180 Media Academy returns with a programme that brings together professionals from different creative fields with a common goal: to reflect on and rethink culture and media.
This year’s edition asks: how do we document reality? How can narratives emerge from systems rather than scripts? How does the act of capturing events transform what we understand about them?
The programme opens with a talk by American filmmaker Sean Dunne, known for his portraits of subcultures and communities living on the fringes of American society. Over the past decade, Dunne has developed an observational and deeply empathetic documentary language in films such as Oxyana, Cam Girlz, American Juggalo, and Florida Man. His talk reflects on what it means to film the margins: the ethical choices, the challenge of access, and the search for an eye that observes without judging.
Next, Peter Mack, a game designer whose path began in cinema, explores how stories can be told through systems rather than scripts, at the Canal180 HQ. Drawing from his career, from early visual experiments to his latest simulator inspired by real-life truck drivers, Mack reflects on how meaning can emerge from action, choice, and interaction, and how games generate living narratives shaped by players themselves.
The cycle concludes with a session led by the Canal180 team, reflecting on years of covering music festivals through an alternative lens, one that looks beyond the main stage to uncover the people, spaces, and stories that define these events. Through a chronology of past and recent projects, the team will discuss how the festival landscape, commercial pressures, and ways of documenting have evolved, and how Canal180 has continually adapted and reimagined its approach in response.
At Porto/Post/Doc, Sean Dunne’s latest film Wild Magic will screen on 22 November at Batalha Centro de Cinema: a journey through new spiritualities and mythologies in contemporary America, revealing both the fragility and hope of a society in search of meaning.
From 16 November to 1 January, FAHR 021.3 present Pó de Vir a Ser, a project developed within the Geologia da Atenção programme. Born from three residencies exploring stone sculpture for the first time, the exhibition investigates material agency, accident, and the relationship between authorship and process, including a film made in collaboration with Canal180.
During Porto/Post/Doc, Canal180 will also air a special TV programme dedicated to Sean Dunne, featuring a selection of his films that document an invisible America: Trump Rally, Man in Van, Black Bike Week, American Juggalo, American Juggalo 2, Joshua Tree, Sweet Nothing, Cam Girlz, Florida Man, Oxyana, and Wild Magic.
