An exploration of documentary creative production
Two talks with producer-filmmakers from opposite ends of the American documentary industry.
Hear all about their personal career journeys from the first steps through all the major turning points, find out what’s hot in today’s American documentary scene, and learn what inspires and motivates the filmmaker-producers.
In collaboration with the Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum 
Thursday | July 8 | 18:00 | ONLINE | Free admission
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Julie Goldman masterclass
Emmy Award winner and Oscar nominee Julie Goldman, one of the most prolific American documentary producers (with over 100 projects under her belt) will lead a masterclass on creative production, hosted by Filmmaker Tamar Kay. Goldman’s most recent production, In the Same Breath, will compete in Docaviv’s International Competition. Two of her earlier films, Life, Animated and Buck, are also screened at the festival this year.
JULIE GOLDMAN - PRODUCER
Julie Goldman is an Oscar-nominated and Emmy Award-winning producer and executive producer of documentary feature films and series. Julie is the first documentary producer to receive the Amazon Studios Sundance Institute Producer’s Award and the Cinereach Producer’s Award. She produced Nanfu Wang’s new film, In The Same Breath, which premiered on opening night at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. She is currently in production on The Velvet Underground, directed by Todd Haynes, which is set to be released by Apple in 2021, and is producing new films with Roger Ross Williams and Maite Alberdi. Julie executive produced Tribeca Grand Jury Prize winner Socks on Fire, and the acclaimed, Goya Award and Oscar nominated The Mole Agent, and produced Gotham and IDA Award winner A Thousand Cuts —both 2020 Sundance premieres. She produced Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner and Oscar-shortlisted One Child Nation, which was acquired by Amazon Studios; Ringside, which had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival and recently debuted on Showtime; and Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn, which premiered at the New York Film Festival and launched on HBO in June. Julie produced Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, The Final Year, and Showtime’s series Murder in the Bayou. Julie is the producer of Life, Animated which won the Sundance Directing Award, was nominated for the 2017 Best Documentary Oscar, and won three Emmys, including the award for Best Documentary. She is executive producer of Weiner, winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. Julie also produced and executive produced: Emmy Award-winning films Best of Enemies, Solitary, Manhunt; Peabody Award-winning films Inventing Tomorrow, Southwest of Salem; Emmy-nominated films and series Gideon’s Army, 1971, Humans of New York; Oscar-shortlisted films, God Loves Uganda, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, 3 1⁄2 Minutes, Ten Bullets, Art and Craft and Buck.
Tamar Kay
Tamar Kay, filmmaker, editor and writer (b. 1985), was nominated for an Israeli Academy Award as editor of the series Arik Einstein: A Standard Love Song (2018) and the series Sorry for Asking (2021), both won the Award for Best Documentary Series. She is one of the creators of the TV series Unchained (Kaan 11). Her film The Mute’s House was shortlisted for the 2017 Best Short Documentary Academy Award (Oscars) and screened internationally, winning numerous awards in prestigious festivals.
Thursday | July 8 | 20:00 | ONLINE | Free admission
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A masterclass with Sebastian Pardo and Riel Roch Decter
Film scholar Neta Alexander talks to the two darlings of the indie-doc scene, Sebastian Pardo and Riel Roch Decter (Rat Film, Fraud, Shakedown), producers of the award-sweeping arthouse brand MEMORY—an independent film studio specializing in producing and curating innovative and thought-provoking films that push the boundaries of the medium.
Their latest film All Light, Everywhere will open this year’s Depth of Field Competition at Docaviv.
Sebastian Pardo
Sebastian Pardo is a filmmaker and designer who is the creative director and co-founder of MEMORY. Sebastian began his career producing commercials and music-videos, before producing Gia Coppola’s debut feature PALO ALTO. As a designer Sebastian has designed titles and graphic identities for filmmakers Ana Lily Amirpour, Kahlil Joseph, Antonio Campos, Sean Durkin and Barry Jenkins as well as for HBO’s ”Room 104” amongst others.
Riel Roch-Decter
Riel Roch-Decter is a Canadian born, Los Angeles based producer and the Projects Director and co-founder of MEMORY. Prior to co-founding MEMORY Riel produced THE WAIT written & directed by M Blash and starring Jena Malone and Chloë Sevigny. Riel graduated from Concordia University with a Major in Economics and attended programs at the Harvard Business School, NYU SCPS, and the London School of Economics for Management and Entrepreneurship.
Neta Alexander (Host)
Neta Alexander is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media at Colgate University, New York. She has published articles in Cinema Journal, Journal of Visual Culture, Media Fields Journal, and Flow Journal, among other publications. Her first book, Failure (2020; co-written with Arjun Appadurai), studies how Silicon Valley and Wall Street monetize failure and forgetfulness.
[spoiler title=”About MEMORY” open=”no” style=”default” icon=”plus” anchor_in_url=”no”]
MEMORY is an independent artist-driven studio specializing in producing and curating innovative, thought-provoking works that push the formal boundaries of their medium. Focused on discovering and mentoring new diverse voices, MEMORY creates and showcases these new compositions on and off-line.
Sebastian Pardo and Riel Roch-Decter founded MEMORY at the start of 2014 and together have produced and distributed award-winning films by multi-hyphenate filmmakers and artists, guiding them to World Premiere’s at top-flight international festivals.
In 2016 MEMORY was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, and in 2020 MEMORY was awarded the Cinereach Producing Award for their work in ”shaping new ways of filmmaking”. MEMORY’s latest production, Theo Anthony’s ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE won a Special Jury Prize for Non-Fiction Experimentation at Sundance, and was released in theaters in North America this June by Neon’s SUPER LTD imprint.
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Films
When the virus started taking lives by the hundred-thousands, the Chinese and later American authorities insisted: “there is no reason for concern.” Using rare on-the-ground footage from China, the filmmaker, who had witnessed the horror firsthand, asks: where, if at all, can citizens believe their leaders?
How have inventions meant to keep us safe become powerful tools of policing and surveillance in the hands of the authorities? In his search for answers, Theo Anthony (Rat Film) explores innovative technologies and exposes the basic assumptions behind them.
Owen, 23, learned everything he knows about the world from animated Disney movies. When he was first diagnosed as autistic, no one imagined that he would learn to talk or to function on his own. Disney's animated movies became his key to a world that was otherwise locked.
Opposing traditional violent and oppressive training techniques, Buck Brannaman developed a horse training approach based on communication and mutual trust, which affects horse owners no less than it affects horses.