From Heather:

I am thrilled to have been accepted as a participant into the UnionDocs Summer Documentary Lab in Brooklyn, New York.

In February 2020, I began filming my first documentary in Japan. Tentatively titled, “Inaka Doc” I captured the lives of over 10 people in the countryside of a very remote area of northern Japan. In 20 days of filming, I focused on 6 people & met some new friends along the way. The idea was to hear more of their stories and discover more about their lives, most of whom I’d met while I was studying Japanese there in 2019. Originally, we were scheduled to shoot with them throughout 2020 and see how their lives were affected by the changes in the seasons while getting to know them over time. We started in winter and returned to LA at the onset of COVID. Everything was put to a halt. With so much uncertainty in the world, there was no way we could risk returning for the Spring for more filming. I now have one season’s worth of the film I had originally intended to capture.

This program will help me discover, reconceptualize, and clarify the footage I currently have and find the best way to move forward. It will be perfect for my need to collaborate, discuss, and continue the project.

Any contribution, no matter how small, will be greatly appreciated – thank you for your time and support!

Heather Brown is an award-winning artist and filmmaker whose camera skills have taken her many places. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California as a Local 600 camera operator on the sets of many commercial, television, and movie productions. She graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, with an emphasis in Film and Photography where she was a recipient of a Princess Grace Award. Her work continues to explore communication, language, proximity, and time.

www.heatherchristinebrown.com

https://www.instagram.com/h_brown/

https://www.instagram.com/pantiltgirl/

About the Summer Documentary Labs:

The UnionDocs Summer Documentary Lab are a program for a select group of media artists from the US and abroad. Based in one of NYC’s most exciting neighborhoods, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the Summer Labs offer a platform for participants to spend the Summer making strides and clarify the creative direction of their projects to attract the potential team members, funders and producers they need to find their way to the finish. With a specialized hybrid in-person / remote format, an intensive schedule of screenings, open seminar discussions, weekly industry “field trips,” and inspiring artist visits from some of the most dynamic voices across the field of documentary, the SUMMER DOCUMENTARY LABS are tightly structured environments that bring participants into a select group of emerging filmmakers to get challenged and encouraged to think through every aspect of their works-in-progress.

Drawing inspiration from across disciplines, this intensive program should not be mistaken for an industrial, journalistic, or traditional documentary training. Scholar Scott MacDonald highlighted in The New York Times that, “UnionDocs has a healthy sense that the older definitions of what constitutes ‘experimental’ cinema and what constitutes ‘documentary’ are up for grabs.” Much emphasis is placed on workshopping lab participants’ writing about their projects as a way to both clarify the creative direction and attract potential team members, funders and producers. Participants receive focused, honest and helpful feedback on their project proposals from prominent documentary artists and industry experts.

The Early Production Lab in July is for projects about to go into production. Filmmakers have already likely shot some of their material and have access to their subjects and are looking for ways to strengthen their media samples, and pitches and work through the ideas as they approach the production stage and plan for the entire process all the way through to distribution.