Doc Walks

Take a spirited walk though East Austin, Black History, and the Texas State Cemetery with filmmaker, educator, and self-described activist-artist Ya'Ke Smith—on Juneteenth week, no less. We kick off our walk under a Moonlight Tower and basically never stop moving: past Franklin Barbecue (pour one out for the old Ben's Barbecue), over to the Victory Grill, and into a cash-deal for some Bass Reeves-...

We hit the streets of South by Southwest with Isaac Gale—director, artist, and one-half of the Minneapolis noise outfit Marijuana Deathsquads, in town to play the fest with his band. Isaac's the kind of guy who'd rather break a piece of software than master it, and that restless, try-anything energy runs through everything he makes. We wind through Ben's old neighborhood and retrace how the two fi...

Meet Juli Berwald—a marine biologist turned science writer and the author of an invertebrate page-turner—she's the founder of a coral-reef nonprofit in Honduras, aaaaand she's producing her first doc. Throughout our waterfront walk at Ladybird Lake Juli opens up about her adventures in science writing—how getting fired off a book project (& replaced by Elizabeth Kolbert) inspired Juli to create he...

We hit the boardwalk with Luke Korem—the Emmy-winning documentary director behind DEALT, MILLI VANILLI, and ACTION—and somewhere between a guy blasting EDM off a portable speaker and the bats under the bridge, Luke hands us a filmmaking philosophy worth bottling: it's all the same muscle. Doc, series, scripted—storytelling is storytelling, and the trick is knowing a series is a sprint and a featur...

Barlow Jacobs says: Walk to the Next Block.. easy to say when you're sitting there, not-walking on DocWalks. It's day three of the AFS Doc Intensive, and we close out our run in the room for a sit-down with actor-turned-documentarian Barlow Jacobs—a guy we've been hearing about for 20 years ever since he burst out of Sundance with LOW AND BEHOLD in 2007. Barlow brings his doc-debut, THE VOYAGE OUT...

Alisa Payne cannot be stopped… certainly not by a little rain. When the downpour chases us indoors, we're lucky enough to post up in a cozy podcast studio at Austin Public—the public-access station where, Alex Jones got his start—and the home to the Austin Film Society Documentary Intensive, where the Oscar-nominated producer is serving as a mentor. You may know Alisa as the producer behind Geeta...

We duck inside for the first time ever — into the Blanton Museum of Art, because it's pouring in Austin and Pete Muller had the brilliant idea to bring our show into a gallery. Pete is the National Geographic photographer behind BUCKS HARBOR, his five-years-in-the-making debut feature about lobster fishermen in Downeast Maine, premiering at Berlinale and playing Doc Days at the Austin Film Society...

Ben walks Glassell Park in L.A. with Bradley Jackson—screenwriter, novelist, and the documentary writer/producer behind FACING NOLAN, DEALT, MILLI VANILLI, and the Showtime sports-betting docuseries ACTION. Bradley leads Ben up his neighborhood  hill as he details exactly how he ended up in a "premium economy" English castle filming a bisexual British aristocrat for his very first doc—and why he n...

Let's get into the tragic side of comedy with documentarian, comedian, and Academy Award–nominated screenwriter Jena Friedman. The BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM co-writer is in town for the Moontower Comedy Festival to perform her hour-long stand-up about her mother's death. Two minutes in and we're deep into the grief, as the former DAILY SHOW correspondent talks about editing her own SundanceTV tru...

We walk South by Southwest with director Bryan Storkel—HOLY ROLLERS, THE LEGEND OF COCAINE ISLAND, THE PEZ OUTLAW, ALABAMA SNAKE—in town to premiere I GOT BOMBED AT HARVEY'S, his new feature about the man who built a thousand-pound bomb and walked it into a Lake Tahoe casino in 1980. Keith's on vacation, so it's just Ben and Bryan, two directors aiming cameras at each other ("this is like a Beasti...

We mark 50 walks with business partner, co-conspirator, and professor of things cinematic—Berndt Mader, co-founder of The Bear and Ben's filmmaking better-half of nineteen years. Lady Bird Lake, placid gray spring weather, and Berndt tracing his arc from sandbag-slinging grip on David Gordon Green's GEORGE WASHINGTON to Austin's hybrid-film provocateur. The main event: the $2M Kid Rock documentary...

Kansas City here we come! Well, just Ben this time, revisiting old haunts along the Tomahawk Creek trail with Sharon Liese—Emmy-winning director of THE FLAGMAKERS and TRANSHOOD. Sharon proves you don't need an LA zip code to premiere at Sundance—her new feature SEIZED—a nuanced, complicated portrait of what happened when police raided a small-town Kansas newspaper—was a must-see at Park City this...

Let's talk about MANHOOD—specifically, Daniel Lombroso's startling new doc about the growing world (haha) of penis girth enhancement. You heard that right. This is the penis injection movie that SXSW audiences (& DocWalks guests) won't stop talking about. At 33 years old, the Brooklyn-based Lombroso considers himself to be "criminally open minded" (his words, then immediately walked back), and the...

This is one packed parking lot full of filmmakers! Why? Because it's SXSW—and time once again for Austin Film Society's annual party. And we're throwing you right into the thick of it, to connect with both visiting and local doc-makers making the scene, We kick it all off with the cutest damn Willie Nelson cameo you can imagine… no not the nonagenarian multi-hyphenate hero, but a baby goat named f...

This one is scientific! We're thrilled to take a walk on Austin's wildside with one of the hardest working Executive Producers in the doc game today. Meet Jess Harrop, executive director of Sandbox Films—the science-meets-cinema studio behind FATHOM, FIRE OF LOVE, ANDRÉ IS AN IDIOT, and a jaw-dropping slate of genre-bending docs. Jess takes a break from her SXSW responsibilities to share her journ...

Holly Herrick is all about the film-life—as the Head of Film for Austin Film Society and Doc Days festival founder / programmer, she's at the center of Austin's film community, but this SXSW finds Holly wearing a new hat: first-time documentary producer.  FIRST THEY CAME FOR MY COLLEGE, directed by Patrick Bresnan, chronicles the 2023 "hostile takeover"—their words—of New College of Florida by Ron...

If you ever wanted to get into the head of a premier festival programmer, this is your chance! Meet SXSW VP of Film & TV, Claudette Godfrey, a self-described Chaos Coordinator and all-around boss. Keith's flyin' solo while Ben's off shooting commercials (allegedly) and you won't want to miss the chance to walk & doc with Claudette today, on the 40th anniversary SXSW kickoff. An ADHD/OCD whirlwind...

We're takin' it to the streets, sure—but this week we're also takin' it to the list: the Nonfiction Hotlist, with producer Anna Rau. Anna's got the scoop on this new endeavor to connect nonfic producers with money and distribution, and she's here to share just what the Nonfiction Hotlist is and where it's going. It started when former ESPN producer Adam Neuhaus made a viral LinkedIn post that insp...

Park City, 2026 —  we showed up without films, without press credentials, but still… ready to make our DocWalk dreams a reality. Welcome to the last of 4 episodes at Sundance: a walk down Main Street, where we hobnob with the best of the fest, greet the people, and do everything we can to stay warm in sub-freezing temps without a single movie ticket in sight. This year at Sundance everyone was loo...

It's time for some JOYBUBBLES! That's what first-time doc director Rachael J. Morrison believes—and she's brought her feature doc to Sundance to share the power of JOYBUBBLES with the world. Rachael's film introduces the world to Joe Engressia, a blind kid who discovered he could whistle a magic tone and hack the analog telephone system—becoming a pioneer in the world of "phone phreaking." Joe's s...

When we find Julie Goldman and Chris Clements of Motto Pictures in a Sundance hotel lobby, they're doing what they do—sharing hugs and encouragement with the Oscar-nominated team from THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR. They're the kind of producers who root hard for everybody in the field while juggling 8-10 projects of their own.  Julie and Chris know everyone—and they champion longtime friends and newcomers...

We are excited to catch Sam Green—despite freezing our asses off on Main Street—hours after the world premiere of THE OLDEST PERSON IN THE WORLD. What starts as a conversation about chasing Guinness World Records quickly becomes something bigger: how curiosity transforms into meaning.  Sam walks us through ten years of filming, cancer scares, fatherhood, and the realization that 116-year-olds don'...

Ben squeezes into the VHS vault that is the Found Footage Festival (FFF) headquarters in NY with Joe Pickett—half of the FFF comedy duo who quit his job to follow a dirty country singer for four years, turned stolen instructional videos into a 20-year comedy empire, and once declared a half-naked woman painting ceramic clowns "the greatest moment in VHS history." Joe walks us through his filmmakin...

What does impact look like? That's what we're asking this week's guest, Courtney Cook—a veteran impact producer who's helped hundreds of doc-makers answer that question in her 7-years at POV. A high school teacher-turned-PhD-turned-doc-producer and soon-to-be professor of documentary film at Texas State, Courtney has strong opinions about perspective, ethics, and how having a "bad attitude" is the...

This week, Ben is on a solo mission to a freezing New York City, where legendary filmmaker Alan Berliner guides him through his studio that's equal parts fine art gallery and documentary laboratory. We're talking about a 108 drawer sound sculpture that Alan plays like an instrument, flood-destroyed film reels turned gorgeous works of art, and the kind of collections that make you wonder where arch...