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DocuClub NY

DocuClub NY: Untitled Death Row Memory Film

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  • A person with fair skin and thick dark short hair, eyebrows and a short beard sit at a table looking gently at the camera with a smile. They cross their arms, in front of them is a 16mm camera.
    Alex Morelli, Director
  • Black and white photo of a young man with fair skin and black hair and eyebrows. He is standing in an environment with trees behind him. He crosses his arms gleefully. He wears a button up collard shirt.
    Daniel Garber, Producer
  • headshot of a white woman in her forties with hair loosely tied back, a white button down shirt, and metallic earrings standing in front of a body of water.
    Samara Chadwick, Moderator

About the Screening

A news anchor stands in the middle of the desert, in front of a sign that says, “ELY STATE PRISON”. A production light shines on them, and a camera person with a tripod films them.

Join the International Documentary Association and DCTV on Monday, June 5 from 7PM to 10PM ET, for the DocuClub work-in-progress screening of the film Untitled Death Row Memory Film. We will be joined by director Alex Morelli and producer Daniel Garber. The feedback session will be moderated by Samara Chadwick

About the Work-In-Progress Film: Untitled Death Row Memory Film

When filmmaker Alex Morelli starts researching a rural Nevada community and its maximum security prison, he doesn't expect to receive a reply from an artist on death row named Scott Dozier. He’s even more surprised when Scott confides that he wants to waive his appeals and ask the state to carry out his execution—preferring death to the daily violences of incarceration. He offers Scott a supportive ear, and they begin to swap music and artwork to pass the time. But as Scott moves forward with his plans, Alex questions whether their friendship is compatible with his own commitment to ending the death penalty. And as he road trips to places from Scott’s past as an artist, soldier, father, and meth kingpin, a portrait emerges that reflects how masculinity, race, and individualism shape our reliance on punishment and prisons. Photographed on luminous 16mm, Untitled Death Row Memory Film is an intimate documentary about the fraught imaginaries of making art across prison walls. In the wake of Scott’s unexpected suicide, the film considers how he might have fit into a world without prisons—an abolitionist future he refused to envision, but one that organizers in Nevada are working to make a reality.

About DocuClub

DocuClub NY is a collaboration between IDA and DCTV. DocuClub is a work-in-progress screening series offering the public and members of the documentary film community a first look of new projects. Filmmakers and creators have the opportunity to showcase their rough cut and consult feedback from their peers and audience. To apply to participate in DocuClub with your own work-in-progress project, click here.

The screening will be held at the Firehouse: DCTV's Cinema for Documentary Film (87 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10013)

Doors open at 6:30 pm. Screening, followed by a moderated feedback discussion with the filmmakers - 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm. Drinks and snacks will be available for purchase. 

Space is limited. All RSVPs are first-come, first-served. Admission not guaranteed.

ASL and/or live captioning can be requested for the feedback discussion. Please email your request to docuclub@documentary.org by May 22, 2023.

Event Participants

    A person with fair skin and thick dark short hair, eyebrows and a short beard sit at a table looking gently at the camera with a smile. They cross their arms, in front of them is a 16mm camera.

    Alex Morelli

    Alex Morelli is an artist, filmmaker, and educator based in Chicago, IL. Drawing on personal, observational, and archival practices, he makes films that examine intergenerational memory, carceral landscapes, and the relationship between place and identity. His shorts have screened in RiverRun, Indie Grits, Athens International Film and Video Festival, and Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival. He was a 2017-18 Harvard Film Study Center Fellow, a 2019 Flaherty Film Seminar Fellow, a 2021 LEF-CIFF Fellow, and a 2021 Gotham Documentary Feature Lab participant. In 2022, Filmmaker Magazine named him one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film. He has taught filmmaking in university and community settings and frequently works as a cinematographer and editor.

    Black and white photo of a young man with fair skin and black hair and eyebrows. He is standing in an environment with trees behind him. He crosses his arms gleefully. He wears a button up collard shirt.

    Daniel Garber

    Daniel Garber is a filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY, with work spanning documentary, fiction, and experimental practices. Primarily employed as an editor, he was nominated for a Cinema Eye Honors award for his editing on Sierra Pettengill and Pacho Velez’s feature documentary The Reagan Show, which premiered at Tribeca and Locarno in 2017. Since then, he has edited Garrett Bradley’s Naomi Osaka documentary series, Lance Oppenheim’s feature documentary Some Kind of Heaven, Daniel Goldhaber's eco-activist heist thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline, as well as short films for Sierra Pettengill, Nan Goldin, and Zara Meerza. He was included in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 "New Faces of Independent Film", DOC NYC 40 Under 40, and Berlinale Talents.

    headshot of a white woman in her forties with hair loosely tied back, a white button down shirt, and metallic earrings standing in front of a body of water.

    Samara Chadwick

    Samara is a mother, curator, scholar, and filmmaker from Acadie / Mi’kma’ki. She has been programming nonfiction films, conferences, and interdisciplinary programs for over fifteen years, with a fierce dedication to forging new creative spaces across geographies, cultures, and technologies.

    She is currently the Executive Director of The Flaherty, and has served as Senior Programmer at the Points North Institute and Camden International Film Festival, and as a programmer for Hot Docs (2011-2012) and RIDM (2015-16). She is a founding member of Cinema Politica (2003) and of Independent Documentary Directors (2020).

    Samara's critically acclaimed debut feature 1999 about community healing, grief, and adolescence, premiered in 2018 at Visions du réel and Hot Docs and has since played 50+ festivals and educational institutions worldwide, including DCTV!