Mediamaker Fellows

Hope is 30 years old and fighting to save her historic African American neighborhood from encroachment by an elite white fraternity, one known to fly the Confederate flag. Old South explores two Southern communities as they collide, and strive to keep their respective legacies relevant in a changing America. Danielle makes documentaries. Her feature Learning to Swallow (2005) premiered at Silverdocs and toured the Southern Circuit. She is a Visiting Professional in Digital Media at Marquette University.

A State of Mind is a feature documentary that explores the stigma of mental illness through Alexander and his wife Timothy's love story. Alexander and Timothy's personal life experience living with a mental disorder provides an entry point to look at the ways in which African-Americans struggle with an inadequate mental health care system and the grievous social and cultural stigma people with mental illness face in our country. Debra A. Wilson made her directorial debut with her film Butch Mystique, which screened in more than 30 film festivals worldwide and has won Jury and Audience Awards as well as Showtime’s Black [...]

Futbolistas 4 Life is about teens in Oakland, California's Fruitvale neighborhood who campaign to transform their barren playground into a soccer field. The film shows the teens' passion and resiliency as they create a legacy for future generations. Jun is a producer based in the Bay Area. Currently, she produces videos for AJ+, Al Jazeera’s new digital news channel. She has worked on independent documentaries as well as films and videos featured on the Washington Post website, ESPN and MSNBC.

Just Like Me documents the Vietnam War from a diverse group of veterans and non-combatants representing many sides of the war. The films look at the ways in which war becomes inscribed into the life histories of ordinary individuals; those who experienced the horrors of war and are left to reconcile for years after the conflict ended. Ron Osgood is an independent media producer/director/editor specializing in documentary production. He previously taught for 25 years in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University. His most recent documentary My Vietnam Your Iraq was an official selection at eight film festivals and was broadcast on PBS [...]

Paris Rebels examines the little known history of black youth in Paris in the 1980s and 90s organizing to defend themselves against brutal attacks by skinheads and Neo-Nazis. Inspired by the culture of defiance in early American hip-hop, they organized a novel form of contentious politics in the streets. Dena Montague is a documentary filmmaker and scholar.  She makes films that highlight the social, political and artistic experiences of the African Diaspora. She holds a PhD in Political Science from UCLA.  She is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for Black Studies Research at UC Santa Barbara.

Three years after the 2011 tsunami devastated the Japanese coastal town of Rikuzentakata, three residents rediscover the meaning of home and tradition, even as the ground beneath them continues to shift. Mina T. Son is a Korean American filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She has been awarded fellowships and funding from Independent Television Service, Film Independent, PBS/CPB Producers Academy, Japan U.S. Friendship Commission, and Center for Cultural Innovation. Mina holds an M.F.A. in Documentary from Stanford University and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Eat Bitter, Taste Sweet is an intimate coming of age story of three physically disabled youth stepping into contemporary Chinese society, not knowing if their abilities and education have empowered or disempowered them to succeed. Will they find the strength to persevere, or have they only been set up for failure? John Calvin Fong is a San Francisco-based freelance filmmaker. Following his graduation from UC Berkeley he taught English at the Guangzhou English Training Center for the Handicapped (GETCH) in China. Learning about his students’ lives there became the catalyst for his current feature documentary. Apply to be a 2016 National [...]

Hawaii on the Rocks is an illustrated documentary film that follows the crystal meth epidemic that began sweeping the islands in the 1980s, and continues to this day. It's the story of the federal drug war gone wrong, a Native Hawaiian community battling addiction, and a brutal murder in the director's family that reverberated across the state. Carrie Ching is a multimedia journalist and producer. Her latest project is a series of illustrated documentary shorts for VICE News called Correspondent Confidential. For six years she led digital storytelling projects at the Center for Investigative Reporting as Senior Multimedia Producer. Her work has [...]