Firelight Media brought its Beyond Resilience series to SXSW for a conversation featuring BIPOC filmmakers whose documentaries go beyond one-note celebrity profiles to interrogate the power of music and musicians to shape and advance culture.

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Legendary filmmaker Stanley Nelson (Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool) was joined by Firelight Media Documentary Lab alumni Sabaah Folayan (Look at Me: XXXTentacion) and Isabel Castro (Mija) whose films leverage the music doc genre to explore urgent issues such as mental health, immigration, and intimate partner violence. The panel explored the craft behind making music documentaries and provided a behind-the-scenes look at how filmmakers work with artists, their families, and their estates to create truthful and balanced portraits of their subjects.

Moderated by Fredara Hadley, ethnomusicology professor at Juilliard.

Accessibility notice: The audio recording above includes closed captions.

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The Beyond Resilience Series is sponsored by Open Society Foundations. Beyond Resilience is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and Field of Vision.