Commercial Sets to Climate Refugees: Filmmaker Keenan Newman on Art, Activism, and Storytelling

Keenan Newman built a filmmaking career on the belief that stories have power. Then he stood in a Yup'ik village in Alaska filming people tear down their homes — and started to wonder about the limits of that belief.Today, Piper and David sit down with Keenan Newman — documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Ventura, California, whose work has taken him from a Yup'ik village in Western Alaska to the West Bank to the Park Avenue Armory. His recent projects include NEWTOK, a film about the first climate refugees within US borders, and ASSEMBLY, which documents artist and activist Rashad Newsom's work toward Black queer liberation.Keenan started in commercial work because he couldn't afford film school. Ten years later he was trying to figure out how to leave it. This conversation is about what gets clarified along the way — about what your role actually is, what art can and can't do, and what it looks like to build a creative life around something you believe in.The moment in Alaska that made him question what he was doing there with a cameraGoing from wanting his name on the marquee to seeing his role as service — and what changed thatHow his definition of success in filmmaking has shifted over the last five yearsThe feast or famine reality of freelance filmmaking — and why he doesn't think it's going awayKeenan Newman: https://keenan.filmASSEMBLY: https://assemblythefilm.comNEWTOK: https://www.patagonia.com/stories/newtok/video-116909.htmlIf this one stayed with you, our conversation with Amy Toensing — National Geographic documentary photographer on keeping important work alive when the industry stops funding it — covers similar ground. And DDM's episode gets into what it looks like to make art entirely on your own terms when nobody's cutting the check.Connect with Absolutely Sure, No Idea: Podcast Instagram: http://instagram.com/absolutelysurenoideaCo-Host David Richardson: https://www.davomakes.com/ on IG: https://www.instagram.com/davo_makes/Co-Host Piper Watson: https://www.piperwatson.com/ on IG: https://www.instagram.com/__piperwatson/Season Two Coming - Subscribe wherever you listen