#4 *Navigating between Journalism and Documentary & Getting work distributed on prominent channels - In conversation with Monica Wise Robles

Monica Wise Robles (Director/Producer/DP) is a Colombian-American documentary filmmaker and video journalist based in Mexico City. Her work focuses on intimate stories of resistance across borders to highlight feminist, LGBTQ, migrant, and indigenous narratives. Monica’s work can be seen in the Guardian, the Intercept, the Atlantic, Washington Post, AJ+, PBS and the BBC, among other outlets. Her first short documentary Lupita premiered online with the Ambulante festival in Mexico, and internationally in the Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 programme. It will soon launch online on the Guardian Documentaries online channel. Monica worked on Pamela Yates’ 500 Years, a feature documentary chronicling indigenous resistance in Guatemala which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Monica was also a producer and cinematographer on The New Deciders, a 2016 PBS election special with journalist Maria Hinojosa. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she has also produced work from Haiti, Cuba, Costa Rica, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and El Salvador. For the past two years, she has been directing Niñas, another documentary exposing state human rights abuses in Guatemala through the eyes of female survivors seeking justice. Monica is an International Women’s Media Foundation Adelante fellow, a Ford Foundation and Sundance Institute grantee, a UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program Associate, and was selected for Take The Lead’s 2018 #50WomenCan program for women working to change the gender gap in the media industry. She is a member of the Brown Girls Doc Mafia and the Video Consortium México. Monica also runs a virtual coffee session for filmmakers wanting to get into video journalism in the region or just looking for tips.

Today we’re talking about getting work distributed in prominent channels, the importance of building networks and navigating the intersection of journalism and filmmaking.

See Monica’s work:

Website: http://monicawiserobles.com/

Connect with Monica:

Instagram @monicawiserobles

Watch this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCctioeuk_CmuiPC25RkB76g?

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