newportFILM Announces Documentary Cinematography Lab

 Cinematographers Shana Hagan, Nelson Hume and Robb Moss to Mentor

NEWPORT / NEW YORK –October 10, 2019 — – newportFILM announced today a new program to provide support and mentorship to documentary cinematographers. The newportFILM lab, developed in consultation with Sean Flynn, Co-Founder and Program Director at Points North Institute, will host seven emerging filmmakers for a weekend long retreat offering master classes on cinematography.

Shana Hagan (Director of Photography, The Kingmaker, Generation Wealth, The Queen of Versailles), Nelson Hume (Director of Photography, Long Strange Trip, Happy Valley, Whitney) and Robb Moss (Harvard University, Chair of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies) will serve as mentors. Accepted participants in this year’s program include Nausheen Dadabhoy, Jessica Earnshaw, Lucas Guilkey, Dana Kalmey, Robert Kolodny, Souki Mehdaoui and Christina Shaman.

In this intimate, focused environment, these filmmakers will discuss their process, share their current projects with peers and receive critiques from mentors and leaders in the industry.  The inaugural year will be hosted at the Norman Bird Sanctuary just outside Newport, Rhode Island.

newportFILM Artistic Director Andrea van Beuren stated, “We’ve been interested in expanding our reach into the broader documentary community and noticed that there were not many opportunities for young cinematographers in the early stages of their career to be offered strategic guidance. We were thrilled to have recently received an incredibly generous grant that enabled us to start this program.”

Filmmaker Shana Hagan added, “I am thrilled and honored to be a part of the inaugural newportFILM Lab’s Documentary Cinematography Master Class.  I love being part of the growing documentary community that thrives on great storytelling from a diversity of perspectives.  This is an incredible opportunity to work with talented filmmakers and support them in their journey to find their own voices.”

newportFILM is a year-round non-profit screening program devoted to showcasing films that inspire, educate and entertain, presenting current and impactful documentaries that build community and propel change. For more information, visit www.newportfilm.com

This year’s list of participants is below:

Nausheen Dadabhoy
Nausheen Dadabhoy is a Pakistani-American director and cinematographer. She received her MFA in Cinematography from the American Film Institute. Since graduating, Nausheen has moved between the narrative and documentary world working on over 30 feature and short films: J’DORE NAWAL (2018) for HBO Documentaries which premiered at Sundance, Academy Award Live Action Short nominee LA FEMME ET LE TGV (2016), THE WAR TO BE HER (2016) which premiered at TIFF and aired on POV, and the upcoming CONSCIENCE POINT (2019) which will air on Independent Lens. Nausheen’s work has played at festivals like Tribeca, AFI Fest, IDFA and on platforms like Netflix, Showtime, and PBS. Nausheen has been a Film Independent Project:Involve Fellow (2011), a Berlin Talents participant (2017), a Firelight Fellow (2018), and a Chicken & Egg Eggcelerator Lab Fellow (2019). In 2018 she was one of DOCNYC’s “40 Under 40” filmmakers which features the talented and diverse voices in documentary filmmaking today.

Jessica Earnshaw
Jessica Earnshaw is a documentary photographer & filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work focuses on criminal justice, and healthcare. In the U.S., her clients include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, NBC News, Stern Magazine, amongst others. In 2015, she received the prestigious Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation Fellowship & Grant to photograph aging in American prisons. In 2016, her Aging in Prison work was published in National Geographic, Huffington Post and PDN Magazine and named one of the most interesting photo essays of the week by Buzzfeed. In 2017, the next chapter of her aging in prison work, centering on re-entry after a life sentence, was published in Mother Jones and The Marshall Project. In 2018, she photographed and shot video for an NPR story called “In Iowa, A Commitment To Make Prison Work Better For Women” which was a part of a special series covering discipline and women in prison.

Lucas Guilkey
Lucas Guilkey is a video journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Oakland, California. His work focuses on power, politics, social movements, democracy, and racial, economic, and ecological justice. He has produced and shot for AJ+, Frontline, Splinter, Fusion, KTVU, Oakland North, and KPFA, written for Documentary Magazine and the San Francisco Bay View, and assistant edited on the feature documentaries Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America and Bias. He recently completed What Happened to Dujuan Armstrong?, a 27-minute documentary about deaths in Santa Rita county jail, and he is currently directing and producing Dying for Sunlight, a feature documentary about the 2013 California prisoner hunger strikes against indefinite solitary confinement. He is a fellow at the Investigative Reporting Program and a graduate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Wesleyan University.

Dana Kalmey
Dana Kalmey is a documentary filmmaker who produces, directs, films, and edits. Her film roster includes the Sundance award-winning TRAPPED and E-TEAM, WELL GROOMED, (DIS)HONESTY: THE TRUTH ABOUT LIES, and BACKPACK FULL OF CASH (narrated by Matt Damon). She is currently directing/producing THE LAST 90 MINUTES, about a college women’s soccer team, and TANDEM, about the forgotten Hawaiian sport of tandem surfing.

Dana has worked as a cinematographer for Nike, The Project for the Advancement of our Common Humanity (PACH), Vacant Light, Honolulu Civil Beat, and on her films, TANDEM and THE LAST 90 MINUTES. She is a 2017 Impact Partners Producing Fellow and a recurring guest speaker on the art of the documentary interview at NYU.

Prior to film, Dana worked in architecture notably completing the million-square-foot revitalization project, Midtown Crossing at Turner Park. She also is a former college soccer coach and former architecture teacher with The Green Gecko Project in Cambodia.

Robert Kolodny
Robert Kolodny is a Cinematographer, Director and Writer based in New York City. He has contributed non-fiction cinematography to Josh & Benny Safdie’s LENNY COOKE (2013) as well as Robert Greene’s BISBEE ‘17 (2018) and ‪KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE (2016) – both of which had their premiers at the Sundance Film Festival. His short film FLY ON OUT (2014) screened at the Court Métrage at the 67th Festival de Cannes and won the Audience Choice Award (short form) at the HBO/BET Urbanworld Film Festival. In 2013 he won a New York Emmy Award for his work on the series FRANKIE COOKS. He also garnered a Vimeo Staff Pick for his short ALLO ALLO {DEUX AMÉRICAINS Á PARIS}. More recently he has acted as Cinematographer for new nonfiction work by Nan Goldin and David Byrne. He is currently acting as Director of Photography on Robert Greene’s UNTITLED MISSOURI PRIESTS FILM and SERAFIM (also Directed by Kolodny).

Souki Mehdaoui
Souki Mehdaoui is a filmmaker based in New York. Raised in Morocco, France, and over a dozen American cities, her worldview is an eclectic tapestry of culture and philosophy. She explores the moving image as an entry-point into empathy, wisdom, and ecological storytelling.

In her career, she has worked Emmy award-winning and Oscar-nominated directors, Grammy award-winning musicians, composers, nonprofits, pharmaceutical companies, and companies. You can see her work online with the New York Times, Yahoo, Ok Cupid, Refinery29, Mason Jar Music, the Othrs, Found Sound Nation, Lonely Leap, TED, Pfizer, Tylenol, Bang On a Can, and HUMAN.

Christina Shaman
Christina Shaman is a journalist and documentary filmmaker from Queens, N.Y. She graduated from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Before that, she was a multimedia fellow at the Texas Tribune and an editor on a documentary about mass incarceration in Pennsylvania.