Exploring how stories are shaped, shared and experienced today.
180 Media Academy invites creative professionals from different media sectors to share their vision on their practice, the industry they belong to, the world around them, and where we are headed next.
How do we observe, interpret, and communicate the world around us? How do the tools and formats we use shape the stories we tell?

The goal of this program is also to offer a transdisciplinary and comprehensive perspective for discussing new themes, discourses, and trends that are shaping the world.
Talks
Documentary
Filmmaking
Storytelling
Filming the margins: how Sean Dunne documents misunderstood communities.
with Sean Dunne
For over a decade, Sean Dunne has worked at the edges of mainstream America, making films about subcultures and communities often overlooked or misunderstood.

In this talk, he unpacks the practical and philosophical choices behind that work: why he chooses certain subjects, how trust and access are built, and where the limits of observation lie.

Drawing from Oxyana, Cam Girlz, American Juggalo and Florida Man, Sean will discuss moments that reshaped his practice, public reactions, ethical challenges, and the pressures of distribution and media framing. He’ll also reflect on how editing and context shape a film’s meaning, and how artistic intention meets the lived realities of those on screen.
18h30 — 24/11
ONLINE
ENG
Games
Cinema
Storytelling
Can games tell stories better than movies?
What filmmakers can learn from games.
with Peter Mack
Trained in cinema before turning to game design, Peter Mack has spent his career exploring how stories can be told through systems rather than scripts.

In this talk, he reflects on what games can do that film cannot, how meaning can emerge through action, choice, and interaction instead of narration.

From early lessons in cinema and Dungeons & Dragons sessions with successful Hollywood film writers, actors, directors, and pop musicians, to his latest open-world truck simulator inspired by real drivers, Peter shows how games can generate narratives players actively shape.
18h30 — 25/11
Canal180 / FAHR 021.3 HQ
Rua Miguel Bombarda 425
(also available online)
ENG
Music
Filmmaking
Storytelling
O que aprendemos em 14 anos a filmar festivais.
Canal180
A equipa do Canal180 reflete sobre os seus anos de cobertura de festivais de música como o Paredes de Coura, Primavera Sound, Festival Tremor, Pitchfork Midwinter e Le Guess Who?, através de uma lente alternativa.

A partir de aftermovies, vídeos de line-up, documentários, entrevistas, e uma variedade de outros conteúdos, a equipa discutirá como o panorama dos festivais, as pressões comerciais e as formas de documentar têm evoluído, e como o Canal180 tem continuamente adaptado e reinventado a sua abordagem em resposta.
18h30 — 26/11
Canal180 / FAHR 021.3 HQ
Rua Miguel Bombarda 425
(also available online)
PT
Screening
Wild Magic (2025)
by Sean Dunne
At Porto/Post/Doc, we are presenting Sean Dunne's latest journey into the fringes of American society.

The filmmaker behind visceral and empathetic documentaries such as American Juggalo, Oxyana, Cam Girlz, and Florida Man returns with Wild Magic, a kaleidoscopic exploration of contemporary mysticism in the United States.

Here, Dunne looks at how different forms of spirituality emerge in a country in crisis, revealing both the desperation and the search for meaning running through America today. Balancing delusion and lucidity, Wild Magic finds in the mystical imagination an honest portrait of human attempts to make sense of an uncertain time.

Sean Dunne will also be joining 180 Media Academy for a talk about his approach to these communities and his documentary practice.
16h30 — 22/11
Batalha Centro de Cinema
PT
Exhibit
Aquilo que escapa à intenção
FAHR 021.3
"That which escapes intention" arises from three residencies by Fahr 021.3 at Pó de vir a Ser, within the project Geology of Attention. During this period, the artists in residence experimented for the first time with stone sculpture, developing distinct processes but sharing common concerns: the agency of matter, the negotiation between authorship and authority, and the role of accident in the making of the work. Rather than treating form as a final product, sculpture is approached as contingency made visible.

The presentation includes the exhibition of the work developed and the additional screening of a film made in collaboration with Canal180.
opening
16:00—15/11
screening
18:00—15/11
Canal180 / FAHR 021.3 HQ
Rua Miguel Bombarda 425
The Hosts
Sean Dunne
Documentary filmmaker
Sean Dunne is an award-winning documentary filmmaker celebrated for his raw, vérité portraits of American subcultures and hidden corners of society. His work strips away artifice to reveal the dignity, humor, beauty, and truth of people living on the margins.

Dunne’s filmmaking career began with short documentaries such as The Archive (2008), which premiered at Sundance and earned him an Emmy nomination, and American Juggalo (2011), a viral portrait of the Insane Clown Posse fan community that solidified his reputation as a fearless chronicler of subcultures.

In 2013, his debut feature Oxyana—an unflinching look at the opioid crisis in rural West Virginia—premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won Best Documentary Feature and earned Dunne the award for Best New Documentary Director.

Dunne followed Oxyana with the viral micro-feature Florida Man (2015) and Cam Girlz (2015), about online sex workers. In 2016, he received the prestigious Vanguard Award at the San Francisco Doc Fest. Since then, Dunne has released seven films that have contributed to his lifelong project of building a cinematic mosaic of America.

His most recent feature, Wild Magic (2025), is a kaleidoscopic road trip through modern mystical Americana. The film received the Artistic Vision Award at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and screened at Psychedelic Science 2025, further.

His films have been praised for their honesty, compassion, and ability to transform fleeting encounters into timeless cultural documents.
Peter Mack
Game designer
Starting out in film school, Peter Mack is an American game designer who currently serves as the Creative Director at Saber Interactive.

He has designed and produced mobile, browser and PC games for nearly 25 years, leading teams of up to 30 and productions lasting from six months to three years. He’s delivered lectures and served on panels on Game Design in New York and San Francisco, and won several industry awards, including a Cannes Gold Cyber Lion and Fast Company Top 50, as well as having work showcased at the Whitney Museum in New York. Peter specializes in game design, producing, UX, UI, scriptwriting, copywriting and concepts.
FAHR 021.3
Experimental architecture studio
FAHR 021.3 is an internationally awarded creative and experimental studio, which operates in the expanded fields of art and architecture, incorporating artistic practices as a methodology in architectural scope.

180 Media Academy invites creative professionals from different media sectors to share their vision on their practice, the industry they belong to, the world around them, and where we are headed next.

How do we observe, interpret, and communicate the world around us? How do the tools and formats we use shape the stories we tell?

The goal of this program is also to offer a transdisciplinary and comprehensive perspective for discussing new themes, discourses, and trends that are shaping the world.

180 Media Academy takes place both offline and online between the 22 and 27 November 2025.
(see previous edition)
About Canal180:
 Canal180 is an independent media platform based in Porto, Portugal, dedicated to creativity and culture.

Founded in 2011 as a groundbreaking TV channel, it has evolved into a space where filmmakers, musicians, designers, photographers, and artists of all kinds share how they see, think, and create. Through original documentaries, interviews, and experimental audiovisual projects and events we explore the creative process and the ideas shaping culture today.