Working on It: Session 2

12:30–3:30 p.m.: Reverse Shot Emerging Critics Workshop (PRIVATE) 

12:30–1:15 p.m.: “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat”: A conversation about the art (and process) of connecting films with their audiences between Senior Curator of Film Eric Hynes and Karol Piekarczyk, the artistic director of Millennium Docs Against Gravity. The biggest documentary film festival in Poland, MDAG is the only festival in Europe to take place simultaneously in seven cities throughout the same country. Karol also oversees Against Gravity, a key player in arthouse film distribution.  (Redstone Theater) 

1:00–2:30 p.m.: Work-in-progress presentation and discussion: Filmmaker Michael Coleman presents an edit under construction, along with sample scenes, from his debut feature documentary Satan’s Greatest Lies. What began as a document of George Haw Russell’s decades-long fight to preserve East Texas’ disappearing wilderness transforms into an intimate study of a man grappling with purpose, loss, and the weight of legacy. This screening presents the first half of the film alongside newly captured material, revealing how their growing trust exposes deeper emotional truths—both about George’s unraveling world and the filmmaker’s shifting role within it. (Bartos Screening Room) 

1:30–3:00 p.m.: Multimedia performance and discussion: Filmmaker Argyro Nicolaou presents Unsettled, a multimedia lecture performance and work-in-progress feature that explores the fast-changing landscapes of an island under occupation and the filmmaker’s attempts to reconstruct her mother’s past. (Redstone Theater) 

3:00–5:30 p.m.: Work-in-progress session: shorts from the Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism. Moderated by First Look Senior Programmer Edo Choi. (Bartos Screening Room) 

3:15–5:30 p.m.: Work-in-progress presentation and discussion: Amelia Evans presents a cut of her feature-length documentary Minor Attraction, an attempt to craft empathetic portraits of three people who acknowledge they have pedophilic desires but who claim never to have sexually interacted with a child—and who each want more support to keep it that way. What emerges is an intimate exploration into shame and loneliness, the limits of empathy, and the cost of our collective silence around desire, pleasure, and the body. (Redstone Theater) 

Followed by a reception sponsored by Lismore Road. 

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With support from