), AX Mina (Archival Producer’s Alliance), and Akmyrat Tuyliyev (MIT Open Documentary Lab) join this conversation to explore what’s at stake: Is time-saving worth the potential erosion of voice? How might AI reshape not only the way artists apply for resources but also how institutions evaluate them? And crucially, what should institutions do, knowing that some filmmakers will inevitably lean on AI? By centering time, authenticity, and trust, this discussion surfaces an underexplored facet of AI’s impact on the documentary field, one that goes beyond efficiency to question how we truly connect.
Elaisha Stokes
Chicken & Egg Films
Elaisha Stokes
Chicken & Egg Films
As the Senior Program Manager at Chicken & Egg Pictures, Elaisha oversees the Chicken & Egg Award and the Research & Development grants for mid-career filmmakers. She believes that the documentary craft is a means to increase gender diversity and inclusion, both in the arts and in the zeitgeist. Prior to this position, Elaisha served as Senior Producer for CBS Original Documentaries, where she oversaw several documentary series for Paramount+ and streaming platforms. Her documentary work has been featured on National Geographic, CNN, The New York Times, and Vice. She has received awards and grants from the Nation Institute, the Pulitzer Family, the Emmy Foundation, and the Ontario Arts Council. In 2018, she was a Sundance New Voices fellow and a Cine Qua Non screenwriting fellow. Her films have screened at BFI London, the Maryland Film Festival, the Brooklyn Film Festival, London Shorts, and Planet in Focus. Elaisha holds a Master’s degree in Documentary Filmmaking from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
Sean Weiner
Co-director, UFO
Sean Weiner
Co-director, UFO
Sean Weiner is a film producer and artist community builder based in the Lower Hudson Valley of New York. Sean is the Co-Director of UFO, a filmmaker support organization built upon a philosophy of inclusion and collaboration that provides short film labs, feature film residencies, and grants opportunities to early career and experienced independent filmmakers. He was the Founding Director of Creative Culture at the Jacob Burns Film Center. Sean is an assistant professor in Film & Media Studies at Purchase College. He has produced, edited, and mentored award-winning films selected by Sundance, Berlinale, and SXSW, and acquired by Criterion, Searchlight, HBOMax, POV, The New Yorker, and New York Times’ Op-Docs.
A.X. Mina
Filmmaker, artist and author
A.X. Mina
Filmmaker, artist and author
AX Mina is a queer nonbinary filmmaker, artist and author. She consults on research for the Archival Producers Alliance and is director and producer of Rubbish: The Queer Kingdom of Leilah Babirye. She is a Senior Civic Media Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Journalism and Communications and member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and the Asian American Documentary Network.
Akmyrat Tuyliyev
MIT Open Documentary Lab
Akmyrat Tuyliyev
MIT Open Documentary Lab
Akmyrat Tuyliyev is a producer at MIT Open Documentary Lab and a Visiting Assistant Professor at ASU’s Master’s in Narrative and Emerging Media program in Los Angeles, CA.
His VR documentary “1991” was part of the Venice Biennale College Cinema VR, IDFA DocLab Forum, and NewImages Festival XR Market. Akmyrat has produced and directed new media experiences showcased by the United Nations, The History Channel, Made in NY Media Center by IFP, and Frank Gehry’s IAC Building Video Wall. Akmyrat served as an interactive producer at PBS’s POV Spark, where he produced Instagram documentary series Otherly in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada (Webby Nominee 2022), Alexa, Call Mom! (Tribeca 2020) and Atomu VR (Sundance 2020). He also produced Snapchat AR lenses for Nike, Coca-Cola, Disney and more.
He taught immersive and interactive storytelling at Interactive Media Arts program at NYU Tisch and Columbia University’s Digital Storytelling Lab.
DOC NYC PRO is co-presented by:
