Focus on First-Time Filmmakers

Aaliyah Johnson, 24, worked as a community organizer with the Detroit Water Brigade for three years before picking up a camera to document water shut-off resistance in her own neighborhood. "Water Justice Rising" emerged from her organizing work, providing intimate access to families fighting for basic human rights while connecting local struggles to global water privatization campaigns.

Johnson's documentary follows three Detroit families navigating water shut-offs while organizing collective resistance through the Detroit Water Brigade. Her camera captures both the daily humiliation of living without running water and the dignity of communities building mutual aid networks to survive corporate assault on public services.

As a first-time filmmaker, Johnson emphasizes collaboration over extraction, sharing decision-making authority with the families she documents and distributing revenue according to collective agreement. Her approach demonstrates how documentary practice can strengthen rather than exploit organizing campaigns when filmmakers maintain accountability to community leadership.

The film's production methods mirror its political content, with community members controlling editing decisions, approval processes, and distribution strategies. Johnson worked with families to ensure that filming supported rather than interfered with ongoing legal challenges to water shut-offs, demonstrating how documentary can serve concrete organizing goals.

"I didn't set out to become a filmmaker," Johnson explains. "I picked up a camera because I realized that mainstream media would never tell our stories with the dignity and complexity they deserve. This film belongs to the families who trusted me to amplify their voices and the community that taught me everything about resistance and mutual aid."

Ricardo Morales migrated from Oaxaca to Phoenix at age 12 and spent fifteen years working in restaurant kitchens before documenting organizing campaigns that challenge both immigration enforcement and workplace exploitation. "Borders of Resistance" examines how immigrant workers build collective power despite constant threat of deportation and employer retaliation.

Morales's documentary follows organizing efforts at three Phoenix restaurants where undocumented workers challenge wage theft, unsafe working conditions, and immigration raids. His insider perspective provides unprecedented access to strategy discussions, workplace actions, and community defense networks that support immigrant organizing.

As a first-time filmmaker with limited technical training, Morales relied on collaborative production methods that emphasized community knowledge over individual expertise. Co-workers operated cameras, community members contributed editing skills, and local organizations provided equipment access, creating a genuinely collective documentary process.

The film's bilingual approach reflects community linguistic diversity while refusing to translate everything for English-speaking audiences, asserting cultural autonomy and challenging documentary conventions that prioritize dominant language accessibility over community representation.

"This film documents our resistance strategies, but it also serves our organizing goals," Morales notes. "We use it for worker education, legal documentation, and building solidarity with other immigrant communities facing similar conditions. The camera became an organizing tool that helps us build power rather than just record our struggles."

Jordan Thompson, a 28-year-old former steelworker whose family has lived in Gary for four generations, began documenting his city's transformation when the last steel mill closed in 2022. "After the Steel" captures both the devastation of deindustrialization and the creativity of communities building alternative economic relationships amid industrial collapse.

Thompson's documentary rejects decline narratives that portray post-industrial communities as passive victims, instead highlighting urban farming cooperatives, community land trusts, and mutual aid networks that demonstrate economic alternatives to corporate capitalism. His intimate knowledge of Gary's history provides context often missing from outside documentary treatments of Rust Belt cities.

As a first-time filmmaker working without institutional support, Thompson developed innovative production methods using smartphone technology, community volunteers, and equipment borrowed from regional media organizations. His approach demonstrates how sophisticated documentary work can emerge from communities with limited resources but deep political commitment.

The film's structure reflects collective decision-making processes, with community members helping determine which stories receive emphasis and how their neighborhood appears on screen. Thompson maintains ongoing relationships with everyone featured, ensuring that documentary production strengthens rather than extracts from existing community networks.

"Gary gets portrayed as a symbol of American decline, but that misses how residents are building new forms of economic democracy," Thompson explains. "This film shows how communities create alternatives to capitalism even under conditions of extreme economic abandonment. We're not waiting for outside salvation—we're building our own future."