Doc Camp - Spring 2025
April 11-12 Portland, OR
25 filmmakers are invited to join us for screenings, discussions, community building, and the following programming:
A Screening & Case Study
We’ll attend Portland Panorama’s festival screening of Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks on April 11th. Then we’ll do an in depth case study with filmmaker Ilya Chaiken on April 12th.
Ilya Chaiken is an award-winning filmmaker whose feature film Liberty Kid (Kino Lorber), currently streaming on HBO Max and recently screened at the Museum of Modern Art, garnered wide critical acclaim and won Best Picture at the NY Latino Film Festival. Her debut feature Margarita Happy Hour premiered to rave reviews at the Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals. She has made numerous short form projects, including The 100 Lovers of Jesus Reynolds (Sundance). She won a Princess Grace Foundation Award for Artistic Excellence and subsequently produced her web series The Unlovables, starring Kevin Corrigan and Eleanor Hutchins, which is currently being adapted into a feature. Her first documentary, Pretty Ugly, about the all-female 90s punk band Lunachicks, premiered at the DOC NYC film festival and is currently being represented by Submarine Entertainment. She also has worked extensively as an editor. Chaiken is a first generation American who grew up visiting her father, a union scenic artist, on movie sets. She studied filmmaking at S.U.N.Y. Purchase.
Our Zoom Panel Workshop
On April 12th, we’ll offer a private online experience of REAL TALK: Funding in the Current Documentary Landscape with Jamie Dobie, Kelsey Koenig, Lailanie Gadia, and Sarah Wainio
Originally presented live at DOC NYC 2024, this panel shares in-depth, practical knowledge on fundraising from grass roots to contacting foundations, and gives you the opportunity to engage directly with the panelists.
Jamie Dobie has worked at the intersection of documentary film and social impact for over 15 years, and has raised $20 million in funding for social-issue doc work. She is a filmmaker by background and passionate about bringing new funding into the field. She is also currently leading an advocacy effort to safeguard impact distribution rights so we can serve the communities we are ultimately most accountable to as filmmakers—film participants and the movement ecosystems that our films exist in.
Kelsey Koenig has worked in independent documentary for over a decade and is currently the VP of Production at Impact Partners, a fund that supports powerful documentary films addressing pressing social issues. Since joining IP, she has been involved with the development of 100+ projects and has spoken on panels about funding, distribution, and impact at industry events around the world.
Lailanie Gadia serves as Operations Director at A-Doc, a filmmaker collective with 1,700 Asian American documentary filmmakers and film professionals. She is on the producing team of Tadashi Nakamura’s documentary feature, Third Act (Sundance 2025) along with several other film projects. She has been in various roles over the last 6+ years in marketing, sponsorships, partnerships and artist support. She previously had a 6 year career in mortgage banking and still remains in the financial industry as an independent financial professional and entrepreneur.
Sarah Wainio produces reality television and independent documentaries. She has participated in several documentaries and uses this unique perspective to open up the conversation about crew and participant care. Her first independent feature, THE SUM OF OUR PARTS, is in post production.
Before filmmaking, Sarah had a career as a professional fundraiser in higher education (Towson and Fordham University) and as an AmeriCorps trained community organizer. Powered by this background, Sarah has raised over $250,000 in community fundraising for the five feature documentaries she’ll be talking about today.
Works-in-Progress
Later in the day on April 12th, we’ll select six Doc Camp attendees to share their works-in-progress facilitated by the fantastic Courtney Hermann & Maria Moreno!
Courtney Hermann is an Assistant Professor of Film at Portland State University, an independent documentary filmmaker, and a non-fiction media producer. Courtney’s work is distributed by PBS and its affiliates, through educational film catalogues, at film festivals, and through impact distribution to community partners. Courtney earned an MFA degree in Film and Video Production from Columbia College Chicago. She is a co-author of 7th Edition of the textbook Directing the Documentary.
Maria Moreno (she/her) is a Venezuelan filmmaker working between Miami, FL & Portland, OR. Her work explores themes of existentialism & belonging while focusing on the lightness that can be found in everyday life.
She is currently working as a freelance producer & assistant director on projects for clients such as TIME, Nike, & Hulu, as well as bands like Sleater Kinney & Y La Bamba.
She also works as the Film Career Manager for the nonprofit organization Outside The Frame. In her free time, Maria programs film screenings centering Latine stories.
