Heather CourtneyDirecting the Documentary: Finding your story and telling it ethically
In this 90-minute workshop, Emmy-winning filmmaker Heather Courtney will draw from her 25 years of experience in directing feature documentaries to discuss how to find and shape your story, and how to deal with the ethical challenges that are inherent in documentary filmmaking. In this interactive session, we'll discuss the research and development of your idea, and what kind of story and approach makes for a good documentary (as opposed to a news piece or media report). Through clips and conversation, Ms. Courtney will cover some of the pitfalls when making documentaries in difficult situations, and the different choices made when planning a film shoot, identifying protagonists, going through hundreds of hours of footage, and finding the narrative arc of the story. The ethical challenges in the documentary process will also be discussed -- what do you do when your protagonist changes their mind about participating, how collaborative should you be with your protagonists in shaping the story, how do you protect your protagonists when participating in a documentary could expose them to danger, and more issues.
Heather is an Emmy-winning filmmaker, and a Guggenheim, Sundance, and Fulbright fellow. Her film WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM was broadcast on the PBS series POV, and won an Emmy, an Independent Spirit Award, and a SXSW Jury Award. The film received positive reviews in the NYT and the Washington Post, and was supported by many grants and fellowships including from ITVS, the Sundance Documentary Fund, and the United States Artists Fellowship. Heather was also a fellow at the Sundance Edit and Story Lab. Her latest feature documentary, BREAKING THE NEWS, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2023 and will air on PBS’ Independent Lens in February 2024, and her latest short documentary, FOR THE RECORD, about a community newspaper in rural Texas, premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and has screened in Detroit, DC, and soon New Orleans, Colorado and New Jersey. It broadcasts on the PBS series Reel South in May 2024, and streams on PBS.org and Amazon starting May 2024.She co-directed and produced a Ford-funded feature documentary on DACA students, called THE UNAFRAID, which was broadcast on the national PBS series America ReFramed. Her earlier films include LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE (supported by a Fulbright) and LOS TRABAJADORES (IDA Award, SXSW Audience Award, and Indie Lens broadcast).Prior to receiving her MFA in Film, Heather spent eight years writing and photographing for the United Nations and several relief agencies, including in the Rwandan refugee camps after the 1994 genocide there.