David Novack

Filmmaker

David is a filmmaker with widely-released, critically supported and award-winning documentary films. These include Finding Babel (Special Jury Prize, Moscow Jewish Film Festival), about executed Soviet writer Isaac Babel, and Burning The Future: Coal in America (International Documentary Association’s Pare Lorentz Award for social documentary film) about rights activists in West Virginia and their struggle for climate justice. For that film, he travelled with the US State Department’s Documentary Showcase, lectured internationally, and received an award for Best In-Depth Television Reporting on the Environment from the Society of Environmental Journalists. David also produced Kimjongilia (Sundance, Best Human Rights Documentary Award/One World Brussels Film Fest) about N. Korean labor camps. A former lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Novack now teaches sound and cinema at Lusófona University for Humanities and Technology in Lisbon, where he conducts research in sound studies for film.

Participating Sessions

Eyes Everywhere: The Widening Net of Government Surveillance

In this panel, we explore the expanding threats to the privacy of our devices and hard drives through mass extraction techniques, especially by law enforcement and border authorities. The practice has far-reaching implications for fundamental rights, including privacy and the presumption of innocence, but it also poses a particular peril for journalists and filmmakers seeking to protect their sources and material, along with ethical questions about the use of information...

Film Screening: All Static & Noise

When Uyghurs and Kazakhs are arbitrarily detained in Chinese “re-education” camps, survivors and their families risk everything to expose the truth.