Dawn Porter tells difficult stories.
Her documentaries focus on people coming up against societal issues that threaten to break them — the WNBA and its public confrontation with racism, misogyny and hom*ophobia; public defenders and their fight for justice; reproductive health care providers in states dismantling abortion access.
What these stories have in common is Ms. Porter’s refusal to look for simplistic throughlines. Rather than leveling her subjects’ narrative peaks and valleys, she prefers to explore the full topography of a life or issue.
“I’m endlessly fascinated with people and how we adapt and move forward,” she told the Gazette. “Nobody’s life is all sadness, nobody’s life is all joy. It’s really how we manage those two extremes.”
Ms. Porter has been a longtime seasonal Vineyarder. — Jeanna Shepard
Circuit Arts honored Ms. Porter Saturday with its inaugural Icon Award for a lifetime of achievement in film. The organization has shown nine of the seasonal Vineyarder’s films, most recently Luther Vandross: Never Too Much, which has been traveling the festival circuit ahead of its 2025 release.
The documentary about the late singer will also be screened at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival next month to a sold-out audience. The screening is August 9 and Ms. Porter will take part in a discussion at the event. Ms. Porter’s films have been backed by major networks and streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. Her work has received awards by Sundance, South by South west and the Gotham Awards. She has also received nods from the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Emmys.
But she didn’t set out to make films. Her background is in journalism and law — a combination she says sharpened her approach to filmmaking.
“Those are two disciplines that value accuracy,” she said. “Even when you’re an advocate, you’re still supposed to be truthful . . . . You can fight hard but you have to fight fair.”
Her first film was Gideon’s Army, released in 2013, which followed young public defenders committed to clients seen as indefensible.
Ms. Porter's film John Lewis: Good Trouble came out in 2020. — Jeanna Shepard
When a story leaves her wondering, she chases it.
“I try to come into things being curious,” she said. “Like, what don’t I know? What do other people want to know?”
It is this relentless curiosity, she says, that keeps her prolific. There has seldom been a year since Gideon’s Army where she hasn’t released at least one film. Her latest is Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net, a shimmery exploration of the nouveau cirque’s post-pandemic comeback that hit Amazon Prime Thursday.
Earlier this year, Amazon Prime also released Power of the Dream, which narrates the WNBA’s fight to upend American politics. Forthcoming are a limited series for MSNBC and a film for HBO, both of which profile the wrongfully convicted.
For Ms. Porter, telling difficult stories means being willing to exist in difficult worlds with her subjects for however long is necessary. To unwind and recharge, she said the Vineyard is crucial to her self-care regimen. She reads more on the Vineyard than anywhere else — recently enjoying Horse by Geraldine Brooks — builds fairy houses with her kids and takes them to the library. She also likes to cook for her friends and lets them cook for her.
Stepping away from her work is what allows her to keep returning to it.
“It’s not like I’m talking about my work with my friends,” she said. “We’re talking about where we’re going to get pie.”
She has a particular allegiance to Scottish Bakehouse in West Tisbury.
While Ms. Porter is eager to wade into challenging emotional and artistic territory, she said it is always a challenge profiling those who aren’t around to tell their own stories. For her film about Mr. Vandross, and a previous film about Lady Bird Johnson, she had to construct narratives based on archival footage.
“I feel an almost heightened responsibility when someone’s not here because they can’t push back,” she said. “You really have to be a good listener.”
Working with living subjects, she says, comes with its own complications.
“When people are here, the hard thing is a lot of times you love them,” she said. “You don’t want to disappoint them. You don’t want to embarrass them.”
No person or story, Ms. Porter said, can be distilled into a single theme.
In Never Too Much, she reconciles the joy Mr. Vandross brought to people through his music with his painful private life, plagued by public scrutiny about his weight and his sexuality.
She portrays Lady Bird Johnson as a flawed civil rights advocate whose actions were at times incongruous with her beliefs, but also as a mother and wife struggling with being in the political limelight.
Ms. Porter said she feels it is important to be critical of her subjects, but not at the expense of empathy.
“I think we’re too quick to cancel people and not understand the fishbowl that they’re swimming in,” she said.
Circuit Arts executive director Brian Ditchfield presented Ms. Porter with her Icon Award on Saturday alongside journalist Michele Norris. Ms. Porter joined the Circuit Arts advisory board not long after the organization showed her first film.
At the presentation Mr. Ditchfield said he couldn’t think of a better person to honor.
“What I admire is her compassion, both as a person and as a filmmaker,” he said. “She gives voice to the voiceless.”
