Kin Makers
An unscripted TV series rooted in research surrounding alternative forms of kin making. In response to a “Seeking Family Members?” call, five strangers cohabitate to see if they can form a family from thin air. With the guidance of their host, Dr. Green and the Kin Makers Family Wellness Panel, the Kin Makers family members-to-be learn and apply tools for forming and maintaining lasting bonds and support systems.
Teaser 1:
Kin Makers (docu-series teaser 1), 5:00, 2021.
Teaser 2:
Kin Makers (docu-series teaser 2), 6:22, 2021.
A collaboration with psychologist Dr. LaShonda T. Green, Kin Makers implements reality TV vernacular and group therapy models to guide five kin-seeking strangers to create their own family. Psychology and futurism are applied to a speculative process of forming relationships of care. This family abolition project looks at unconscious attachments to social constructs and what they mean to concepts of care and growth.
friedman and Dr. Green and compiled the Kin Makers Family Wellness Panel, which helped them develop and safely deliver the process. In addition to leading the panel, Dr. Green is also the on screen host guiding the family each day (in the 2021 iteration and in the proposed production). Dr. Alexis Moreno (licensed psychologist, community wellness expert) and Alex Honigman (sociologist, family wellness expert) helped us develop the programming for the cohabitation experience.
A process informed by family and relationship psychology, as well as community and group development studies, the Kin Makers experience includes four phases: Shaping, Unknowing, Knowing and Kinning.
The Kin Makers also engaged in movement exercises and learned breathing techniques, eventually developing a family choreography.
Kin Makers uses mainstream entertainment vernacular to ground the non normative element of the stranger as potentia kin in something familiar. Some of the reality TV tropes included strangers brought together to live in a house, diary cams, testimonial shots, etc.
Strangers seeking kin reckon with their desperation for a new way to love and be loved when they are matched to form a family. Trailblazing psychologist, Dr. Green, and her team of psychology and sociology experts nimbly guide the newly cohabitating unit in its radical pursuit for relationships of care. In building their own kin making model, the family members contend with expectations for themselves and each other in order to find out what it takes to make family from thin air.
Thank you to the Kin Makers Family Members, Kin Makers Family Wellness Panel and Kin Makers Crew for helping to bring visibility to and potentially normalizing non nuclear, potentially non natal families, and alternative ways of making kin.
Kin Makers Family Members: Catherine Goba. Emily Marie. Mizan Taylor. Seanmichael Rodgers. Stacy Smith.
Kin Makers Family Wellness Panel: Dr. LaShonda T. Green. Dr. Alexis Moreno. Alex Honigman.
Kin Makers Host, Co-Executive Producer: Dr. LaShonda T. Green. Creator, Director, Co-Executive Producer: miranda j friedman. Production Supervisor, Director of Photography, Editor: Laura Zéphirin. Cinematographer, Camera Operator: Natassja Ebert. Producer: Dani Larimer. Sound Engineering: Gigi Mead. Dani Rev. Wardrobe and Set Design Director: Nafeesa Baptiste. Lighting Director, Videographer, Field Producer: Sacha Vega. Cinematographer, Movement Instructor, Videographer: Kori Koolman. Videographer, Story Consultant: Eliza Doyle. Line Producer, Craft Services, Additional Support: Katerina Pansera. Transportation, Craft Services, Additional Support: Amanda Horowitz. Makeup Artist: Jeffrey Sanchez. Production Assistant: Gem Rosenberg. Costume Designer: Jon Janal. Music: Fadi Ghassan Khoury. Carl Massey. Transportation: Robbie Acklen. Family Support System: Lillianna Isabel Burley, Chaya Eden Burley, Brenda Friedman, Stephen Friedman, Marge Hobley, Melissa Hobley, Adine Paradis, Bruce Magrane.
Special Thanks: Heather Hart, Jeanine Oleson, Steffani Jemison, Natalie Bookchin, Barbara Madsen, Julie Langsam, Marc Handelman, Park McArthur, Jason Hirata, Adi Omry, Damian Catera, Sam Bogner, Ben Weathers, Stephanie Zimmerman, Oona Garthwaite, Meghan Swaby, Matt Jorge, Justin Clarel, Yae Ji Cha, Mackenzie Rohan, Asher Hartman, Pierce Constanti, Caridad Svich, Jane Brucker, Perri Hofmann, Gabriel Sacco, Debra Cartwright, Stephanie Boyer, Cassandra Oliveras-Moreno, Carole Monroe, Lena Hammam, Rosemarie Te Nyenhuis, Bomi Kim, Karrie Wolfe, Jennerette Smith, Stanya Kahn, Jeff Lopez.
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