Fellowships

Emily Kai Bock

Emily Kai Bock is a Canadian filmmaker based in Los Angeles. After receiving a degree in painting and sculpture from Emily Carr University in Vancouver in 2007, she moved to Montreal where she began making music videos for local musicians. A video she made for Grimes’ song, ‘Oblivion’, became a viral success, and has been since viewed on Youtube over 38 million times. Since that time, Bock has become a much sought-after music video director, working with such artists as Arcade Fire, Lorde, and Grizzly Bear. Her video for Arcade Fire’s single ‘Afterlife’ won the Prism Prize for Best Canadian Music Video and a UKMVA for Best International Alternative video. Her commercial work includes prominent brands such as Yves Sant Laurent, Google, Hennessy, Gap, Coca-Cola, and Vogue. Her short documentary, Spit Gold Under An Empire, screened at Sundance 2013 and on Sundance TV. In 2016, her short film, A Funeral for Lightning, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival, where it was selected by TIFF as one of Canada’s Top Ten Films. It went on to win the Grand Jury Award for Best Short Film at the LA Film Festival, an Honorable Mention for Best U.S. Short and Best Tennessee Short at the Nashville Film Festival.

Sabaah Folayan

Sabaah Folayan made her directorial debut at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival with the feature length documentary Whose Streets?. Recently nominated for a Peabody Award, the film chronicles the experiences of activists living in Ferguson, Missouri when Michael Brown Jr. was killed. Whose Streets? was distributed theatrically by Magnolia Pictures, and supported by the Sundance Documentary Film Program, Tribeca Film Institute, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation among many others.

An award-winning storyteller and activist, Sabaah uses written and visual media to bring a fresh perspective to the urgent questions of our time. A Los Angeles native, she has thrived in vastly different environments, from South Central LA to the Upper West Side. Her outlook on social change is both inclusive and unapologetic. She attended Columbia University as a premedical student and graduated with a degree in biology. Outside-the-box thinking and passion for social good drew her to the non-profit and grassroots sectors where she honed strategic planning and community organizing skills before becoming a filmmaker.

Anahita Ghazvinizadeh

Rashaad Ernesto Green

Zachary Heinzerling

Zachary Heinzerling is a filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. He directed the 2014 Oscar-Nominated Documentary feature, Cutie and the Boxer. In 2015 he worked with Beyonce, directing a 5-part documentary that accompanied her album. His 2015 short film, Hugh the Hunter, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. His commercial work has garnered multiple awards as well, including the 2017 Tribeca X award for his branded short film about a deaf dance instructor. He’s currently in development on his next feature, a hybrid documentary and fiction film.

Eliza Hittman

Eliza Hittman is an award­winning filmmaker, born and based in New York City. Her critically acclaimed debut feature film It Felt Like Love premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in NEXT and the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Tiger Competition in 2013. It was a New York Times, The Village Voice, and Los Angeles Times Critics’ Pick. She was named one of Filmmaker Magazine‘s 25 New Faces of Indie Film. She was nominated for a Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Gotham Award and two Independent Spirit Awards for It Felt Like Love, Best Cinematography and the John Cassavetes Award. Her second feature, Beach Rats, was selected for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and premiered in US Dramatic Competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, where she was given the Directing Award. She is an Assistant Professor of Film/Video at Pratt Institute.

Andrew Thomas Huang

With a background in fine art, visual effects, puppetry and animation, Los Angeles-based filmmaker Andrew Thomas Huang explores alternative modes of storytelling to create lush, mythic worlds. His list of collaborators include Icelandic artist Bjork, among others including FKA Twigs, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and British director Joe Wright. Huang served as creative director for Bjork’s VR exhibition Bjork Digital, creating multiple immersive experiences within the pioneering traveling installation. His films and videos have exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, NYC; MoMA PS1; The Sydney Opera House, Sydney; The Barbican Centre, London; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. With his strength in world-building, Huang carries on his visual aesthetic as he continues his foray into narrative feature film. Huang is a Cinereach Fellow, a recent fellow in Film Independent’s Directors & Screenwriters Labs, and a recipient of the K Period Media Fellowship grant. His most recent narrative short “Kiss of the Rabbit God” premiered at Tribeca Film Festival 2019.

Barry Jenkins

Barry Jenkins was born and raised in Miami and studied Film at Florida State University. His feature film debut, Medicine for Melancholy, was hailed as one of the best films of 2009 by The New York Times. In 2017, Barry Jenkins along with playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his second feature Moonlight, which won Best Picture at both the Oscars and the Golden Globes (Drama). Most recently, Barry directed an episode of the Netflix Original Series Dear White People. Upcoming projects include an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad for television. He’s also writing a script based on the life of the first American female olympic boxing champ Claressa “T-Rex” Shields. Barry Jenkins is a curator at the Telluride Film Festival and a United States Artists Smith Fellow.

Young Jean Lee

Young Jean Lee is a writer and director who has been called “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by The New York Times and “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” by Time Out New York. She has written and directed ten shows in New York with Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company and toured her work to over thirty cities around the world. Her short films have been presented at The Locarno International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and BAMcinemaFest. Lee is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two OBIE Awards, a Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN Literary Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant.

Jason Lew

Jason is a Chinese-American filmmaker based out of Los Angeles. He wrote and directed The Free World, which premiered in Dramatic Competition at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. The film stars Elisabeth Moss, Boyd Holbrook and Octavia Spencer and was distributed by IFC. His first screenplay, Restless, was directed by Gus Van Sant and produced by Ron Howard. He is currently working with a diverse slate of collaborators from Justin Lin to HBO. Jason is a grad of NYU, where he studied acting, directing and design for theater.

Lotfy Nathan

Lotfy Nathan’s first film 12 O’Clock Boys, for which he was awarded an HBO emerging artist award, has played numerous festivals domestically and abroad, including SXSW, Sundance LA, Lincoln Center NYC, Viennale, Hot Docs Toronto, London, and Copenhagen in 2013, and was ranked 7 in the BFI list of top 20 documentaries of 2013. The film had a theatrical release in North America and Europe, and a television release on SHOWTIME.

Terence Nance

Terence Nance was born in Dallas, Texas in what was then referred to as the State-Thomas community. Nance learned personhood there. Nance’s first feature film, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically in 2013. Nance’s most recent films, Swimming in Your Skin Again and Univitillen, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and the 2016 New York Film Festival, respectively. In 2017, Nance premiered a performance piece, 18 Black Boys Ages 1-18 Who Have Arrived at the Singularity and are Thus Spiritual Machines at Sundance. Nance recently debuted his television series Random Acts of Flyness on HBO. It airs at midnight on Fridays. Nance is currently at work on healing, curiosity, and interdimensionality.

Jessica Oreck

Jessica Oreck is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of Myriapod Productions, a production company with a focus on education and the exploration of natural sciences that produces both shorts and features. Her documentary features include Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys, and The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga, which each focus on ethnobiology—the way that human cultures interact with the natural world.

Nicole Perlman

Nicole Perlman is best known for having co-written Marvel Studios’ blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy as well as the upcoming Captain Marvel (slated for release in 2019). Nicole received her BFA in filmmaking from NYU in 2003, and has gone on to win the Tribeca Film Festival’s Sloan Foundation Grant for Science in Film, the Hugo Award, and the Ray Bradbury award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation. Nicole has written for Fox 2000, Universal Studios, Disney, Cirque Du Soleil Films, Dreamworks, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, and Legendary Studios. Nicole is celebrating her sixth consecutive year of being on the steering committee for the National Academy of Science’s “Science & Entertainment Exchange,” a nonprofit organization that aims to bridge the gap between scientists and filmmakers. She is a creative adviser for both the Sundance Institute and SFFILM.

Michelange Quay

Michelange Quay is a writer director of American nationality and Haitian origin. He directed several shorts in Haiti, among which are The Gospel of the Creole Pig, which premiered in Official Competition at Cannes 2004, and won Best Short film prizes at Milan, Sao Paolo, Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro, and the Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival. His first feature, Eat, For This Is My Body, was selected for many festivals including Sundance, Toronto, New Director/New Films, Seattle, Rotterdam and was awarded at Miami Film festival.

Celia Rowlson-Hall

Bessie award-winning dancer/choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall unites movement and dance with her filmmaking. Celia began her career as a professional dancer and quickly moved into choreographing for film and television, working with directors such as Gaspar Noé and Lena Dunham on Girls. Bringing her experience of choreography and performance to the screen, over the past few years Celia has written and directed over fifty short films and videos. Celia’s debut feature film, MA— which she wrote, directed, choreographed, and stars in—premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2015, and went on to screen internationally and nationally at over forty festivals worldwide, winning the Breakthrough Audience award at AFI Film Festival, the Independent Visions Award at Sarasota Film Festival, the One in a Million Award at Sun Valley Film Festival, and the Ron Tibbett Excellence in Filmmaking Award at Indie Memphis, among others. Celia was named one of 25 New Faces to watch for Filmmaker Magazine. In the fall of 2016, alongside her partner, Mia Lidofsky, she co-created the viral “Pantsuit Power” video for Hillary Clinton which garnered over 4 million views in less than two weeks. In 2017, Miu Miu commissioned Celia to make a film as part of their “Women’s Tales Series” which also premiered at the Venice Film Festival. She is at work on her next feature, Hoi Toiders and In March she was announced a Sundance Institute FilmTwo Fellow. Celia recently wrapped Season Two of the Facebook Watch series Strangers, of which she co-executive produced and directed several episodes.

Camille Seaman

Camille Seaman strongly believes in capturing photographs which articulate that humans are not separate from nature. She is a photographer and explorer. Her photographs have been featured in prestigious publications, including National Geographic and TIME magazine. Seaman has a bachelor’s degree in the fine arts photography from the State University of New York at Purchase. She has won several photography awards, including a National Geographic Award and the Critical Mass Top Monograph Award. Seaman is writing her first fiction work that visits the untold history of her Shinnecock ancestors.

Kirsten Tan

A versatile filmmaker with a penchant for bold visual storytelling, Kirsten Tan’s works straddle a range of genres, but are consistent in their humanity and off-beat humor. Being a bit of an adventurer, she was raised in Singapore but has lived in South Korea and Thailand before New York City, where she recently completed a Master’s in Film Production at New York University. There she was honored to receive the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts Fellowship. Her short films have collectively received over ten international awards and screened and competed at international film festivals including Toronto, Busan and Rotterdam. Commercially, she has directed content for brands including Giorgio Armani, TED Talks and Credit-Suisse. Ella, a fashion film she directed for Giorgio Armani, was included as a part of the archives of MoMA in NYC. Her debut feature, Pop Aye, made its World Premiere in competition at Sundance Film Festival 2017 — it was the opening film for the World Cinema dramatic competition segment and went on to receive a Special Jury Prize for Screenwriting at the Sundance Film Festival, the VPRO Big Screen Award at Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Best International Film Award at Zurich Film Festival. To date, it has screened at over 50 film festivals including London, Melbourne, Munich and Taipei. Pop Aye was chosen to represent Singapore in the Foreign Film Category at the Oscars.