Third World Newsreel On and Off Screen at DOC NYC 2026

For Immediate Release
Third World Newsreel On and Off Screen at DOC NYC 2026
NYC Media Arts Institution Celebrates the World Premieres of ManSee Kong’s “What Happened to Danny” and Ivora Cusack & James June Schneider’s "The Newsreel: Characterization of Subversive Organization”
Executive Director JT Takagi Receives Lifetime Achievement Award
(New York) DOC NYC, the largest documentary film festival in the United States, will feature NYC media arts institution Third World Newsreel (TWN) both on and off the screen.
JT Takagi, TWN Executive Director, will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by DOC NYC at its annual Visionaries Tribute event on November 11, 2026, at Gotham Hall in Manhattan. She will receive the award along with filmmaker Alex Gibney. “Lifetime Achievement Awards are given to filmmakers for a distinguished output of documentaries,” DOC NYC said.
While leading TWN, Takagi is also an award-winning filmmaker, sound engineer, and adjunct professor in film at The City College of New York and Brooklyn College. She has recorded numerous public television and theatrical documentaries with Emmy and Cinema Audio Society nominations, including “POWER” (Yance Ford, Netflix, 2024), “Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” (Stanley Nelson, PBS), the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated “STRONG ISLAND” (Yance Ford, Netflix), and others.

“It was a surprise to me to hear about the DOC NYC Lifetime Achievement award. At first, I was worried that they knew something about my mortality that I didn’t, but hopefully not.
In any case, it's not only for me, but also for the organization, Third World Newsreel, and for celebrating its tenacity in surviving.
As the organization approaches 60 years, I’m pleased that we can still do so much with so little — from educational distribution and exhibition to production, fiscal sponsorship, media training, and a great deal of archival preservation as well,” Takagi said.
TWN has a long and significant history in the film and social justice communities, but has always been underfunded but committed. In recent years, TWN has found things even more challenging.
“Despite being recently de-funded by federal arts and humanities institutions, we’re still here, and still committed to our mission — advancing movement storytelling and media arts for cultural and social justice; championing the self-representation of historically marginalized communities — Black, Latine, Indigenous, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, North African, Mixed/Multiracial, People with Disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ individuals.
We’re pleased to be honored by DOC NYC and to be in community with so many great filmmakers and media arts groups, all of whom deserve such awards, and expect to see the continuing activities of our Production Workshop graduates, one of whom is premiering her film at DOC NYC. And I need to thank those funders who believed in us, from NYSCA and DCA, the New York Community Trust, Jerome, Golden Globe, Kolibri, Ford foundations, and our individual donors,” Takagi said.
As part of her work for Third World Newsreel, Takagi oversees the TWN Production Workshop, which nurtures aspiring filmmakers who are committed to social justice media. The Production Workshop is designed to help emerging filmmakers develop practical skills within a collaborative environment, especially from historically underrepresented communities.

Former TWN Production Workshop graduate and activist filmmaker ManSee Kong’s documentary “What Happened to Danny,” will have its world premiere at DOC NYC on November 15. She started production in 2011 and completed her film with the help of TWN's new Advanced Production Workshop program in 2025, and support from her program mentor, filmmaker Sam Pollard. The four-month Advanced Production Workshop is an initiative supported in part by the Jerome Foundation and is designed to advance the documentary projects of past TWN Production Workshop graduates as they take the next steps in their filmmaking journeys.
Kong’s film is about NY Chinatown native Danny Chen, who died while serving in Afghanistan in 2011 after relentless hazing by supervisors. Troubling questions surrounding his death compelled his grieving family and community to embark on a determined search for answers. Highlighting the resilience and power of community organizing for well over a decade, this story follows Danny’s family and community leaders in New York's Chinatown as they mobilize to demand justice for Danny and his family.
Much of Kong’s work focuses on Chinatown, which is what sparked her interest in filmmaking. What started as local advocacy for her community led her to a 14-year-long process of creating a feature-length documentary film. TWN is the fiscal sponsor for her film.

The DOC NYC film festival will also feature the world premiere of “The Newsreel: Characterization of Subversive Organization,” a film about the origins of Third World Newsreel, on November 14. Directed by Ivora Cusack and James June Schneider, the film dives into the core of the fiery hopes of a group of 1960s NYC filmmakers and activists called The Newsreel. Through the perspective of this collective, the power of 1960's counterculture sheds light on today's challenges.
“Newsreel was founded as a radical film collective to make and show films that depicted the reality of social movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in contrast to mainstream media. Remember, this was pre-internet, pre-cellphones, pre-video even. The hope, then and now, is to get viewers to see, rethink what they know about society, and act to change it.
Dozens of filmmakers and activists in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and many more cities were part of the Newsreel collective, and many continue to make films and be politically active. When Newsreel became Third World Newsreel in the early 1970s, it aimed to focus specifically on media by and about people of color and social justice, and that’s when additional activities, such as distributing other people’s work, training programs, and preservation, became part of what we do,” Takagi said about the origins of TWN.
TWN helped the directors of the film with archival materials and information about Newsreel and TWN. Over a decade in the making, “The Newsreel: Characterization of Subversive Organization” provides a look at the unique, complicated, and important history of Newsreel.
“The directors of ‘The Newsreel: Characterization of Subversive Organization,’ Ivora Cusack and James June Schneider, had made a short film profiling a Newsreel member and became interested in making a documentary about the collective and its history and films. While we have often been approached to participate in articles and many folks have written their dissertations on the organization, these two makers were persistent in their effort, which went on for years.
In ‘The Newsreel: Characterization of Subversive Organization,’ they interviewed some 45 Newsreel members, traveling throughout the country. What they have is pretty amazing. Our role in this production was to provide archival footage so that in the end, we would be able to distribute the film and to preserve interviews for the TWN Archives. We participated in some rough-cut screenings and were interviewed as well. This film will not only premiere at DOC NYC; it’s one of 10 nominated films in DOC NYC’s inaugural Archival Storytelling Competition. So we’re excited about this, and like the filmmakers, relieved that it is finally finished!” Takagi said.
TWN continues to support films and filmmakers of marginalized communities, and at this time has fellows enrolled in both its TWN Production Workshop and The Advanced Production Workshop, while also presenting a series of free film seminars in collaboration with the Documentary Forum at The City College of New York.
Moments like these at DOC NYC are ones where filmmakers and activists can finally present to audiences and celebrate their hard work. We celebrate social justice films and the recent midterm elections where such change has begun to happen. We are reminded of just how impactful social movements can be and how independent films and filmmakers have, and will, play an inspiring and instigating role in bringing change.
For interview requests, Sonia Kalo, Communications, outreach@twn.org, 212 947 9277 x10
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Third World Newsreel
Since 1968, Third World Newsreel (TWN) has advanced movement storytelling and media arts for cultural and social justice. We champion the self-representation of historically marginalized communities — including Black, Latine, Indigenous, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, North African, Mixed/Multiracial, People with Disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ individuals — through diverse genres and forms of media, such as documentary, experimental, and fiction. From documentary and experimental to narratives, we are committed to shaping a media landscape where diversity and intersectionality are not merely represented but are central to social transformation.
JT Takagi
JT Takagi is an award-winning, Emmy-nominated, independent filmmaker, sound recordist, and the Executive Director of Third World Newsreel (TWN), a progressive alternative media center working to advance storytelling and media arts for cultural and social justice. She is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Takagi’s films are primarily on Asian, Asian American, and immigrant issues, including “Bittersweet Survival,” “Homes Apart: Korea,” The Women Outside,” and “North Korea: Beyond the DMZ,” which aired nationally on PBS. As a sound engineer, she has worked on numerous television and theatrical documentaries, including “POWER,” the Oscar-nominated “Strong Island,” “Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space,” “Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,” the Emmy-nominated “4 Little Girls,” and “A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde.” Takagi also teaches film and sound at The City University of New York, The New School, and serves on the boards of several organizations and community groups working for peace and social justice.
ManSee Kong
Kong is a filmmaker and cultural worker born and raised in New York City. Her film and collaborative media works are inspired by narratives rooted in immigrant life and grassroots social movements. Along with artists Tomie Arai and Betty Yu, she co-founded Chinatown Art Brigade in 2015, a cultural collective that facilitates and creates community-led public productions to advance social change. ManSee has worked as a camera assistant, camera operator, and teaching artist with Third World Newsreel, Global Action Project, and Tribeca Film Institute. She holds an MFA in film directing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and has received support from Asian Women Giving Circle, Puffin Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Davis-Putter Fund for Peace & Justice, Spike Lee Production, and Jerome Foundation. Her creative interests in recent years have expanded from film/video to new media art and technologies applied in accessible, community-based, and socially conscious ways.
Ivora Cusak
After a founding experience in ZALEA TV, an alternative TV station in Paris in the early 2000s, Ivora Cusack went on to co-found the 360° et même plus film collective in Marseille. Through a feminist lens with attention to race, class, gender, and sexuality, their work documented different struggles in France. In recent years Ivora has transitioned from cutting film to climbing trees and cutting branches, trading the editing suite for the arborist's rope.
James June Schneider
James June Schneider is a filmmaker, video performer, teacher, researcher and curator. He has directed short films, music videos and his feature-length films include “Punk the Capital: Building a Sound Movement (2019).” As a performer, Schneider has been conducting live video events with sound and image (aka “vampling” or "live cinema") both solo as well as with collaborators since 2002, lecturing at various universities and film festivals on the subject.

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