We recently connected with Jaydn Ray Gosselin and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jaydn Ray thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful project to me at the moment is my latest feature film, END IN SIGHT, which recently began production in Texas, the result of so much of my thinking as an artist and impact producer in recent years. I can’t reveal too much, but the film explores the shared technologies of surveillance and identification along the U.S.-Mexico border between those who enforce the border and researchers working to track and identify the remains of missing migrants who died crossing it. The film places their work in the context of tools used throughout the 20th and 21st centuries to categorize migrant bodies and place them in conversations with migrants themselves, their families, advocates, and the larger context of science in the Borderlands.

As a documentary filmmaker, I see some similarities to my own practice in the work of the researchers. They use DNA analysis, ground penetrating radar, data, and models to tell a story of the world; I use a camera, editing software, and archival media. We both chase the truth, believing there’s some transcendental quality to it. But I have begun to think that truth, though important, is far less useful than our fields usually consider them. What requires more attention are the systems, code, and ethics with which we pursue it and the impact of the information once we have it. The truth isn’t enough. The real questions are: How do we pursue it? What do we choose to do with it once we think we’ve found it? And how can our technologies help or hinder this work?

I am interested in the social life of technological infrastructures. This concept recognizes that technology is not neutral but is imbued with values, assumptions, and power dynamics that shape research, anthropology, policing, and documentary filmmaking. Approaching this story, I’ve been thinking a lot about my ethical responsibilities to participants in my films, the audience, and my own artistic vision. As a filmmaker who works at the intersection of art and advocacy, I am also aware of documentary filmmaking as only a way of capturing reality but also a way of co-creating it with the people and places we encounter. With END IN SIGHT, I get to push my work into new places. And that’s exciting. I hope to share more about the film soon.

END IN SIGHT is produced with Jacob Fertig and is a production of Denizen Studios.

Jaydn Ray, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a US-based French-Australian filmmaker who works at the intersection of art and advocacy. I am the co-founder and creative director of Denizen Studios, a production company dedicated to sparking civic engagement through non-fiction storytelling, which I co-founded with Jacob Fertig. I am also the director of several documentary projects that explore how histories, memories, and traumas are embedded in community spaces, built environments, and the tools we use.

I have always been fascinated by stories and how they can shape our perception of the world and inspire us to take action. That’s why I decided to move across the world in 2015 to pursue a career in filmmaking and study at New York University, where I met amazing friends, collaborators, and my incredible wife. There, I learned the craft and skills of visual storytelling and developed my own voice and vision as a filmmaker.

I approach each project with curiosity, empathy, and respect, even if I vehemently disagree with a participant or subject – sometimes especially if that’s the case. I also believe that documentary filmmaking is a powerful tool for social change and impact, which is what drives Denizen Studios.

Denizen is a New York-based, independent production company that specializes in exceptional, provocative works of non-fiction art and real-world impact. We create original and partnered content that informs, immerses, and inspires audiences toward collective progress. Our motto: we believe that the same techniques used to captivate audiences can and should be used to activate them.

Some of our projects have taken me across the world and all around the country; others have led me to interesting communities in my backyard. Beyond END IN SIGHT, they include a film about the architecture of refugee detention, a dark matter research lab in South Dakota, and Manhattan’s last public gun range.

I am interested in how cultures, identities, and experiences are shaped by borders and boundaries. I am also interested in the promise and peril of technologies and science, depending on who controls them and how they are applied. These are some of the themes that I explore in my films.

I am also a proud cheerleader for non-fiction filmmaking and love to encourage more people to get involved. I have found it the source of incredible collaboration and the nicest people. The best part about making documentaries are the people you get to meet, in front of and behind the camera.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Thrown into a post-graduation existential crisis, I thought for a while of being a journalist. I shadowed reporters, took a class, and authored a few articles in college. But I’m not a journalist. At least not that kind. I believe that many of our most important truths, the ones we structure our lives around, rely far less on what we read in newspapers, or even what we experience firsthand, and far more on what are constructed for us on screens big and small – what we’re shown and made to believe.

These are the stories that sink into our lizard brains. To me, film, more than any other type of mass media, combines the filmmaker’s acute awareness of their audience with the medium’s unique ability to shape a story and involve viewers deeper – intellectually, emotionally, and even physically – in it. Good documentaries add to that the pursuit of truth and, hopefully, a commitment to ethics. And they can be just as cinematic as the best fictional films. But, I guess, more than anything I just love what I do.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

As a documentary filmmaker, I get to meet the most interesting people working in the most interesting places on the most interesting things. I feel I have no right to be there, and yet I get the honour of people inviting me into their worlds. It’s an incredible feeling, especially as someone interested in so many things. And it’s a reward whether or not the film is a slog to make, we run out of money, or no one gets to see it. It’s the process I love. And that alone, at least for now, gives me enough to keep going.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.denizenstudios.com
• Instagram: jaydn.gosselin