KDocs Talks Wants to Talk About Docs, K?

Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s yearly documentary film festival, KDocs, has introduced its own small-scale take on the TED Talks format.

The videos in the series, titled KDocs Talks, are presented in a similar format as the festival’s existing footage of past keynote speeches, but will feature a higher production value.

“I think viewers will get the full sense of what really happens at KDocs,” says KDocs Community Outreach Coordinator Greg Chan. “They’re really getting almost the full experience of being there.”

All KDocs Talks videos are offered under creative commons with permission granted for viewers to use, share and edit them as they please, so long as KDocs is credited.

Chan says that the idea for KDocs Talks came about when members of the festival’s organizing team realised how much discussion was being generated at their events. They wanted to capture that discussion to share with those who couldn’t attend, so they hired an editor and a producer to make videos of the panel discussions and ensuing audience discussion.

“Usually, at intermission and between documentaries, the conversation spills out into the lobby and we have really good discussions out there, and [KDocs founder and festival organizer Janice Morris] and I always say, ‘We should film this,’” says Chan. “We should have something that captures it so that people who aren’t able to come to the panels or the keynotes or even to the films themselves can get a sense of what we do.”

So far, the KDocs Talks YouTube channel includes seven videos from last year’s festival keynotes.

In one, KPU Criminology Department chairperson Dr. Wade Deisman discusses the complexities and pitfalls of having conversations about police enforcement as an introduction to the film Do Not Resist, a documentary on the militarization of American police forces.

In another, Dr. Faith Bondar, Executive Director of Inclusion BC, speaks about the changing language used to describe intellectual disabilities in advance of KDocs’ screening of Life, Animated, a documentary about the use of animated films to teach reading, writing, and communication skills to people with autism.

All KDocs Talks videos are intended to get people talking about some of the most pressing social justice issues in today’s society.

Several improvements have been planned for the 2018 iterations of KDocs Talks, the most significant of which is the inclusion of panel discussions and question periods. Chan says that the team also plans to improve the production quality on the videos by purchasing a second camera and focusing on the technical aspects of filming.

Other planned KDocs additions include a Snapchat channel for posting snippets of KDocs events in real time, as well as a podcast that will feature interviews with KDocs speakers who have questions that the team wasn’t able to ask at the panel discussions.

Chan says that he’s encouraged by the feedback he has received about the videos, adding that KPU professors have already begun showing KDocs Talks to their classes to cite in their research.