Nicoletta Vangelisti

About Me

I am a scholar/practitioner who researches alternative media labor and produces film and media in what I name an Alternative Independent Filmmaking Industry. I earned a Masters in International Affairs from The New School and a PhD in Communication with a specialization in Critical Gender Studies from the University of California, San Diego.My dissertation, titled Making at the Margins: Cultural Labor, Value and Social Reproduction in an Alternative Independent Filmmaking Industry, an ethnographic and media analysis project focused on Black and queer/trans filmmakers and film workers that explores their motivations, desires, and experiences making work in the fringes and outside of the film industry. I developed a methodology to better understand what value is produced by creative labor given to projects with little to no money-value in film marketplaces. The results of this study included findings that independent filmmakers and film workers experienced value in mending ruptures in African American history in order to constitute cultural identities stolen by slavery and ongoing colonial/capitalist violence; healing from racialized and gender-based violence through collaborative work; organizing communities around film projects that sustain lives and build culture through social reproductive labor; and producing legacies, a concept that speaks to the ways in which cultural value is transferred across time and space through bodies of work.At present, I am working on a manuscript entitled We Cannot Be What We Cannot Do: On Legacy and Creative Labor in the Margins. The book positions alternative filmmaking within a longer history of storytelling practices critical to sustaining cultures and communities under persistent political oppression and violence, and highlights its unique contributions such as: the formation of communities around film projects, contributing to histories disrupted by economic and cultural domination, and building transnational audiences through visual storytelling.My current film project is the feature documentary Stars of the Northern Sky (dir. Zeinabu irene Davis), on the lives of enslaved women of the North, focusing on three historical figures: Marie Joseph Angélique (Montreal), Phillis Wheatley (Boston), and Sojourner Truth (New York). Recent films include the "rejuvenation" of the film Compensation (dir. Zeinabu irene Davis, 1999/2024) for the Criterion Collection; Demsala Nan (The Bread Season) (dirs. Anvar and Emeer Hassanpour, 2024); the restorations Dreams of Passion (dir. Aarin Burch, 1989) and Spin Cycle (dir. Aarin Burch, 1991); the short film Sydney & Kim (dir. Hazel Katz, 2024); and the short film Pandemic Bread (dir. Zeinabu irene Davis, 2023). My production experience extends over a decade partnering with communities in Palestine, New York City, and national and international filmmakers and artists residing throughout the US.When I am not engaged with my academic and film work, I love to have long, animated [gestures in Italian] conversations about art, culture, and life; read as much as I can; swimming and hiking in the Allegheny Mountains; and watch (too much?) Star Trek. I believe living is a practice that requires courage to make space for joy and am dedicated to working in service to others. Together we can shape the narratives that engender an equitable and liberated future.

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Research Experience

Education

PhD, Communication with a concentration in Critical Gender Studies
Chairs: Dr. Boatema Boateng, Prof. Zeinabu Davis
University of California San DiegoMA, International Affairs (2017)
Advisors, Mark Johnson and Sean Jacobs
The New SchoolCertificate, Palestinian and Arabic Studies (2015)
Bierzeit UniversityBA, Liberal Arts (2015)
The New School

Research Interests

I engage in multidisciplinary research, including alternative filmmaking, cultural ethnography, and media arts. My work explores the political economy of alternative media funded primarily through grants, community support, and personal income/debt. My teaching is aimed at providing students media literacy, the ability to analyze power in their lives and work, and tools to engender life-long learning. I am an academic/practitioner who uses a wide range of theoretical and creative work to explore pressing social topics around identity and cultural labor.

Research Statement

As a community-engaged ethnographer and media maker, my research agenda focuses on how creative labor contributes to the cultural production of communities marginalized by racial capitalism and heteropatriarchy. In my dissertation, I analyze how Black, queer, and transgender filmmakers and film workers produce value through alternative filmmaking that makes substantial contributions to cultural re/production in the social margins. I draw empirical evidence for this argument from media analysis and ethnographic observation, interviews, and life histories from across social contexts.Dissertation
There is a strong focus on aesthetics, performance, interaction, and representation in visual media in Queer, Trans, and Black Studies. My research focuses on an underdeveloped analysis of the creative labor given to make those representations along with other forms of simultaneous labor given to the social reproduction of communities subjected to regimes of heteropatriarchy and racial capital. My dissertation, titled Making at the Margins: Labor, Value, and Social Reproduction in an Alternative Independent Filmmaking Industry, addresses the ways in which Black women filmmakers and queer/trans filmmakers and film workers in the U.S. navigate making films outside of commercial industries and participate in what I name an Alternative Independent Filmmaking Industry. This is the world of Black independent film, Third World film, queer/trans film, resistance cinema, and all the countless projects made, being made, and waiting to be made through grant funding, community support, personal income, and debt. My study focuses on community-based film projects and the value outcomes of cultural labor.I was introduced and included in this filmmaking world through my training in the L.A. Rebellion Film Collective methods, such as strong community inclusion in the production process and a narrative emphasis on women’s experiences. As one of perhaps a few film producers who works exclusively on philanthropic and community supported projects, I am tasked to describe in grant applications and conversations with donors/supporters the importance of film projects within a framework of “impact” on participants, communities, and national culture. This experience led me to my primary research questions: What value is produced by filmmaking labor when projects hold little to no money-value on commercial film markets? Why do filmmakers and film workers marginalized from commercial industries persist in this notoriously expensive, time consuming, and socially complicated practice? How are those of us working in this film world able to translate qualitatively expressed value into measurements required by donor institutions? The answers to these questions are essential to how I and many others around the world are able to structure our lives and sustain our creative work. As a scholar/practitioner, I am in the unique position to translate experiences of value from the artistic world and value expectations of the nonprofit world through research and publication in order to contribute to a robust understanding of the critical role filmmaking plays in the lives of those confined to the social margins.Methodologically, my interdisciplinary work draws on traditions in Black feminist ethnography; textual analysis of films adapted from literary methods; and queer/transgender autoethnography. I take a community approach to ethnographic research that accounts for my position within the groups I study and is shaped by an ethical commitment to long-term engagement through both my research and creative work. My research is guided by what I name equitable partnership, a method I developed while working within communities living in persistent states of violence, in which the researcher and participants evaluate power and agency within the study in order to minimize researcher intrusion and ensure collective agreement to materials produced before publication. From this stance, I engage in ethnographic work that provides space and opportunity for participants to guide the direction of conversations and hold regular check-ins on written materials to ensure honest representations of life experiences and continued agreement in participation.My work draws on and contributes to literature in Cultural Studies through its emphasis on intersectional analysis of meaning-making through entwined forms of labor filmmakers and film workers engage in while working on film projects. My work also contributes to Black, Gender, and Queer/Trans Studies, such as the emergent subfield of Trans Film Studies, by exploring how identities produced through regimes of discrimination orient marginalized filmmakers and film workers toward making culturally valuable work, often at great financial, emotional, and energetic costs to themselves. I show how making films generate cultural and social value for participants, including: the recovery of lost/stolen histories; healing from racialized and gender-based violence; engaging in the labor of care through filmmaking; social reproduction of queer/trans lives; working within labor conditions that prioritize well-being over profit; and the formation of legacies—a concept that speaks to the ways in which value is produced and transferred across time and space.Emergent Research Agenda: Film Festivals, Audiences, and Cultural Institutions
My ethnographic and textual analysis approach toward studying the racialized and gendered labor experiences of marginalized filmmakers and film workers expounds one facet of what constitutes an Alternative Independent Filmmaking Industry. I have identified three other critical components of this industry where cultural value is produced for communities in the margins: film festivals, audiences and institutions. Over the next five years I will expand my research by examining human experiences, logistical challenges, and the circulation of ideas about cultural production in both the film festival space and the cultural institution/donor space. A unique approach in my research is my curiosity for the ways in which philanthropy and the Nonprofit Industrial Complex structure cultural production: to what extent do they benefit filmmakers and communities and to what extent do they re/produce the margins through their procedures?I am currently working on my first book manuscript entitled We Cannot Be What We Cannot Do: On Legacy and Creative Labor in the Margins. This book takes the concept of legacy as its primary organizational concept that speaks to the ways in which cultural value is made and transferred across time and space. How do historical legacies such as slavery and emancipation shape the aspirations of filmmakers and the conditions in which they work today? How cultural legacies inform meaning-making and ways of life? What is the value of personal legacies—the collected works of a filmmaker or film movement—to filmmakers and communities? The book positions alternative filmmaking within a longer history of storytelling practices critical to sustaining cultures and communities under persistent political oppression and violence, and highlights its unique contributions, such as: the formation of communities around film projects, contributing to histories disrupted by economic and cultural domination, and building transnational audiences through visual storytelling that expresses shared life experiences.

Roll Call

All the people and organizations who continue to inspire me each and every day I take breath:

Hasheemah Afaneh ~ Writer
Patrick Anderson ~ Writer, Theorist, Mentor
Boatema Boateng ~ Artist, Theorist, Mentor
Aarin Burch ~ Filmmaker
Portia Cobb ~ Interdisciplinary Artist, Documentarian, Professor, Gemini
Peggy Cosgrave~ Actress, Traveller, Lover of Food, Home
Zeinabu irene Davis ~ Filmmaker, Professor, Mentor, Aries
Lito Espudo ~ Artist, Sag, Fag, Family, Lover of Live Jazz Events
Anvar Hassanpour ~ Filmmaker, Father, Marxist, Comrade
Emeer Hassanpour ~ Filmmaker, Charmer, Debater
Erin Hill ~ Writer, Historian, Hollywood Girlboss
Alexis Hithe ~ Artist, Work Wife, Goddess, Multi-life Companion
Asher Honish ~ Photographer, Double Cancer
Hazel Katz ~ Filmmaker, Visual Artist, Virgo
Camille Lenain ~ Photographer, Traveller, Critic of Life
Teresa Naval ~ Family, Grad Companion, Boxes and Zines
Palestine ~ The Land & Her People (and food!)
Michelle Parkerson ~ Filmmaker, Historian, Icon
Roy Pérez ~ Writer, Theorist, Mentor to all girls like us
Tina Rafidi ~ Educator, Academic, Activist, Mentor
Akshita Sivakumar ~ Designer, Architect, and Technoscience Studies Scholar

Contact

Nicoletta Vangelisti

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