Although we wrapped up the Content +Intent Documentary Institute just under a month ago, I wanted to take a moment to share some photos from the event in the hopes of giving you a glimpse into the inner workings of the residency and, if you are a filmmaker, peak your interest in participating in future Working Films’ residencies and workshops. The 5 days that we share with filmmakers at MASS MoCA each year is re-energizing for me because I get a chance to interact with both the folks making these powerful films and with people who put them to good use. It’s an intense time of hard work and discussion, but as you’ll see from the pictures below it’s lots of fun as well.
Everyone fueled up with an array of breakfast choices at our home away from home in North Adams, The Porches. Every filmmaker had an hour of the residency dedicated solely to the discussion of her (or his) outreach plan. Here, filmmaker Luisa Dantas and Robert West, Working Films' ED, discuss her project Land of Opportunity.
Filmmakers got to see Working Films' model in action at this community event built around the film The Hunger Season. Filmmaker Beadie Fenzi and Judith Helfand, Working Films Co-founder, discussed how the film could be used to make change with representatives from the local food bank in North Adams.
At The Hunger Season event audience members got to sample the corn meal that is depicted in the film and is sent to Swaziland as Food Aid. Several funders of creative media and outreach campaigns were generous enough to spend time answering our residents' questions. All of the filmmakers at the residency, including Marcia Jarmel pictured here, spent time working on their individual outreach plans with input from Working Films staff, like Deputy Director Molly Murphy.In the midst of all of this work residents got a chance to check out the art at MASS MoCA.
Thanks so much to participating filmmaker Ashley Yorkfor these photos!
RELATED NEWS
Come on In: Building Spaces People Want to Join
How can film screenings become the welcoming spaces organizers need: places where people feel invited in, and leave feeling like they belong? In this conversation, Working Films’ Director of Campaigns and Strategy, Andy Myers, chats with Daniel Solorzano with Amanecer in El Paso, Texas and Warren Tidwell with Alabama Center for Rural Organizing and Systemic Solutions (ACROSS) about what it takes to create spaces that break down barriers, dissolve left/right binaries, and give more people a sense of ownership in our movements. These two organizers were part of the 2025…
Meet the 2026 Works-in-Progress Lab Cohort!
Cucalorus Film Foundation, Working Films and DAWG are excited to announce the 2026 Works-in-Progress Lab Cohort! The WiP Lab is an immersive laboratory supporting social justice documentaries with a focus on Black storytelling. The program fosters a tight-knit community of peer support, where facilitators and mentors guide filmmakers in providing constructive feedback on each other’s works-in-progress. This year's mentors are filmmakers and WiP Lab alumni: Natalie Bullock Brown and Byron Hurt. The 2026 WiP Lab cohort will come together next week at the Cucalorus Campus in Wilmington, NC. Congratulations to the filmmakers! Alex J. Bledsoe OAKLEAD OAKLEAD, her debut…
May Day Is for Organizing: Host a Film Screening
May Day is coming up! For those of us raised on a lifetime of apolitical Labor Days in the US celebrated in early September, it may come as a surprise that International Workers Day, actually falls on May 1st, a.k.a. May Day. It traces its origin to the 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago, where police clashed with workers striking for the eight-hour workday. Since then, May Day has been adopted worldwide as a celebration for the struggle for workers’ rights. Despite its roots in Chicago, the US government deliberately avoided…
