Video Academy Dialogues: Focus on docs with Lisa Cortés, James LeBrecht, Bao Nguyen, Dawn Porter and Roger Ross Williams

Part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Academy Aperture 2025 initiative, “Academy Dialogues: It Starts With Us” is a new series of virtual panels, with conversations about race, ethnicity, gender, history, opportunity and the art of filmmaking.

The Academy’s newest discussion in the series, Academy Dialogues: “Documentaries Through Our Own Lens,” focuses on the systemic changes that need to occur for marginalized communities to be able to tell stories through their own lens.  Although the field of talented documentarians is among the most diverse in the entertainment industry, opportunities to tell their stories continue to be a challenge for people from underrepresented communities.  Is there a distinction between excursions of discovery into indigenous cultures and cultural appropriation?  Who gets to tell those stories?

Panelists include filmmakers Lisa Cortés (“All In: The Fight for Democracy”), James LeBrecht (“Crip Camp”), Bao Nguyen (“Be Water”) and Dawn Porter (“John Lewis: Good Trouble”).  Moderated by Academy governor and Oscar® winner Roger Ross Williams (“The Apollo”).  

For more information on this Academy Dialogue and others in the series, please click here.   



Lisa Cortés (“All In: The Fight for Democracy”)
James LeBrecht (“Crip Camp”)
Bao Nguyen (“Be Water”)
Dawn Porter (“John Lewis: Good Trouble”)
Roger Ross Williams (“The Apollo”)