Documentary: In Development
Dir: Hazel Falck
A personal, ongoing work that explores the human capacity for denial. How do we experience and move through the phenomenon, psychologically, collectively, existentially? What truths about ourselves and our realities are we unable to receive, or believe?
Like a fractal pattern, this project makes a study of denial along a spectrum of experience. The research aims to determine where denial is at play in unexpected or insidious ways, and what could be learned from the areas of life where denial most predictably occurs.
Denial covers our most difficult truths and when it gives way, a unique nature of acceptance and transformation often occurs. This work brings together different versions of what happens when we can no longer escape a particular reality, and what unfolds once we face it.
Team
Jonna Mckone | Development Producer
Jonna is a photographer, artist, and filmmaker based in Baltimore, MD. She works with documentary, archives, and abstraction to explore legacies of empire, the fragility of truth, and the land and body as vessels of memory. Alongside her studio practice, Jonna is a producer, researcher and story producer. She produced MARGIE SOUDEK’S SALT & PEPPER SHAKERS, which premiered at Sundance in 2023 and is now streaming on the New Yorker as well as the feature film ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE, which premiered at Sundance in 2021, where it won a Special Jury Award for Nonfiction Experimentation.
Dr Yewande Pearse | Neuroscience development consultant
A Londoner currently based in Los Angeles, Yewande is a self-motivated neuroscientist with over 10 years of experience in research, turned independent science consultant and science communicator with a passion for translating complex scientific topics into relatable and relevant narratives. Yewande has worked with various organisations including Sundance Film Festival, Headspace, The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Female Collective, TEDMED, DEEM Journal, Grow Magazine, Dublab Radio and more. Yewande has served as an Advisor to Science Gallery, Detroit, The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Science Center.
Jack Shenker | Research and development consultant
Jack is a London-based, award-winning reporter on radical politics and protest whose work has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. He was formerly the Egypt correspondent for the Guardian, covering the 2011 revolution and Arab uprisings, which led to his critically acclaimed first book, The Egyptians: A Radical Story. He writes regularly for a wide range of publications, including Granta, the New York Times and the London Review of Books; his journalism has covered Gaza, Africa, Central Asia and the United States, as well as Britain and Europe, and has been translated into several languages.
Midtones Studio contribute artistic direction, 3D animation and world building / creative development to the project.