I have been working in the world of film, TV, and documentaries since 2016. During this time, I’ve been learning how to make films in a self-sufficient mode of production, where writing, producing, filming, editing, and sound are all within the filmmakers’ wheelhouse. The films I’ve made have engaged with the local to look closely at the mysteries and richness of the familiar and everyday through essay, observation, recreation, performance, archive, and interviews.

I am seeking a dedicated and structured time and space for research and development on my first feature film. This lab provides an opportunity to workshop and refine the materials I can use to communicate with others, find additional resources, and articulate my vision, paving the way for production. It’s a great privilege to get to dive into this work alongside a cohort of filmmakers with unique perspectives and experiences, and under the guidance of the UnionDocs team.

My feature centers around the archaeology of sound. I hope to weave together acts of collection with sonic excavation and reconstruction to inquire into nature’s systems of communication, asking if individuals can tune into invisible signals that carry a resonance. Due to sound pollution, globalization, development, and technology, it’s harder to listen to our environment and sonically distinguish one place from another. Yet, there is a broader acknowledgment of nature’s hidden dynamic communication systems beyond what scientists previously imagined, and efforts to understand and preserve nature’s languages and phenomena. The film taps into this conversation, making a case for listening.

All support will be allocated to covering the UnionDocs fees and transportation costs for travel between New York and Los Angeles for the program.

Zazie Ray-Trapido is a filmmaker and producer based in Los Angeles. Her films expand on traditional documentary and narrative formats, engaging with analog film techniques, archives, and performance. Her practice investigates relationships between memory, ideology, and the environment.

Her work has been screened at festivals and venues worldwide, including the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Viennale, RIDM, Kasseler Dokfest, Glasgow Short Film Festival, Curtas Vila do Conde, Oberhausen, Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, ICDOCS, and Maysles Documentary Center, among others.

She holds a BFA from Bard College and an MFA in Film/Video from the California Institute of the Arts.

Filmography:

Language Decay | Experimental Documentary | 3 minutes | 2025
The Instability of Clouds | Experimental Documentary | 15 minutes | 2025
When We Encounter The World | Experimental | 11 minutes | 2023
Nona | Documentary | 6 minutes | 2022
Playdate | Experimental | 2 minutes | 2021

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, Ridgewood, Queens, 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. 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 Research and Development Lab in August is for projects preparing to go into production. Filmmakers are developing their conceptual approaches to their work and are aiming to strengthen their proposals and sharpen their creative ideas, as they approach the production stage and plan for the entire process all the way through to distribution.