Nilima Abrams is a documentary filmmaker and social entrepreneur with extensive experience in India. As an undergraduate she integrated self-taught documentary filmmaking with coursework, and wrote an award-winning honors thesis on schools and media in India. She also made a film on child labor prevention in India, and went on to complete an…
Jacob Bricca is an award-winning Tucson-based documentary editor, director, and teacher. He has edited over a dozen feature films including the international theatrical hit LOST IN LA MANCHA, the New Yorker Films theatrical release CON ARTIST, the Independent Lens Audience Award Winner JIMMY SCOTT: IF YOU ONLY KNEW and the 2016 Sundance…
Jean Carlomusto is a filmmaker, activist, and interactive media artist whose work explores the complex nature of unique individuals and marginalized populations. Her films are often unorthodox investigations of LGBT history and HIV/AIDS. Her work has been exhibited internationally in festivals, museums and on television. She produced and directed HBO’s Emmy nominated documentary, LARRY KRAMER IN LOVE & ANGER (2015), which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival…
Matthew Cassel is an independent multimedia journalist and filmmaker based in Istanbul. He spent five years covering the Arab world with the Al Jazeera network. His 2013 award-winning film for AJE, IDENTITY AND EXILE: AN AMERICAN’S STRUGGLE WITH ZIONISM, focuses on his personal journey from his hometown Chicago to the Middle East, where he has lived for the past decade…
Heather Courtney is a Guggenheim fellow and an Emmy-winning filmmaker. Her film WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM, won an Emmy, an Independent Spirit Award, and a SXSW Jury Award. The film received positive reviews from the New York Times and the Washington Post, and was broadcast nationally on the PBS program POV. It made several Top 10 films…
Brazilian-American filmmaker Luisa Dantas has worked on a wide array of documentary and fiction projects at the intersection of storytelling and social justice. Her most recent work, LAND OF OPPORTUNITY, chronicles the reconstruction of New Orleans through the eyes of those on the frontlines and asks the question: what kinds of cities do we want to…
Luchina Fisher is an award-winning director, writer and producer who works at the intersection of race, gender and identity. She is the founder and CEO of Little Light Productions. Her feature directorial debut MAMA GLORIA, about Chicago trans icon activist Gloria Allen, was nominated for…
Jen Gilomen is an award-winning documentary producer, director, and cinematographer who has created nationally and internationally distributed films, including Life on the Line (PBS, 2014), In My Shoes (Frameline, 2005), and Deep Down (Independent Lens, 2010), which was funded by ITVS and MacArthur Foundation, participated in…
James Klein has been an independent filmmaker since 1970. With his partner, Julia Reichert, he created such innovative documentaries as GROWING UP FEMALE, the first documentary about women from a feminist perspective which was selected for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress; UNION MAIDS, one of the first oral history films and an…
Lisa Molomot is a documentary filmmaker living in Tucson, Arizona. She has been working in film for over 20 years, directing, filming and editing documentaries. Early in her career, Lisa attended The American Film Institute in Los Angeles where she focused on film editing before going on to edit several fiction and nonfiction films. Since then, she has directed eight…
Paco de Onís is the Executive Director at Skylight Pictures. In 2011 he produced GRANITO: HOW TO NAIL A DICTATOR (world premiere at Sundance 2011), a documentary detective story focused on the role of filmic and archival documentation in the prosecution of a genocide case against Guatemalan generals, and launched GRANITO: EVERY MEMORY MATTERS…
Richard Ray Perez is personally connected to the issues presented in CESAR’S LAST FAST. For 22 years, Perez’s father was a farm worker who lived in and worked under the conditions Cesar Chavez fought to end. At five years old Richard joined the historic grape boycotting organized by the United Farm Workers. Prior to directing and executive producing…
An award-winning documentary filmmaker and instructor, Anayansi Prado was born in Panama and moved to the United States as a teenager. She attended Boston University where she received a B.A. in Film. She directed and produced the award-winning documentaries MAID IN AMERICA (2004), CHILDREN IN NO MAN’S LAND (2008) and PARAISO FOR…
PJ Raval is a filmmaker and cinematographer whose work explores the overlooked subcultures and identities within the already marginalized LGBTQ+ community. Named one of Out Magazine’s “Out 100” and FILMMAKER Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” PJ’s film credits include TRINIDAD (Showtime, LOGO) and BEFORE YOU KNOW IT…
Theo Rigby is a director, cinematographer, and interactive storyteller based out of San Francisco. He believes in the power of media to create awareness and dialogue about the world’s most pressing social and political issues. Rigby’s last project, IMMIGRANT NATION (iNation), is a series of short films about immigration in the U.S. including THE CARETAKER, The MAYOR…
BERNARDO RUIZ is a two-time Emmy®-nominated documentary filmmaker and a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. He was born in Guanajuato, Mexico and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. EL EQUIPO (THE TEAM), his fifth feature documentary as director, was awarded the Jury Prize for best documentary feature at the 2023…
Producer Lisa Stevens has produced several landmark documentary series for National Geographic Channel: OUTLAW BIKERS, UNDERWORLD CITIES AND DRUGS, INCORPORATED. She recently produced CRACKHOUSE USA for Channel 4 and MSNBC, with Academy Award winning (MAN ON WIRE) producer, Jonathan Hewes of Wall to Wall Media and BAFTA…
Anike Tourse is a multimedia maker with accomplishments both in front of the camera and behind the scenes, including writing for the daytime serial ONE LIFE TO LIVE and the sitcom GIRLFRIENDS, an animated short film FRANCES THE FISH, and a children’s story and short film about children biking on Yom Kippur in Tel-Aviv. Before making AMERICA’S FAMILY…
U of A Media Arts (now Film & Television) alumna Lindsay Utz (BA, 2003) is an award-winning documentary film editor based in Chicago. In addition to QUEST, her other credits include the Oscar-shortlisted BULLY (Tribeca FF 2011), FIRST POSITION (TIFF 2011), BUOY (Ashland FF 2013), IN COUNTRY (Full Frame 2014), two Emmy-nominated FRONTLINE episodes…
“>Chihiro Wimbush (Director/Producer/Editor) is an Emmy-nominated, documentary filmmaker. Chihiro was co-director (with Amir Soltani) and cinematographer on the documentary feature, DOGTOWN REDEMPTION, about homeless shopping cart recyclers in West Oakland, California. The film premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival where it won an Audience Award…
Pamela Yates is a co-founder and currently the Creative Director of Skylight Pictures, a company dedicated to creating feature length documentary films and digital media tools that advance awareness of human rights and the quest for justice by implementing multi-year outreach campaigns designed to engage, educate and activate social change. She was…
Sande Zeig (Producer/Director) Sande Zeig is a writer, director, producer and film distributor. Her short film, Central Park, premiered at Sundance in 1994. She went on to direct a feature, THE GIRL, based on a short story by renowned French writer Monique Wittig that premiered at the Toronto and Berlin Film Festivals in 2001. Her documentary SOUL MASTERS:…