2019 National MediaMaker Fellows

Vicky Du is a Taiwanese-American filmmaker based in New York. Her short film GAYSIANS (Frameline, 2016) screened at 35+ film festivals around the world, had a public television broadcast on KQED, and was distributed to 1000+ middle and high school LGBTQ student groups. She is a worker-owner of Meerkat Media and has a BA in Biological Anthropology from Columbia University. Vicky is currently working on her first feature documentary with support from Points North Institute and CAAM. In Light of the Setting Sun, the filmmaker investigates how trauma has proliferated throughout her family since the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949 [...]

Taimi Arvidson is a director with over a decade of experience telling human stories for critically acclaimed documentaries, television series, and commercials. She recently directed the National Geographic Channel series MARS, which was executive produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Her other television work includes Oprah Winfrey's BELIEF about human spirituality around the world, National Geographic's Emmy-nominated series HARD TIME about the lives of inmates. Her work has additionally been featured by clients such as CNN, Apple, Ulta Beauty, NBC, Esquire Magazine, and more. Hossian tells the story of a six-year-old boy growing up in the middle of the [...]

Rashaad Newsome is a multidisciplinary artist whose work blends several practices together including collage, sculpture, film, music, computer programming, and performance, to form an altogether new field. He pulls intuitively from the world of advertising, the Internet Black and Queer culture to produce counterhegemonic works that use the diasporic traditions of improvisation and college, to craft compositions that walk the tightrope between intersectionality, social practice, and abstraction. Newsome lives and works in New York City. He was born in 1979 in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he received a BFA in Art History at Tulane University in 2001. In 2004, he received [...]

Lagueria Davis is an award-winning writer/director. MAID OF DISHONOR a feature she co-wrote was a 2016 Nicholls Fellowship Quarter-Finalist. REMEMBER ME a pilot Davis wrote was a 2018 Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition quarter-finalist. In addition, in 2013 THIS IS NOT A LOVE STORY, a feature script placed in the Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition. Last year, Davis completed the short film LIGHT IN DARK PLACES, which hit the film festival circuit in 2019. Currently, Davis resides in LA where she’s on the board of the Alliance of Women Directors and Cinefemme. Behind the rise of the iconic Barbie doll, came [...]

Katy Scoggin was a co-producer and cinematographer on Laura Poitras's films "CITIZENFOUR" and "Risk," an AP on Emmy-nominated "The Oath," and a producer on short OpDocs "The Program" and "Death of a Prisoner." She won a 2018 Glassbreaker Films grant to make a short, “Promenade,” that took her to her high school prom for the first time. "Flood," her debut feature, has been patiently supported by Sundance, IFP Documentary Lab, Film Independent Fast Track, MacDowell, DCTV, BAVC Media, and Berlinale Talents. Flood is my cinematic, decade-long search to understand my evangelical family. It begins with my failed attempt to thaw my [...]

Colombian-American filmmaker, Emily Cohen Ibañez makes films about global labor and gender politics in science/tech, militarism, and food systems. She earned her doctorate in Anthropology (2011) with a certificate in Culture and Media at New York University. Her film work pairs cinematic excellence with social activism, advocating for labor, environmental, and health justice. The National Science Foundation, Fulbright Colombia, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and SFFILM FilmHouse Residency Program amongst others have supported her work. Fruits of Labor is the story of Ashley, an American high school student traversing the seen and unseen forces that keep her family trapped in a cycle [...]

Debra Schaffner is an editor and filmmaker of all things short and long, with an emphasis on art, education and body parts. Her work has screened at venues including SF DOC FEST, DOCS/MX, FRAMELINE and aired on PBS and SMG (China). She enjoys breaking into zoos and setting all the monkeys and penguins free, but has never been arrested. She is most recently credited as the editor of Dawn Lodgson’s feature documentary Free for All: Inside the Public Library. Curse of the Mutant Heirloom is a hybrid documentary which explores the gift and curse of genetic knowledge. Faced with the [...]

Christian Figueroa is a native of El Salvador where he witnessed first hand the ravages of the civil war. Images of this armed conflict inspired him to confront social issues through art and cinema. He has produced documentary films in the U.S., Cuba, China, Italy, and El Salvador. His work deals with notions of cultural identity, trauma, and memory representations. He holds an MFA in Cinema Production from San Francisco State University and works as an educator in San Francisco, California. Flowers of May represents the memories of the Sumpul River massacre. This human rights violation occurred at the beginning [...]

Brittany Shyne is a writer, director and producer. Her works analyze race, gender and culture seeking to examine the complexity of the human experience. Shyne received a MFA in Documentary Media from Northwestern University and a BFA in Motion Pictures from Wright State University. Her directorial work includes “Painted Lady” which screened at BlueStocking Film Series, Starz Denver Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Pan African Film Festival, Citizen Jane Independent Women Film Festival and others. Seeds is an ethnographic and sensitive portrait of a centennial African American farm in Thomasville, Georgia. Using lyrical black and white imagery [...]

Brenda Avila-Hanna is an award-winning filmmaker and educator. Born and raised in Mexico City, her films focus on transnational stories between Latin America and the U.S. Brenda is a Fellow for the NMC Lab through LPB and a recipient of NALIP’s 2018 Media Market Fellowship. She is a two-time finalist for the International Documentary Challenge and a member-owner of New Day Films, where she serves as Team Lead for Equity and Representation. Brenda received an M.A. in Social Documentation from UCSC in 2013. Libertad – Alejandra, an Indigenous, transgender woman from Oaxaca, Mexico escaped violence in her hometown and fled [...]