Join Firelight Media's Beyond Resilience series at DOC NYC PRO!

Step into the dynamic crossroads of documentary filmmaking, artificial intelligence (AI), and its business impact, where creators wrestle with ethical dilemmas amidst relentless innovation. Eva Kozanecka (Researcher at Google), Will Tyner (Researcher at Google & Firelight Media Documentary Lab Alum), Tess Thorsen (Research Ethics Director at Comcast), and Meredith Broussard (Professor at NYU & author, Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World) reflect on how AI might transform artistic approaches to connection and access, power and positionality, agency, and community care with moderator Sian Pierre-Regis (Filmmaker, Duty Free & Beyond Resilience Series Producer). Guided by industry leaders, this discussion will reflect on the entire filmmaking process, with a focus on research and development. Come contribute to shaping a future where innovation, ethics, and business coalesce.

This event will take place on Wednesday, November 15 from 11:30am to 12:45pm ET as part of DOC NYC PRO. Admission to the event can be purchased via a Day Pass or Multi-Day Pass.

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Participant Bios:

Sian- Pierre Regis is a filmmaker who directed, produced and self-distributed his debut feature documentary DUTY FREE. Called a “tender love poem from son to mother” by CBS News, the film was released in 30 theaters over Mother’s Day 2021 and fast-became a press magnet garnering coverage from CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, MSNBC, The Tamron Hall Show, AARP; the film was also a #1 Apple News story through the weekend. It premiered on PBS’s Independent Lens. Prior to filmmaking, Regis was a journalist and on-camera contributor to CNN, HLN, and MTV and founded Swagger, an online lifestyle magazine for millennials with over 1.5 million fans. He is a Firelight Media fellow and Film Independent Documentary Lab Fellow.

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William Tyner (he/him) is a director, producer, and founder of DELU Productions. He is also a Researcher at Google where he works across questions of justice, equity, and product inclusion. His latest film is The People’s Way, a feature length documentary that follows Jeanelle Austin, Robin Wonsley, and Toshira Garraway, three Black women in Minneapolis who embark on interweaving journeys to care for their communities and find inner healing in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. William is currently a Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellow and the recipient of the 2018-2019 Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship, Code for America Fellowship, and San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation Fellow. He studied Anthropology at Wesleyan University.

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Meredith Broussard is an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and the research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology. She is the author of an upcoming book, More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech (MIT Press, 2023), as well as the award-winning 2018 book Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence in investigative reporting, with particular interests in AI ethics and using data analysis for social good. She appears in the Emmy- nominated documentary Coded Bias, now streaming on Netflix. Her work has been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Institute of Museum & Library Services, and the Tow Center at Columbia Journalism School. A former features editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, she has also worked as a software developer at AT&T Bell Labs and the MIT Media Lab. Her features and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Vox, and other outlets. Follow her on Twitter @merbroussard or contact her via meredithbroussard.com.

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Tess Skadegård Thorsen, PhD (she/her/hers), is a researcher, educator, and consultant, specialized in representation and ethics in tech, media, and film practices. A former managing editor of the Danish journal for gender research, Tess was awarded the 2022 Kraka Award for gender research. Her research has been published internationally including in ‘Women in the International Film Industry: Policy, Practice & Power’ and ‘Black Film British Cinema II’. With a BA and MA in film and media studies from Copenhagen University, and a PhD from Aalborg University, Tess decided to expand her knowledge in the AI/ML space, by joining the 2021 cohort of NYU’s Institute for Public Interest Technology. Having specialized in questions around anti-discrimination and bias identification in tech, particularly AI, in the past years, Tess currently works in the media and tech industry and serves on multiple boards, including on the board of the Danish Pioneer Centre for AI.

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Eva Kozanecka is a Polish-born director and producer, based in Brooklyn, New York. She has produced and directed films for Google, Microsoft, and the Museum of Modern Art. Her work has been recognized by the New York Times and The Museum of Modern Art. Since 2018, she co-leads a research program at Google investing in artistic projects using A.I. technologies.