June Cross

June Cross is a documentary filmmaker who has Emmy, Peabody, and DuPont-Columbia Journalism awards under her belt. She also founded and directs the doc program at the Columbia University Journalism School. So you could say she's helped bring not only documentary films into the world but also a lot of documentary filmmakers. We talk about her own films, which include the autobiographical Secret Daughter, a film with many twists about her upbringing as the daughter of a white mother and a Black father, and Wilhemina’s War, about a grandmother caring for her HIV-positive granddaughter in South Carolina. We also discuss what she teaches her students about the craft and ethics of documentary filmmaking and how her own thoughts about those things have evolved over the years. 

More about June here.

Films mentioned in the episode:
Wilhemina's War (2015), Dir. June Cross
Secret Daughter, June Cross
The Territory (2022), Dir. Alex Pritz
Imitation of Life (1959), Dir. Douglas Sirk
A Kid Kills (1992), Dir. June Cross
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), Dir. Michael Moore

Other Mentions:
Bill Moyers
Fredi Washington
Amiri Baraka
Anna Deavere Smith
David Fanning
Frontline
Jigsaw Productions

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Special thanks for helping make this series happen: Sara Archambault, Florence Barrau-Adams, Jon Berman, Ben Cuomo (music), Jax Deluca, Pallavi Deshpande, Nancy Gibbs, Kathleen Hughes, Caroline Kracunas, Laura Manley, Alexis Pancrazi, Liz Schwartz, Jeff Seelbach, Lindsay Underwood (logo/graphics)

This episode was supported by a fellowship at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.