Stanford University - Documentary Film Program

09/11/2025

Job Opening at Rice University:

“The Department of Art at Rice University is seeking to hire at the Assistant Professor rank a full-time, tenure-track artist and art educator with primary interests in the production of film, video, and/or new media forms…”

08/26/2025

Tenure track position at Santa Clara University:

Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Narrative or Non-Fiction Filmmaking

04/02/2023

Excited to share that two thesis films will be playing at this year!

ENTITIES WITH KNOWLEDGE (dir. Max Mueller, https://hotdocs.ca/whats-on/hot-docs-festival/films/2023/entities-with-knowledge)

and

STILL WATERS (dir. Aurora Brachman, https://hotdocs.ca/whats-on/hot-docs-festival/films/2023/still-waters)

04/02/2023

This year's lineup is out and it features two thesis films from ! AND THEN I WAS HERE (dir. Alex Stergiou) & STILL WATERS (dir. Aurora Brachman)

Tickets are on sale now!

03/21/2023

Our first year MFA winter film screening is tonight at 6PM at Oshman hall, come by!

🎥Earthling
By Julia Mendoza Friedman and Claire Haughey

An independent aerospace engineer and a crew of dreamers tinker with the airship they hope one day will carry them to the edge of space.

🎥What Cannot Be Seen
By Julie Gaynin and Dominic Yarabe

Real estate agents share their stories navigating housing discrimination in the Bay Area.

🎥Lacuna
By Carlo Nasisse and Shirley He

An ancient lake was drained leaving behind fertile soil. Now, agricultural machinery, animals, and humans search for water in the dry valley left behind.

02/09/2023

FLOAT! by alum Azza Cohen is now up on the New Yorker.

Congrats Azza!

12/13/2022

CORRECTION: The screening is at 7pm tonight. A previous version of the poster had a typo that said 7:30PM. Sorry for any confusion and see you tonight!

Our first-year MFA students will be sharing their fall films this Tuesday, December 13th at Oshman Hall! It’s free (!) and there will be a Q+A with the filmmakers and light reception afterwards. Come out and support their hard work if you can!

The films include:

Wood Street Afternoon by Julie Gaynin
A group of Oakland residents find home in an unlikely place.

Another Day by Claire Haughey
An unlikely open water swimmer finds community, connection, and ritual by communing with the San Francisco Bay.

Uncanny Earth by Carlo Nasisse
A filmmaker attempts to make a film about a changing planet with an artificial intelligence.

Headshot by Dominic Yarabe
A filmmaker explores the director-subject relationship while processing their first film.

Fortune Alley by Shirley He
An experiential sight/site-seeing that meanders through Ross Alley, the oldest alleyway in San Francisco Chinatown.

parklunchgod by Julia Mendoza Friedman
A meditation on Privately Owned Public Parks and the power structures that exist within them.

12/11/2022

Our first-year MFA students will be sharing their fall films this Tuesday, December 13th at Oshman Hall! It’s free (!) and there will be a Q+A with the filmmakers and light reception afterwards. Come out and support their hard work if you can!

12/10/2022

Lastly, we welcome first year student Dominic Yarabe to the program! Check out an interview with her below:

Q: What films are you interested in creating?
A: I am interested in creating films that refract rather than reflect; that visualize an unconscious way of seeing and experiencing; and that, to put it in Ramell Ross’s words, “disautomate the consumption of blackness.” As an Ivorian-Malaysian American and a Black woman, I am also drawn to making films that traverse the complexities of the immigrant and black experience.

Q: What is your background?
A: Prior to Stanford, I was a PhD candidate in Brown University’s Modern Culture and Media program, where I am currently on leave to pursue my interest in documentary film production. My research involved black visual culture, or more specifically, the ways in which black film might subvert the colonial gaze in real-time and in its long term effects. I grew up in the children’s library, majored in literature/digital humanities during my undergraduate experience and worked in book publishing for years, so in short, I also have a very soft spot for the art of written storytelling. And I guess digital humanity, although I am still trying to figure out what that really means.

Q: Interesting fact about yourself?
A: I grew up in Nebraska, I’m okay though.

12/01/2022

Up next, we are happy to welcome first year student Claire Haughey to the program! Quick Q&A below:

Q: What films are you interested in creating?

A: I’m interested in using film as a means of reframing environmental issues in a way that centers the humanities. I’m drawn to situations where history, culture, and community are integral parts of our conversations about conservation. On a more gut level, I’m really fascinated by memory and how it informs our relationships to differently landscapes - and also the way memories evolve or are forgotten. But more than anything, I am really open to exploring and letting film pull me in new directions.

Q: What is your background?

A: I grew up in Colorado in a very outdoorsy family. We spent a lot of time in the woods and mountains and that’s a landscape that will always feel like home (even if I haven’t lived there since I was 17). As an adult, I’ve never lived anywhere more than three years so I’m kind of fascinated when I meet someone who has long term relationship with a place.

Q: Interesting fact about yourself?

A: I have perfected the breakfast burrito.

11/14/2022

Next up, we are super excited to welcome Carlo Nasisse to the program! Check out an interview below:

Q: What films are you interested in creating?

A: I like films that alter my perception of the world on the level of the senses. My favorite films live inside me and shape how I see and hear and experience. I aspire to do work that achieves this type of transformation of everyday experience.

Q: What is your background?

A: I grew up in Georgia and North Carolina where I spent a lot of time in the woods with my dogs Juniper, Mingo, and Bonnie. My parents are potters, and I was raised in an eclectic community of musicians and artists. I studied anthropology and film and was drawn to documentary because of the flexibility I felt it gave me to ask questions and engage with the world. My films have explored grief, ecology, and landscape.

Q: Interesting fact about yourself?

A: I’m slowly shrinking.

10/30/2022

Our next Stanford student spotlight is Julie Gaynin! Learn more about Julie below:

Q:What films are you interested in creating?

A: I’m interested in creating immersive, observational films that reflect, process and synthesize some of the challenging, weird and scary issues we currently face (and cause) as humans. Particularly, I want to look at areas of inequality and late-stage capitalism, reproductive justice, the climate crisis, and generational divides within American culture. I want to collaborate with subjects on films that explore the relatable, mundane and universal human conditions that connect and/or isolate us. And I’m also interested in how documentary can cinematically play with traditional fiction genre forms.

Q: What is your background?

A: I grew up in New York City, spent 5 years in the Twin Cities where I did my undergraduate degree at Macalester College in St. Paul. Then I returned to New York City and spent the last decade working on documentary features as an editor and assistant editor, ate lots of bagels and got arrested with Extinction Rebellion in civil disobedience for the climate.

Q: Interesting fact about yourself?

A: I was on the intro to Sesame Street in 1993 and I met Big Bird.