Mediamaker Fellows

Tony Nguyen made his directorial debut with ENFORCING THE SILENCE (2011), which the LA Times called “an uplifting portrait” of Lam Duong, the first of five Vietnamese journalists to be assassinated in America.  In 2015 his personal film, GIAP’S LAST DAY AT THE IRONING BOARD FACTORY, broadcast nationally on PBS and received the CAAMFest Award for Social Issue Documentary.  In 2016 he served as an associate producer on the Emmy-nominated Frontline documentary TERROR IN LITTLE SAIGON.  In 2017 his short, FRESH FROZEN, about the best fish sandwich in Oakland premiered at the inaugural DOCLANDS Documentary Film Festival in Mill Valley.  [...]

NORBERT SHIEH is a Taiwanese-American filmmaker and cinematographer based in Los Angeles. Through delicate and formal observations, his work explores new perspectives on the quotidian. These projects span from experimental films focused on perception, to intimate documentaries/narratives. His experimental short film WASHES premiered at the New York Film Festival and won the Jury’s Citation Award at the Black Maria Film & Video Festival. TWO MILES EAST, Norbert’s latest short documentary is part of an omnibus celebrating the 20th anniversary of the San Diego Asian Film Festival, and premiered during its opening night. Norbert’s commissioned documentaries include work for KCET, The [...]

Lendl is a versatile storyteller working across film, photography, journalism, and experiential art. His practice centers the subversion of aesthetic traditions to more accurately depict the nuance within our experiences. He hones in on the seemingly humdrum existence behind popular history and present moment as means to contextualize the contributions of marginalized communities.   ...that’s why He made my momma  In America, owning a home is the universal symbol of legacy. But what happens when you lose that home? When their matriarch becomes ill, a filmmaker and his sister turn the camera on four generations of their family. As the [...]

Hadley Austin’s work is rooted in historical research, social justice, and the natural world.  Demon Mineral is her feature debut, for which she is a Redford Center Fellow and Bay Area Video Coalition grantee. A published poet, she is also a Pushcart Nominee.   Demon Mineral DEMON MINERAL documents life in the radioactive desert on the Navajo Reservation. Spanning a landscape perforated by uranium mines in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, the film follows a group of indigenous scientists, elders, and activists as they work to protect a vital living space on contaminated land.

DENISE ZMEKHOL is a Brazilian-American journalist, an award-winning producer and director of documentary films and media projects that span the globe. Her documentary films, commercials, and innovative transmedia projects have been recognized for their elegant visual style and deft storytelling. Her feature documentary CHILDREN OF THE AMAZON was supported by the Independent Television Service and broadcast on PBS, as well as on European and Latin American television. Denise co-produced and co-directed DIGITAL JOURNEY, an Emmy Award winning PBS series exploring emerging technologies in their social, environmental and cultural contexts. Denise co-directed BRIDGE TO THE FUTURE a short for PBS/TED Talks [...]

Contessa is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist, and an Emmy-nominated producer. She tells stories about identity, socio-political movement and change, healing, liberation and radical imagination, with a focus on race and gender.  She spent several years as a producer at CNN, where she created, produced, directed, shot and edited award-winning original series and documentaries, including the feature documentary, The Feminist on Cellblock Y; shorts, Women Who March and Women Who March: The Movement; and series including, This Is Birth with Lisa Ling, This Is Sex with Lisa Ling, and the 2016 News & Documentary Emmy-nominated Feeding America's Most Vulnerable [...]

Carolina's practice lies at the intersection of personal, social, and political narratives. She weaves multiple media to create documents that challenge social and historical representations of migration, otherness, diaspora, and labor.  She has worked on film and art projects in Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Lebanon, and the United States. She is the recipient of LEF Foundation Production Grant, the Lyn Blumenthal Scholarship, the Gelman Travel Fellowship, and the Programa Nacional de Estímulos (Colombian Ministry of Culture).  She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation).  Carolina is [...]

Victoria Montero is an award-winning photographer, filmmaker, and art director. Born and raised in Argentina, her work is centered on historical memory, gender, and social issues. She is the co-author of "Guerrilleras. Tradición y rebelión en la guerra civil de El Salvador", a photo book about Salvadoran Civil War. Based in San Francisco, she collaborates with independent film and photography projects. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Buenos Aires. Guerrilleras Guerrilleras is a documentary film about the Salvadoran Civil War from a gender perspective: the female experience within the anti-government Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front [...]

Originally from New York City, Sisa Bueno is an Afro-Latina film & multimedia maker who is fascinated by people of all cultures and seeks to awaken our own empowerment. The NBC Network named Sisa an NBC Latino Innovator for her filmmaking, and she is a recipient of the ITVS-PBS Diversity Development grant and HotDocs CrossCurrents grant. Sisa is also a member of the NEW INC tech incubator program within the New Museum working with Augmented Reality (AR) technology. For Venida, For Kalief "For Venida, For Kalief" is an empathetic cinematic essay film with visual poetry that pays homage to the [...]

Robie Flores grew up on the U.S./Mexico border. She’s an independent filmmaker and video editor based in New Orleans. Her work has appeared on CNN and Bloomberg and has been featured by Teen Vogue, Fusion, Allure and i-d Vice. Her latest project The In Between, has received support from Chicken & Egg, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, ITVS and participated in IFP’s Documentary Lab, the Points North Fellowship and Camden / TFI Labs. The In Between is her first feature film. The In Between Through the eyes of children unencumbered by border politics, The In Between visits the characteristic moments of growing [...]