From Hunter to the national airwaves!
In yet another coup for a recent Hunter College Integrated Media Arts graduate, nonprofit media company Radiotopia has picked up Jess Shane MFA ’23’s thesis project as a limited-series podcast.
Shane bills the series, Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative, as “a provocative experiment in documentary ethics that pulls back the curtain on power dynamics between documentary makers and subjects, the ‘rules’ of documentary making, and the booming business of non-fiction storytelling. It’s about what really happens when stories about people’s lives are collected, edited, and consumed.”
The podcast is only the latest example of an IMA graduate’s thesis project gaining accolades and a broad, general audience. In recent months, the thesis film of Kate Lyn Matthews MFA ’22, Dark Moon, was named a staff pick by the video platform Vimeo after its favorable reception at several festivals. Meanwhile, Yehui Zhao ’23 won a coveted International Documentary Association award for her thesis film, May the Soil Be Everywhere, which is about Zhao’s ancestral village in China.
“Jess’s project engages with fundamental questions at the heart of the documentary mission; it’s an important intervention and contribution to conversations happening more broadly in our field. Her success with this project is a testament to the rigorous blend of analysis and craft that our students bring to their projects in the IMA program,” said IMA Department Chair Professor Kelly Anderson.
According to Radiotopia’s promotional copy, the series follows Shane after she posts a Craigslist ad, asking: “Does your story need to be told? Tell it in a documentary! Seeking shocking, heartbreaking, and transformative stories for a new series about the documentary industry. Compensation provided.”
Shane selects four participants, including “Ernesto, a recovering addict and fashion model who dreams of making it big” and “Judy, an unhoused senior who wants to get off the street and give voice to the homeless.” The series asks provocative questions about storytelling, narrative production, and the business of content-making.
Hunter’s MFA Program in Integrated Media Arts educates multi-disciplinary, socially engaged media makers in diverse skills. Working with faculty from film, emerging media, and journalism backgrounds, students learn to conceptualize, create, and distribute innovative, politically and socially engaged works using contemporary media technologies.
