Podcast Summary:

New Books Network – Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi and Shilyh J. Warren (eds.), "Women and Global Documentary: Practices and Perspectives in the 21st Century" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)
Release Date: October 15, 2025
Guest: Shailey Warren, co-editor
Host: New Books Network
Episode focus: An in-depth conversation with co-editor Shailey Warren about the newly released collection “Women and Global Documentary,” exploring feminist praxis, transnational activism, methodology, and the evolving landscape of feminist documentary in the 21st century.

Overview

This episode dives into the motivations, process, and themes behind Women and Global Documentary: Practices and Perspectives in the 21st Century, a groundbreaking anthology edited by Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi and Shilyh J. Warren. The discussion covers the book’s global approach, its structure, and its aim to connect feminist activism, documentary filmmaking, and marginalized voices, especially from the Global South. Warren discusses the sense of urgency behind the project, the challenges of true transnational representation, and the significance of animation in feminist documentary work.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Book’s Origins & Rationale

• Genesis of the Project

  • Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi, an Iranian scholar in the U.S., identified the Northern/Western bias in documentary studies and sought a volume that would expand scholarly and practical focus.
  • Shailey Warren credits Moradiyan-Rizi's vision as decisive in shaping the book:

    “I really want to credit Najma here, my collaborator… who first approached me with the idea to do this collection… [she] was very attuned and sensitive to the ways that film studies as a whole, and documentary studies... is so consistently focused on the global North.” (04:31)

• Curatorial Approach

  • Rather than an open call, contributors were carefully selected to ensure diversity across geography, career stage, and method (theorists and practitioners):

    “We wanted to make sure we were geographically diverse… that we had a range of voices, from emergent new scholars to established and recognized scholars in the field… we had practitioners as well as educators and thinkers of various sites.” (07:38)

Urgency in Feminist Documentary

• Why Now?

  • The editors felt compelled by a “landscape of crises and urgencies”—globalization, digital expansion, war, displacement, the climate crisis, and mounting backlash against feminist activism:

    “It felt urgent to both state that there are… That this continues to be a practice of feminist filmmakers… that women filmmakers, when they take up cameras and work on feminist issues, they make feminist documentaries.” (10:28)

  • Warren acknowledges the challenge of defining “feminist documentary” today, as both feminism and documentary have dispersed, contested centers:

    “It’s really hard for us to agree on a definition of feminism. It’s really hard for us to agree on the boundaries of something called feminist documentary.” (09:55)

Transnationalism and the Global South

• Solidarity and Limitations

  • The collection emphasizes the need for solidarity and collaboration beyond national and regional boundaries. Yet the editors are aware of the challenge of authentically representing the Global South:

    “What would it really mean to create a book that focused on the Global South?... scholars working in the Global South and their own languages, you know, etcetera. We didn’t achieve that in this book… you have really only just touched the surface.” (13:55)

• Circulation of Films and Ideas

  • The book aims to mirror the global circulation of films, supporting the movement and dialogue of feminist documentary ideas.

    “We wanted the book to kind of reflect that circulation... so that these ideas would also circulate in various directions of the global.” (13:05)

Book Structure and Thematic Sections

(Timestamp start of breakdown: 17:56)

• Section 1: Documentary Initiatives as Feminist World Building

  • Looks at institutional frameworks—both formal and informal—that support women filmmakers (e.g., Caravan in the Middle East, Women Make Movies in North America, Docubox in East Africa).

• Section 2: The Personal and the Political

  • Examines documentaries about familial, intimate, and domestic spaces and their intersection with collective experience.

• Section 3: Activism

  • Explores modes of feminist activism in documentary, such as ecofeminist film in Iran, anti-capitalist cinema in Puerto Rico, and inter-art activism in Australia.

• Section 4: Voice

  • Focuses on the politics of voice—speaking truth, being heard—and includes essays that are filmmaker conversations and writing on indigenous filmmaking.

  “The sections all raise and explore familiar sites of feminist activism... But hopefully do so in new ways by bringing new voices, new conversations, new examples, new films, and new sites of inquiry into the conversation.” (21:32)

Highlight: Feminist Animated Documentary (Warren’s Chapter)

• Bridging Documentary and Animation

  • Co-written with Christine Varus after an influential film festival at UT Dallas.
  • Proposes and examines the concept of “feminist animated documentary” as a unique and under-studied form.

  “We wanted to assert basically a new, what felt like a new concept which is feminist animated documentary… Something’s happening here, right? Like there’s a group of films that all are moving in the same direction…” (23:37)

• Why Animation?

  • Animation offers ways to depict non-recordable experiences—memory, trauma, violence—that can’t always be filmed directly.
  • The collaborative, often women-led, process behind these films is itself a form of activism.
  • Festivals and audience responses attest that such films change minds and raise awareness, even in the absence of easily measured impact.

  “Women coming together to apply pressure and force awareness on these issues was itself kind of like a site of transnational feminist solidarity.” (26:20)

• Diversity of Form

  • The editors are careful not to constrain the genre. Styles range from tactile, materially-focused animation (e.g., “Carne” by Camila Cutra) to performance-driven and experimental approaches.

  “We really wanted an expansive [category]... that could include really experimental, performative works as well as maybe more familiar voiceover or interview or... more connected to the real, let’s say, as well.” (29:23)

Intended Audiences

• Primary Audience: Feminist scholars, documentary and film scholars, anyone exploring activism and transnational solidarity, practitioners.

• Secondary Audience: Artists, filmmakers, students (especially in courses on women’s/global/transnational cinema), and individuals questioning the importance of authorship in art.

  “I think anyone who is curious about the question, you know, does it matter who the maker is?... I think could find some answers in this book as well.” (31:34)

Accessibility

• The book is widely available with an affordable paperback edition; the editors invite direct contact from those with limited institutional access, especially in the Global South.

  “If anybody’s interested in a particular chapter or is listening from the Global South and doesn’t have institutional access... they should contact us directly. And we’d be happy to share our work.” (33:22)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the difficulty of achieving comprehensive coverage:

  “Coverage is like an impossible ideal. One can never do it all, and one can never actually even be comprehensive… we're always going to leave so much out.”
  — Shailey Warren (06:30)

• On the urgency of feminist documentary:

  “It felt urgent to say feminism continues to matter and that documentary really matters to feminism.”
  — Shailey Warren (11:19)

• On animation as feminist activism:

  “The collaboration itself… was already kind of a site of solidarity and activism.”
  — Shailey Warren (26:13)

• On finding new ground in the field:

  “You think you’ve made a collection that focuses more broadly on… overshadowed sites and films and filmmakers around the globe, [then] you realize… you have really only just touched the surface.”
  — Shailey Warren (13:55)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:31] Origins and aims of the book; critiquing the Northern focus of scholarship
• [09:17] The sense of urgency in 21st-century feminist documentary-making
• [12:51] The Global South and challenges of true transnational collaboration
• [17:56] Section-by-section breakdown of the book’s organization and themes
• [22:58] Deep dive into the “Feminist Animated Documentary” chapter
• [30:43] Discussion of intended audiences and interdisciplinary appeal
• [33:16] How to access the book and appeal to global readership

Conclusion

Women and Global Documentary is presented as an essential and boundary-pushing volume in feminist media studies. The episode’s conversation underscores the project’s ambitions for geographic and methodological diversity, candidly acknowledges limitations, and highlights the evolving conversation around gender, activism, authorship, and form—especially through innovative approaches like animation. It’s an accessible resource for scholars, students, and makers, with a view toward expanding the conversation, fostering solidarity, and amplifying voices—especially those too often left out of the frame.