Visual storytelling: Workshop with specialist documentary maker Amanda Rubin

Visual Storytelling workshop with Amanda Rubin

Jointly organized by the Centre for Jewish Culture, Society, and Politics and the Centre for Visual Culture, Durham University

• 24th March 2025: 09:30-16:00 (full day workshop with lunch; precise times TBC) 
• In person at Durham University (venue TBC)

This workshop will help students and academics elevate their research and creative practice through visual narratives. Led by the documentary filmmaker and director Amanda Rubin, it will introduce participants to visual storytelling skills and methods, including storyboarding, mood boarding, and writing scripts, as well as working with and adapting archival materials. The workshop will leave participants with a sense of being able to use visual methods to craft compelling stories about their research or creative interests.

• While some knowledge of editing software like Davinci may be helpful, it is not necessary.
• Participants working with non-visual sources are encouraged to attend.

The workshop’s content will be centred on the documentary Amanda is currently developing about Charlotte Beradt’s book, The Third Reich of Dreams. Beradt, a German Jewish journalist and communist activist who fled National Socialism for the United States, collected the dreams of people living in Nazi Germany, eventually publishing them in the 1960s. This remarkable book provides a look into the way totalitarianism invades and shapes the very inner workings of people’s minds. Long out of print in English, Amanda was pivotal in having the book retranslated and reissued by Princeton University Press.

Workshop outline

In the workshop’s first half, Amanda will introduce her work on the film and give examples of how she has crafted a visual narrative from a non-visual source, as well as the challenges involved in this. In the workshop’s second half, participants will choose a dream from the Beradt’s book and use visual storytelling methods to illustrate it. Participants will have the opportunity to continue working on their ‘dreams’ after the workshop.

• Lunch will be provided.
• Registration is essential: please use this link (also use this to tell us about any dietary requirements)  https://forms.office.com/e/MvDpMcSnYN

If you are unable to make the workshop, please email cvac@durham.ac.uk, so we can give the place to another person.

Biography:

Amanda Rubin is an experienced specialist factual and documentary director who has worked across a range of genres on scripted single- and observational-docs, topical magazines, and short forms. Her film credits include: 21st Century Mythologies (about Roland Barthes) and Danceworks for BBC Four; two Cutting Edge documentaries (Nurses and A-is-for-Accident) for Channel 4; A Late Show Special for BBC 2; Bros: The Documentary for Sky TV; The New Russia for Channel 4 and The Unexplained for The History Channel. She is currently developing a feature documentary, The Third Reich of Dreams, and republishing the book by Charlotte Beradt, which it is based on, with Princeton University Press in Spring 2025. Out of print for almost 40 years, Zadie Smith recently wrote an essay for The New York Review of Books.  Amanda has also been commissioned by Radio 4 to make a radio documentary about the book for Holocaust Memorial Day 2026. 

We look forward to you joining us on 24th March!

• Reserve your place:  https://forms.office.com/e/MvDpMcSnYN
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