Join us Tuesday, September 24, 7-8:30 p.m. CT, for our first Latest Generation Mentor Session as part of our filmmaking challenge for aspiring filmmakers in the Midwest ages 14-22.
The workshop and presentation will feature producers from Florentine Films: Stephanie Jenkins and Akia Thorpe and Clark Burnett and will bring together several foundational blocks of historical documentary storytelling and give workshop attendees a taste of how Florentine Films staff help to create their iconic work.
Stephanie Jenkins and Akia Thorpe will start with an overview of the footage and stills archival research process – from identifying archival sources to digitization and licensing – that went into making Muhammad Ali. Then, we’ll discuss UNUM, Florentine Films’ digital platform. Associate Producer Clark Burnett will walk through our methods for telling a compelling, clear, and compact story that connects history to the present.
Q&A to follow
Stephanie Jenkins (pictured left) has over a decade of experience seeing documentary films from development to delivery. She has worked with Ken Burns and Florentine Films since 2010, on multiple projects including their eight-hour series Muhammad Ali (2021), The Central Park Five (2012), Jackie Robinson (2015), and East Lake Meadows: A Public Housing Story (2020). She was a 2018 - 2019 Impact Partners Producing Fellow, and a member of multiple industry organizations, including the Documentary Producers Alliance, the PGA, and NATAS. In addition to her work with Florentine Films, she has contributed research to non-fiction media such as This American Life, Radiolab, The New York Times Op-Docs vertical, Spike Lee’s Forty Acres and a Mule Productions, and multiple independent films. In 2023, she co-founded the Archival Producers Alliance and is working with that group on putting guidelines in place around the use of generative AI materials in non-fiction films.
Akia Thorpe (pictured center) is an Associate Producer (AP) at Florentine Films where she’s currently producing Emancipation to Exodus, a documentary covering Reconstruction through the Great Migration era, for which she will lead stills archival research. Akia most recently produced Leonardo da Vinci, the first Florentine project about a non-American figure, which is set to air on PBS in November 2024. She joined the Florentine team in 2019 as a production coordinator for the biographical series Muhammad Ali (2021). Sticking to her Jersey roots, Akia graduated from Rutgers University (’17) with a B.A. in Journalism and Media Studies and a minor in Digital Communication, Information and Media.
Clark Burnett (pictured right) is an associate producer at Florentine Films working on Emancipation to Exodus, a documentary that looks at the Reconstruction era through the very beginning of the Great Migration. It’s set to broadcast on PBS in 2027.
Previously at Florentine, Clark worked as an associate digital producer for UNUM, a media platform that uses the Florentine filmography to place current events in their historical context and trace themes throughout history. He interned at the company in 2016.
Clark is a director in both documentary and narrative film. In college, he interned at Genius, the music website, and Acres, a commercial production company. He also co-created Now, In Color, a docuseries dedicated to expanding the perception of Blackness in America. It has been featured in The New York Times, Teen Vogue, The Huffington Post, Connecticut Public Radio (WNPR), and other outlets. His short films and documentaries have been recognized by such places as The New Haven Documentary Film Festival, The Garden State Film Festival, and The Yale Policy Lab.
A 2018 Princess Grace Foundation Honorarium recipient, Clark premiered his short film Athol Park at the 2020 National Film Festival for Talented Youth and took home an audience award. In February 2021, he joined Ken Burns and Sarah Burns on a virtual panel at Yale moderated by Thomas Allen Harris.
In 2019, Clark graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in sociology, earning distinction in the major.