Emily Cohen Ibañez (NYU Anthropology and Culture and Media PhD ’11) is a a Latinx filmmaker based in Oakland. Her film work pairs lyricism with social activism, advocating for labor, environmental, and health justice. She has become known for her collaborative methods that challenge the colonial heritage of documentary filmmaking. With parents who migrated from Colombia to the United States and a family legacy of escaping violence from Aleppo, Syria, Emily knows what it means to cross borders and fashion new identities. Her documentary BODIES AT WAR/MINA (2015) premiered at El Festival de Cine de Bogotá and screened in 22 municipalities most affected by landmines in Colombia. Her short films reach wide audiences internationally through The Guardian, The Intercept, and Independent Lens. Emily is a recipient of awards from JustFilms Ford Foundation, Firelight Media Doc Lab, Sundance Kendeda, the National Science Foundation, and was a Fulbright scholar. Her feature documentary, FRUITS OF LABOR had its World Premiere at SXSW 2021, winning multiple awards on the festival circuit and had its US broadcast on PBS POV| American Documentary in October 2021.
Interviewer Melissa Lefkowitz is a filmmaker, doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology at NYU, and graduate of the Program in Culture & Media.
Melissa Lefkowitz: What brought you to the Culture and Media Program?
Emily Cohen Ibañez: When I was an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz, I took one course in social documentation. This is the first doc I made – in 1999 – I made it about Santa Cruzans preparing for Y2K. And I loved it. I was so into it and I remember we edited analog using VHS tapes. I could just be in there for hours. So, I got the bug there, but I didn't understand what the pathway would be in film. I didn't think that was a possibility for me. And I loved anthropology. I had wonderful advisors at UC Santa Cruz. Nancy Chen introduced me to medical anthropology and Pat Zavella did this crossover with Latino studies and anthropology. Then, I worked for three years in the nonprofit sector doing HIV/AIDS prevention work. But I knew I wanted to go into anthropology. And I also had this dream of how can I [do film]? I remembered that I really love film.
I saw the NYU program and I knew Faye [Ginsburg’s] work and was really inspired by that, and also Emily Martin’s – who was my main advisor – and was really inspired by her work. I had read [Martin’s] Flexible Bodies in Nancy Chen’s medical anthropology class. And there was a host of other people, [like] Rayna [Rapp]. I learned through my search and looking into anthropology programs that there was this Culture and Media option. I was like, “this is so cool.” I thought it was something that I could do, learn more, and just see. And so I applied. It’s a hard program to get into, as you know, and I was really excited when I got in. It was my first choice. And I wanted to move to New York; that was always a dream to live in New York City. I ended up living in New York for 12 years and I love New York. As I got more into learning about production, I was discovering it was something I was really drawn to and I felt like I could have a knack for this.
ML: Following the program, what drove you to the next phase of your career and how did you break into the field?
ECI: It was a rough moment to graduate because we were still in the recession. I remember all the UCs [University of California campuses] for example, froze hiring. I had been questioning the academic track for myself, but I was applying to those jobs. That was sort of the expectation. I was lucky enough to get a postdoc. It was a two-year NSF professional grant that I decided to make into a postdoc. I was working on a film that never was finished called Virtual War. I made a film called Bodies at War during my time at Culture and Media. One of the things that the NSF [promoted] was the communication of science to broader publics, and so with that aspect I incorporated my camera work within the research design and dissemination so I could get funding to be able to do some of this stuff. I did that for two years and published on that project, got through production, and had a rough cut. I ended up abandoning it. Maybe one day I’ll go back!
That experience was very much me and the camera kind of thing. I knew down the road I eventually wanted to make films where I could bring on a team. After that, there was a lot of anxiety around how do I make a living? I understood documentary and DER within the educational sphere, and how that could happen in an academic context. But how one could live as a documentary filmmaker and that industry, I didn't actually have much contact with or understand that very well. I took a job as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at LaGuardia Community College within the CUNY system. To be honest, I knew at that point I was going to do it temporarily and look for my transition out of academia.
If you want to make that shift out of academia, whatever field, look at where people are gathering. I decided that I was trained as an anthropologist, I know how to learn different cultures, so I would just treat the film world like a culture that I’m going to learn to navigate, and that's literally what I did. It's funny because sometimes I have a fear of public speaking or have certain social anxiety, and putting on the cap of the anthropologist gives me a certain kind of courage. The first conference I went to was the National Association for Latino Independent Producers. Through networking and meeting people, I found out more. I became a very active member and for a while had a leadership position within a film collective called the Brown Girls Doc Mafia. That was crucial for me and where I made a lot of my connections. The team for Fruits of Labor, many people come from that film collective. With Brown Girls, I organized a retreat when I moved to Santa Cruz [because I] felt kind of isolated. We raised money to go to Sundance and also got festivals to give us passes. We'd have housing to make it affordable for us to go. Unfortunately, one thing that can be a challenge within the film world is that some of these festivals are enormously expensive. But it's important, I believe, if you're going to go the indie route of this industry – and I think in any industry – to network and figure out even how do people speak about their projects? What is the culture around this, you know? I mean literally making those observations and seeing how to insert yourself. And this is what I want to do, and this is how I can pitch this.
It might seem more opaque than it really is. It's not. It’s really similar to anthropology except there's a different culture. It is going to the conferences and the festivals and meeting people. The way to do it is join film collectives. That's a great way to get your foot in the door and figure out how to affordably go to these festivals. Sundance can be really expensive, but there are other ones that really aren’t and can be really great. They’re like gems for filmmakers and you can make relationships. As you take the time to understand the field, as you would any ethnographic project when you’re trying to understand this “thing” – a phenomenon or system – you start understanding the landscape and talking to people and making leads.