Why are documentary films important to multidisciplinary sustainability research and practice?

In this session, some of Concordia's  most talented documentary film makers discuss their work and the power of documentary film.

About the panelists

Elizabeth (Liz) Miller is Chair and Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, as well as a member and past Co-Director of the Loyola Sustainability Research Centre and a fellow of the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability at Concordia Universia. Liz is also an accomplished documentary film maker with reserch interests in place-based and participatory media and sustainability, among other things.

Warsame Isse is a Somali Diasporic Multimedia artist and researcher based in Tiohtià:ke/ Montreal. He holds a BA in Communication Studies, and a BA in Western Society and Culture from Concordia University. He is currently pursuing an MA in Media Studies at Concordia University. He focuses on the process of remediation and interactivity to counter-archive stories in the Somali Diaspora in a more immersive and embodied manner. He aims to see how various forms of media can empower people to express the more ineffable aspects of memory, language, and the Black Diasporic experience.

Julia Kathrin Lehmann is a documentary filmmaker and experienced photographer who brings her photographic sensitivity to the moving image. She is interested in socially engaged documentary filmmaking and uses documentary filmmaking as a narrative and explorative tool for investigating why and how societal change is provoked and eventually actualized or denied. Currently, she is exploring the visual potentials of a feminist approach to drone cinematography together with the affectivity of telepresence. She holds a BA in Communication Studies from Concordia University and is currently pursuing an MFA in Film Studies at York University.

Zachary Fleury is a sound artist and researcher exploring memory, place, and sonic materiality through research-creation and place-based field studies. Blending analog and digital sound technologies, he reconstructs unseen infrastructures and networks of relationships using field recordings, synthesis, and experimental techniques to evoke collective memory. His recent work on the partial ruins of the Sutton School of Art examines the intangible relationships that persist beyond physical destruction. He is completing his BA in Communication Studies at Concordia University and will begin an MA in Media Studies in the fall of 2025.