Mediamaker Fellows

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 [...]

Susannah Smith is a documentary filmmaker with a focus on stories about the importance of placemaking for often-marginalized urban communities. Her films have been featured at festivals nationally and online, including SFFILM, Q-films Long Beach, SF Streetsblog, and by the UC Critical Sustainabilities Group. She is an Associate Producer of the SF Urban Film Fest, and has worked as a Creative Producer at Bay Area agencies for 10+ years. She earned her MA in Social Documentation from U.C. Santa Cruz. We Belong tells the story of the Lexington Club, the only women-centered queer bar in the gay mecca of San [...]

Raúl is a Mexican-Immigrant filmmaker and multimedia creator.  His work melds contemporary art, political documentary and visual ethnography to explore themes of belonging and alienation in immigrant communities. His films have screened worldwide including at the MoMI, Sheffield Doc/Fest in the UK and at the Ethnografilm Festival in Paris France. He is a Princess Grace Foundation Award winner, an Art Matters/Jerome Foundation Cassis France Arts Fellow and a 2017 Tribeca Film Institute All Access grant recipient. Under intense U.S. pressure, Mexico established a new border control program that has cracked down on the migrant routes north and deported thousands of [...]