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Year
Title
Category
Location
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13
2023
Cultural Heritage in Motion
Documentary
Senegal, Thailand, Ethiopia
The impacts of climate change can be detrimental to the cultural livelihoods of indigenous communities. At the same time, indigenous cultural heritage may play a role in adapting to climate risk and can be central to rethinking dominant approaches to addressing and understanding climate change. This documentary captures the journey of an international group of ethnographers and anthropoligists as they examine the role that cultural heritage plays in climate change adaptation, drawing from climate sciences, social sciences, and indigenous ways of knowing

12
2023
Held vs. Montana
Working with Our Children’s Trust, Double Bind Media has been busy filming the recent court case, Held v. Montana. This past August the Judge on the case ruled in favor of Montana youths. In this landmark decision the court found that young people have a constitutional right to a healthful environment and that the state must consider potential climate damage when approving future projects. Our Children’s Trust is a non-profit public interest law firm that provides strategic, campaign-based legal services to youth from diverse backgrounds to secure their legal rights to a safe climate. This recent ruling in Montana will have widespread impact on litigation in other states with similar constitutional environmental provisions and Double Bind Media is already planning to film these cases as they work their way through the courts.
read more

Working with Our Children’s Trust, Double Bind Media has been busy filming the recent court case, Held v. Montana. This past August the Judge on the case ruled in favor of Montana youths. In this landmark decision the court found that young people have a constitutional right to a healthful environment and that the state must consider potential climate damage when approving future projects. Our Children’s Trust is a non-profit public interest law firm that provides strategic, campaign-based legal services to youth from diverse backgrounds to secure their legal rights to a safe climate. This recent ruling in Montana will have widespread impact on litigation in other states with similar constitutional environmental provisions and Double Bind Media is already planning to film these cases as they work their way through the courts.

11
2023
NEH 2023 Humanities through Filmmaking
Helena, MT, USA
A 13 day filmmaking intensive where students learned about the cultural history of fly fishing in Montana, then produced individual short documentary films. Funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

10
2023
Encounter: Holter Afterschool Teen Arts Council.
Documentary
Helena, MT, USA
This film documents The Holter Museum of Art’s Afterschool Teen Arts Council’s (ATAC) street art project.

9
2023
How to be a lake
Documentary
Arhem, Netherlands
A short film documenting the collaboration between ARTeZ Theatre Docent Program and Klar Taal. The two groups produced a dance theatrical experience that addresses individaul expression and communciation in the age of climate change.

8
2023
Some of my best friends are kimchi
Documentary
Worldwide
Is your favorite “totally authentic” ramen spot making you racist? Should you feel guilty about your kimchi obsession? The answer is much more complicated than you think.

7
2021
Reconnecting…. Stories from the Montana
Documentary
Helena, MT, USA
This film documents students’ experiences, struggles, resilience, and triumphs as first generation, non-traditional, and under-represented college students.
read more

Many of the students within the TRIO demographic often feel a sense of ‘imposter syndrome’ yet paradoxically this demographic constitutes a large percentage of Helena College as a whole. Since the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, in-person filming was hampered. The film production transitioned to interviewing subjects remotely as well as asking them to document their experiences navigating the challenges of the shutdown itself. Surprisingly, the pandemic was revealing beyond this particular health crisis.

6
2021
The People’s House
Documentary
Helena, MT, USA
Montana’s Capitol, designed at the end of the 19th century, was intended to be the “people’s house,” uniting diverse interests across what was then just a territory to form the 41st state. But does it continue to live up to those principles today? Does it still speak to all Montanans?
read more

The student filmmakers of the Humanities Through Film Summer Bridge Program present The People’s House, a documentary analyzing the past and present of the state Capitol to answer the question: who's in and who's out at the people's house? Appearing in over a dozen international film festivals winning several awards. Ari was the NEH Project Director and George was an instructor.

5
2021
Memorial´s undoing
Documentary
Worldwide
Babyn Yar is like the Lethe, the river of oblivion that runs through the Greek underworld; the more one drinks from its waters, the more one forgets. Every memorial, every attempt at memorialization, has only contributed to its obscurity. Can an innovative documentary deploying new technologies reverse the course?

4
2020
Light in Flight or Fight
Documentary
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Working with the MIT Media Lab,this project employs recycled images produced with a new form of high-speed filmmaking known as femto-photography, which operates at such dramatically high-speeds that it has the ability to record photons of light in motion.
read more

How are we to understand the consequences of films that seemingly capture light in movement given how dominant light has been as a trope for truth?

3
2020
No ordinary time
Documentary
Helena, MT, USA
Recently winner of the Long Form Nonfiction Student Production Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television, Arts, & Science. Ari was the NEH Project Director. Appearing in over 30 international film festivals and winning several awards.

2
2018
Explaning climate change to a wolf
Documentary
Canada
An artist, a film documentarian, and a scientist meet in the Canadian wilderness to figure out how to explain climate change to a wolf. Global climate change is a phenomenon that touches upon all life on our planet and as such it exceeds the capacity of any form of representation to properly communicate its scale and meaning.
read more

This film introduces artistic concerns about the limits of representation into the scientific production of images that are circulated and exchanged in the discourse on climate change. To those ends, we take serious and scientifically rigorous aim toward a potentially surrealist end: explaining climate change to a wolf in the Canadian wilderness.

1
2017
Racial Recognition Algorithms
Documentary
Los Angeles, CA, USA
This film critically analyzes the connections between automated, algorithmic, and database driven facial tracking technology and biometric racial differences.
read more

The project is a short, recycled footage film made primarily from closed circuit security footage, consumer electronic media, and 19th-century positivist photographs of ‘racial face types.’

Infrared Landscape Study
Montana Infrared Study — 2026
Infrared Landscape Study
Montana Infrared Study — 2026
Infrared Landscape Study
Montana Infrared Study — 2026
Infrared Landscape Study
Montana Infrared Study — 2026
About us
Mission Statement

A double bind is an impossible situation in which any path forward seems to be confronted by two equally strong prohibitions. An example: racial essentialism is wrong; we should never represent race as a set of “natural” characteristics that define a group of people. Yet, social justice and racial equality require political representation. Without drawing boundaries that define a group, how can we make and mark progress? Another example: technological advancements and capitalist exploitation have brought the human species to the brink of global ecological catastrophe, but without these mechanisms, how can scientists and policy makers correct course and steer us toward a sustainable future?

Collective

We named our collective enterprise Double Bind Media because as filmmakers, writers, professors, documentarians, and media artists, we embrace the paradoxical constraints of the double bind as the governing ethos of our practice. For us, truly creative work arises from a profound engagement with the unworkable. Our focus is on media projects that achieve social change by transforming expectations of form and genre, bringing together innovation, critical analysis, and accessibility.

Team
Dr. Ari Lee Laskin
Dr. Ari Lee Laskin is the co-founder of Double Bind Media is currently a National Endowment for the Humanities Project Director. For the past decade he has served as an Andrew W. Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow, media historian and film Professor teaching courses in global cinema, comparative media studies, critical studies, and film production. He frequently works as a writer and editor in academic publishing, film programming, and also serves on film festival juries. As a filmmaker, his films are shown internationally, and he is currently in production on a film exploring the relationship between the Holocaust, documentary, and the invisibility of trauma.
George Zhu
George received his master’s in English literature from the University of California Irvine. He is the co-founder of Double Bind Media, a production company specializing in experimental documentary film and other visual media based in Montana, Los Angeles and the Netherlands. Currently, he resides in the Netherlands where he develops and produces a range of multidisciplinary new media work. He is also a writer interested in contemporary Chinese culture, environmentalism, endangered species, climate change, and science studies.
Elliot Glass
Elliot Glass received his degree in narrative film production from The University of California Los Angeles School of Theater, Film & Television. For over a decade he has worked full-time as a Freelance Producer, Writer, Director, Editor, and Cinematographer on projects ranging from commercial television to narrative shorts, music videos, web series, educational, branding, and advertising content. His clients have included: Google, Big Beach, Nerdist Industries, Dangerbird Records, Lolipop Records, Whirlpool Corporation, and Igloo Studios. His work has won him multiple awards, such as the Script Pipeline Semifinalist (Features), Peter Stark Memorial Grant, and Fuji Professional Tape Award.
Contact
About us
Mission Statement

A double bind is an impossible situation in which any path forward seems to be confronted by two equally strong prohibitions. An example: racial essentialism is wrong; we should never represent race as a set of “natural” characteristics that define a group of people. Yet, social justice and racial equality require political representation. Without drawing boundaries that define a group, how can we make and mark progress? Another example: technological advancements and capitalist exploitation have brought the human species to the brink of global ecological catastrophe, but without these mechanisms, how can scientists and policy makers correct course and steer us toward a sustainable future?

Collective

We named our collective enterprise Double Bind Media because as filmmakers, writers, professors, documentarians, and media artists, we embrace the paradoxical constraints of the double bind as the governing ethos of our practice. For us, truly creative work arises from a profound engagement with the unworkable. Our focus is on media projects that achieve social change by transforming expectations of form and genre, bringing together innovation, critical analysis, and accessibility.

Team
Dr. Ari Lee Laskin
Dr. Ari Lee Laskin is the co-founder of Double Bind Media is currently a National Endowment for the Humanities Project Director. For the past decade he has served as an Andrew W. Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow, media historian and film Professor teaching courses in global cinema, comparative media studies, critical studies, and film production. He frequently works as a writer and editor in academic publishing, film programming, and also serves on film festival juries. As a filmmaker, his films are shown internationally, and he is currently in production on a film exploring the relationship between the Holocaust, documentary, and the invisibility of trauma.
George Zhu
George received his master’s in English literature from the University of California Irvine. He is the co-founder of Double Bind Media, a production company specializing in experimental documentary film and other visual media based in Montana, Los Angeles and the Netherlands. Currently, he resides in the Netherlands where he develops and produces a range of multidisciplinary new media work. He is also a writer interested in contemporary Chinese culture, environmentalism, endangered species, climate change, and science studies.
Elliot Glass
Elliot Glass received his degree in narrative film production from The University of California Los Angeles School of Theater, Film & Television. For over a decade he has worked full-time as a Freelance Producer, Writer, Director, Editor, and Cinematographer on projects ranging from commercial television to narrative shorts, music videos, web series, educational, branding, and advertising content. His clients have included: Google, Big Beach, Nerdist Industries, Dangerbird Records, Lolipop Records, Whirlpool Corporation, and Igloo Studios. His work has won him multiple awards, such as the Script Pipeline Semifinalist (Features), Peter Stark Memorial Grant, and Fuji Professional Tape Award.
Contact
Encounter: Holter Afterschool Teen Arts Council.
Reconnecting…. Stories from the Montana
Light in Flight or Fight
Racial Recognition Algorithms
Cultural Heritage in Motion
Held vs. Montana
NEH 2023 Humanities through Filmmaking
Encounter: Holter Afterschool Teen Arts Council.
How to be a lake
Some of my best friends are kimchi
Reconnecting…. Stories from the Montana
The People’s House
Memorial´s undoing
Light in Flight or Fight
No ordinary time
Explaning climate change to a wolf
Racial Recognition Algorithms
Cultural Heritage in Motion
Held vs. Montana
NEH 2023 Humanities through Filmmaking
Encounter: Holter Afterschool Teen Arts Council.
How to be a lake
Some of my best friends are kimchi
Reconnecting…. Stories from the Montana
The People’s House
Memorial´s undoing
Light in Flight or Fight
No ordinary time
Explaning climate change to a wolf
Racial Recognition Algorithms
13
Cultural Heritage in Motion
Documentary
Senegal, Thailand, Ethiopia
The impacts of climate change can be detrimental to the cultural livelihoods of indigenous communities. At the same time, indigenous cultural heritage may play a role in adapting to climate risk and can be central to rethinking dominant approaches to addressing and understanding climate change. This documentary captures the journey of an international group of ethnographers and anthropoligists as they examine the role that cultural heritage plays in climate change adaptation, drawing from climate sciences, social sciences, and indigenous ways of knowing

12
Held vs. Montana
Working with Our Children’s Trust, Double Bind Media has been busy filming the recent court case, Held v. Montana. This past August the Judge on the case ruled in favor of Montana youths. In this landmark decision the court found that young people have a constitutional right to a healthful environment and that the state must consider potential climate damage when approving future projects. Our Children’s Trust is a non-profit public interest law firm that provides strategic, campaign-based legal services to youth from diverse backgrounds to secure their legal rights to a safe climate. This recent ruling in Montana will have widespread impact on litigation in other states with similar constitutional environmental provisions and Double Bind Media is already planning to film these cases as they work their way through the courts.
read more

Working with Our Children’s Trust, Double Bind Media has been busy filming the recent court case, Held v. Montana. This past August the Judge on the case ruled in favor of Montana youths. In this landmark decision the court found that young people have a constitutional right to a healthful environment and that the state must consider potential climate damage when approving future projects. Our Children’s Trust is a non-profit public interest law firm that provides strategic, campaign-based legal services to youth from diverse backgrounds to secure their legal rights to a safe climate. This recent ruling in Montana will have widespread impact on litigation in other states with similar constitutional environmental provisions and Double Bind Media is already planning to film these cases as they work their way through the courts.

11
NEH 2023 Humanities through Filmmaking
Helena, MT, USA
A 13 day filmmaking intensive where students learned about the cultural history of fly fishing in Montana, then produced individual short documentary films. Funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

10
Encounter: Holter Afterschool Teen Arts Council.
Documentary
Helena, MT, USA
This film documents The Holter Museum of Art’s Afterschool Teen Arts Council’s (ATAC) street art project.

Encounter: Holter Afterschool Teen Arts Council.
9
How to be a lake
Documentary
Arhem, Netherlands
A short film documenting the collaboration between ARTeZ Theatre Docent Program and Klar Taal. The two groups produced a dance theatrical experience that addresses individaul expression and communciation in the age of climate change.

8
Some of my best friends are kimchi
Documentary
Worldwide
Is your favorite “totally authentic” ramen spot making you racist? Should you feel guilty about your kimchi obsession? The answer is much more complicated than you think.

7
Reconnecting…. Stories from the Montana
Documentary
Helena, MT, USA
This film documents students’ experiences, struggles, resilience, and triumphs as first generation, non-traditional, and under-represented college students.
read more

Many of the students within the TRIO demographic often feel a sense of ‘imposter syndrome’ yet paradoxically this demographic constitutes a large percentage of Helena College as a whole. Since the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, in-person filming was hampered. The film production transitioned to interviewing subjects remotely as well as asking them to document their experiences navigating the challenges of the shutdown itself. Surprisingly, the pandemic was revealing beyond this particular health crisis.

Reconnecting…. Stories from the Montana
6
The People’s House
Documentary
Helena, MT, USA
Montana’s Capitol, designed at the end of the 19th century, was intended to be the “people’s house,” uniting diverse interests across what was then just a territory to form the 41st state. But does it continue to live up to those principles today? Does it still speak to all Montanans?
read more

The student filmmakers of the Humanities Through Film Summer Bridge Program present The People’s House, a documentary analyzing the past and present of the state Capitol to answer the question: who's in and who's out at the people's house? Appearing in over a dozen international film festivals winning several awards. Ari was the NEH Project Director and George was an instructor.

5
Memorial´s undoing
Documentary
Worldwide
Babyn Yar is like the Lethe, the river of oblivion that runs through the Greek underworld; the more one drinks from its waters, the more one forgets. Every memorial, every attempt at memorialization, has only contributed to its obscurity. Can an innovative documentary deploying new technologies reverse the course?

4
Light in Flight or Fight
Documentary
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Working with the MIT Media Lab,this project employs recycled images produced with a new form of high-speed filmmaking known as femto-photography, which operates at such dramatically high-speeds that it has the ability to record photons of light in motion.
read more

How are we to understand the consequences of films that seemingly capture light in movement given how dominant light has been as a trope for truth?

Light in Flight or Fight
3
No ordinary time
Documentary
Helena, MT, USA
Recently winner of the Long Form Nonfiction Student Production Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television, Arts, & Science. Ari was the NEH Project Director. Appearing in over 30 international film festivals and winning several awards.

2
Explaning climate change to a wolf
Documentary
Canada
An artist, a film documentarian, and a scientist meet in the Canadian wilderness to figure out how to explain climate change to a wolf. Global climate change is a phenomenon that touches upon all life on our planet and as such it exceeds the capacity of any form of representation to properly communicate its scale and meaning.
read more

This film introduces artistic concerns about the limits of representation into the scientific production of images that are circulated and exchanged in the discourse on climate change. To those ends, we take serious and scientifically rigorous aim toward a potentially surrealist end: explaining climate change to a wolf in the Canadian wilderness.

1
Racial Recognition Algorithms
Documentary
Los Angeles, CA, USA
This film critically analyzes the connections between automated, algorithmic, and database driven facial tracking technology and biometric racial differences.
read more

The project is a short, recycled footage film made primarily from closed circuit security footage, consumer electronic media, and 19th-century positivist photographs of ‘racial face types.’

Racial Recognition Algorithms
About us
Mission Statement

A double bind is an impossible situation in which any path forward seems to be confronted by two equally strong prohibitions. An example: racial essentialism is wrong; we should never represent race as a set of “natural” characteristics that define a group of people. Yet, social justice and racial equality require political representation. Without drawing boundaries that define a group, how can we make and mark progress? Another example: technological advancements and capitalist exploitation have brought the human species to the brink of global ecological catastrophe, but without these mechanisms, how can scientists and policy makers correct course and steer us toward a sustainable future?

Collective

We named our collective enterprise Double Bind Media because as filmmakers, writers, professors, documentarians, and media artists, we embrace the paradoxical constraints of the double bind as the governing ethos of our practice. For us, truly creative work arises from a profound engagement with the unworkable. Our focus is on media projects that achieve social change by transforming expectations of form and genre, bringing together innovation, critical analysis, and accessibility.

Team
Dr. Ari Lee Laskin

Dr. Ari Lee Laskin is the co-founder of Double Bind Media is currently a National Endowment for the Humanities Project Director. For the past decade he has served as an Andrew W. Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow, media historian and film Professor teaching courses in global cinema, comparative media studies, critical studies, and film production. He frequently works as a writer and editor in academic publishing, film programming, and also serves on film festival juries. As a filmmaker, his films are shown internationally, and he is currently in production on a film exploring the relationship between the Holocaust, documentary, and the invisibility of trauma.

George Zhu

George received his master’s in English literature from the University of California Irvine. He is the co-founder of Double Bind Media, a production company specializing in experimental documentary film and other visual media based in Montana, Los Angeles and the Netherlands. Currently, he resides in the Netherlands where he develops and produces a range of multidisciplinary new media work. He is also a writer interested in contemporary Chinese culture, environmentalism, endangered species, climate change, and science studies.

Elliot Glass

Elliot Glass received his degree in narrative film production from The University of California Los Angeles School of Theater, Film & Television. For over a decade he has worked full-time as a Freelance Producer, Writer, Director, Editor, and Cinematographer on projects ranging from commercial television to narrative shorts, music videos, web series, educational, branding, and advertising content. His clients have included: Google, Big Beach, Nerdist Industries, Dangerbird Records, Lolipop Records, Whirlpool Corporation, and Igloo Studios. His work has won him multiple awards, such as the Script Pipeline Semifinalist (Features), Peter Stark Memorial Grant, and Fuji Professional Tape Award.

Contact