Approach

I met filmmaking at a critical point in my therapeutic work. I encountered film through the gritty messy ‘doing’ of it - as a collaborator and protagonist on an award winning hybrid documentary that told the story of my therapeutic work and life alongside people seeking asylum on a remote island off the coast of Western Australia. It was through experiencing, first hand, the power and potential of these two fields of practice together that led me to founding this approach. It has continued to contribute to a growing number of filmmakers, teams and institutions. 

One of my passions is demystifying theoretical frameworks and concepts into accessible discussions and practices to support creative project teams to design processes that can support the multiple ways that film responds to and influences story, image and community making.

Film and Narrative Therapy

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Film and Narrative Therapy *

  • I work alongside film teams in individual consultations, group facilitation and workshops. Sometimes I come in to consult briefly on a project for a specific issue and other times I accompany a project throughout its life.

    Some of the things commonly explored in these consultations:

    • Looking at your processes (like film editing or scripting) through a trauma-informed lens.

    • discerning between co-creation and extraction in collaborations with human and more-than-human participants.

    • Designing ethical and specific approaches for the community or situation you're working with.

    • Actively questioning colonial, patriarchal and neo-liberal influence on project structure and ways of moving in practice.

    • Supporting film participants through the process and life of the film including defining their participation or preparing for the film to go public.

    • Reviewing industry processes —like funding applications, casting, and Q&A preparation—so that you can have choice and be influential in your responses.

  • Cross-field collaboration with Gabrielle Brady began 12 years ago for the film Island of the Hungry Ghosts. From our respective fields and practices, we actively map processes of engagement to attend to power dynamics, participant care, community relationships, and the wellbeing of both contributors and crew. Together, we have developed frameworks that foreground ethics as a creative practice rather than a limitation. We share our work through workshops and consultations.

    work with us

  • Chapter: Fragments contain worlds: encounters between Narrative Practice and Filmmaking by Xiaolu Wang & Poh Lin Lee

    in Decolonizing Bodies: Stories of Embodied Resistance, Healing and Liberation(2025)

    Xiaolu and Poh first encountered one another at a workshop Poh gave (Departures from migration of identity) at a final Doc X lab event where Xiaolu was a fellow of the program. 

    “The DocX initiative entered its next phase of evolution: to support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) artists and thought leaders working across the nonfiction landscape and charting more accountable, nonextractive documentary paths and practices. To reimagine what documentary work looks and sounds like, DocX nurtured the imaginative exploration and questioning of artists and curators of color who boldly interrogated form and ways of collaborating.” (https://documentarystudies.duke.edu/docx)

    Following this encounter Xiaolu requested a series of consultations with Poh centering a film in development and also more broadly a space to examine the complexities of image and community making within her current political and social realities. 

    We found together how the presence of dominant ideas of the hero’s journey seeks to embed itself into the filmmaking process and how we could create intentional space for the otherwise dismissed and overlooked practices, stories and ways of moving.

    We are deeply appreciative of the care editors Carolyn Ureña (from the University of Pennsylvania) and Saiba Varma (from theUniversity of California, San Diego) offered through this project and are grateful for their willingness to include video fragments of our conversations embedded in the chapter (instead of written transcripts).

  • Film in Mind, UK

    The Flaherty, USA

    International Documentary Association, USA

    The Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab for the Promotion of Mental Health via Cinematic Arts, USA

    DocX Archive Lab Duke University, USA

    Netflix, USA

    Australian Film Television and Radio School, Australia

    Victorian College of the Arts, Film and Television, Australia

    Dokomotive, Germany

    Kunsthochschule für Medien (Academy of Media Arts), Germany

    Filmhaus, Germany

    Attagirl, female and non-binary mentoring program

Projects

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Projects *

Poster for a film titled 'We Are Nature'. It features a woman with natural afro hair against a purple background, with yellow text highlighting the film's theme and credits.
A woman with long brown hair lying on grass with eyes closed, surrounded by white feathers, wearing a brown shirt, an orange jacket, and a black choker.
Hand holding a small chick with a blue background and text that says 'In Good Hands.'