Dynamics of screen storytelling

Isaacs has an astounding gift for getting people to open up to him and he uses film the way a very skilled artist uses paint. The result is beautiful, heartbreaking and profoundly humane. Times Online

Join us for a Moving Worlds’ mini-season of acclaimed documentary filmmaker, Marc Isaacs, and a One Stop Doc workshop titled ‘Out of Place’ on 26/27 October.

Together we will explore how creative documentary storytelling opens a window to how people live alongside difference and in diverse places.

Isaacs’ films are always moving, often challenging and never didactic. Whether engaging with the quiet dramas of multicultural living within a London high-rise in Lift; the perils and banalities of border-crossing in Calais: The Last Border; everyday racism and belonging in All White in Barking; or chronicling migrant lives in the city in The Road: A Story of Life and Death, his documentary stories offer unique and intimate observations of people and places.

Mixing observational documentary with an interactive approach, Isaacs occasionally borrows from fiction. At times provocative and bold, his voice is present but does not dominate. While maintaining respect for characters and places, he doesn’t shy away from taking a position in relation to the stories crafted on screen. Isaacs’ characters negotiate a sense of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ with different levels of ease; his stories are drawn from in-between places and people who emerge as distinctive.

The One Stop Doc workshop will explore questions of place-based research and documentary storytelling methods and ethics; the potential and pitfalls of representing migration on screen; representing people’s intimate stories and histories; engaging audiences and notions of documentary authenticity.

Workshop structure – 4 stages:

Challenges of creative documentary in capturing the significance of places and identities transformed through migration
Casting for place, building relationships, establishing trust
Storytelling – drawing from fiction, setting up scenes and ethical questions
Editing as a collaborative process – inviting audiences to co-construct narrative

PROGRAMME:

Sat 26TH October-
1000: LIFT and CALAIS: The Last Border
1140: ALL WHITE IN BARKING

Sun 27TH October
1200: THE ROAD: A Story of Life and Death
1400: WORKSHOP led by Marc Isaacs
(limited spaces – book early!)

BOOKING: