Danya Abt was raised in Chicago, Illinois, and Detroit, Michigan. She received a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and a hands-on education in filmmaking in New York.

Her first film, Food Water Revolution captures the early days of Iraq Veterans Against the War and played at MOMA’s Documentary Fortnight. Danya later worked with IVAW to produce “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan” a 3-day televised speak out by young veterans.

In the following years Danya worked on a documentary about the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline, living in Cameroon for part of the time. She then worked as a producer for Grit Tv with Laura Flanders, shooting segments for the show.

Danya continued to grow her career as an editor directing films in her available time. As a fellow of Uniondocs Collaborative Studio Danya made Eric Winter to Spring, a Vimeo Staff Pick featured at the True/False and Camden Film Festivals. Her piece for BBC Reel “The Cake That Survived WW2” tells the story of an Abt family recipe and was selected for a Lovie Award “Honouring the best of the European Internet.” Her short film The Sinkhole was an official selection of the Traverse City Festival.

Danya is an active member of the documentary community and contributes her time and passion to the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective and the Alliance of Documentary Editors.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Zeshawn Ali is a Muslim-American filmmaker originally from Ohio and currently based in New York. His feature documentary film, Two Gods, was supported by ITVS, Ford Foundation, and Sundance Institute and was selected in festivals across North America. It was released in theaters nationwide as well as on broadcast as a part of Independent Lens on PBS. The film was named a New York Times Critic’s Pick and nominated for a Cinema Eye Spotlight Award. He was recently selected as a fellow for the Gotham/HBO Documentary Development Initiative and the Pillars Artist Fellowship. He is a member of the cooperatively owned production company Meerkat Media.

Sophie Calle in “Between Worlds”
Lubaina Himid in “Between Worlds”
Tuan Andrew Nguyen in “Between Worlds”
Dyani White Hawk in “Between Worlds”

Website (opens in a new tab)

Jarred Alterman is an award winning cinematographer, known for his work in documentaries such as Bisbee 17′, Contemporary Color, The Proposal and Project X. He has worked closely with artists such as Charles Atlas, Mika Tajima, Jill Magid and recently Lawrence Abu Hamdan (he produced and lensed Abu Hamdan’s film Walled Unwalled, which won a Turner Prize.) He has worked in art, dance and music related projects for over twenty years, shooting films for Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Arcade Fire. His feature documentary, Convento, premiered at SXSW and has screened all over the world.

Alex Da Corte: 57 Varieties
Avery Singer’s Next Painting
Bryan Zanisnik’s Big Pivot

Website (opens in a new tab)

Lorena Alvarado is a director and producer working within the intersection of documentary film and fiction. With a focus on personal stories and social issues, she has developed campaigns for nonprofits and NGOs such as the United Nations as well as directed her own personal short films. Lorena was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, received her B.A. in Media and Film Studies from Emerson College, and completed a fellowship at Fabrica Research Center in Italy.

Salman Toor’s Emerald Green
Adam Milner Takes Care of the Details
The Incredulity of Jacolby Satterwhite
Elle Pérez Works Between the Frame

Website (opens in a new tab)

Ellen Askey is an assistant editor and filmmaker who works across documentary and narrative film. She began working with Art21 in August 2021, supporting the post-production of digital series and Art in the Twenty-First Century.

Through her work in film, Ellen explores the relationships between people, environment, science, and art. In prior documentary work, she collaborated with The STAGE Lab to develop and launch their NSF-supported documentary series, Curiosity: The Making of a Scientist, as co-director and lead editor of the pilot episode. For her B.A. thesis film, Kinoptia, Ellen explored a docu-fiction approach to foster new ways of listening. The piece brought her to film and interview in Granada, Chicago and Sarajevo, where she also interned with the Post-Conflict Research Center. In narrative film, she has written and directed various shorts, worked as 2nd assistant director on an upcoming indie feature, and freelanced as an editor and cinematographer, becoming a student semifinalist in the New York Cinematography Awards. Ellen has recently directed and edited a second short doc Downstream, produced by the STAGE Lab, and she is currently developing a feature screenplay Lacuna as co-writer and co-director. She holds a B.A. in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Haimy Assefa is an award winning, Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker and journalist. As a director and cinematographer, her filmmaking approach centers on the human experience, aiming to tell stories that are evocative, cinematic, poetic and unique. Her work has premiered at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival and has aired on Netflix, Amazon Prime, BET and beyond. Based in Brooklyn, NY, Haimy has been integral to digital storytelling startups at NBC News and CNN. Haimy co-directed a forthcoming Starz documentary series, Down In The Valley.

Select Art21 films
Naudline Pierre: A Place Other Than Here

Precious Okoyomon’s Creative Destruction

Website (opens in a new tab)

Anna Barsan is a filmmaker and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Anna’s work has been featured at Sundance, HotDocs, Camden International Film Festival, Rooftop Films Summer Series, The Brooklyn Museum, Leslie Lohman Museum, and published by Field of Vision, The New Yorker, NBC, and Democracy Now. Her short film, Libre, investigates the use of GPS ankle monitors by private companies and has screened in more than twenty festivals both nationally and internationally including the Documentary Shorts Program at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Anna is currently at work on a short film examining surveillance technologies in Detroit as well as her first feature film, Softly in all directions, with support from Field of Vision and the Sundance Institute.

Loie Hollowell’s Transcendent Bodies

Website (opens in a new tab)

Website (opens in a new tab)

Jasmine Cannon is a documentary filmmaker, editor and photographer. In addition to working as an assistant editor at Art21, Jasmine is the co-director, co-producer, and lead editor on the award-winning short documentary, Fearless. Jasmine’s most editing and assistant editing includes the PBS/American Masters series, Unladylike2000. An Alabama native, Jasmine currently resides in New York City where she’s grateful for the opportunity to make film magic everyday.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Bryan Chang is a documentary film director, cinematographer, and editor whose films have been featured by The New York Times, National Geographic, TIME Magazine, The Atlantic, and MoMA; screened at the Sundance Film Festival; and distributed theatrically. His feature-length documentaries include Brasslands (director), Narco Cultura (editor), Dark Money (editor) and Island Soldier (producer/editor). He is a co-owner of Meerkat Media, a cooperatively-run production company specializing in both independent feature documentaries and commissioned work, that have broadcast on HBO, PBS and CNN.

“Everyday Icons”
“Beijing”
Jordan Casteel Stays in the Moment

Website (opens in a new tab)

Website (opens in a new tab)

Ryan Carl is a designer and art director living and working in the Hudson Valley, New York. He collaborates on a wide range of projects including visual identity and communication design, illustration and image-making, books and printed matter. Ryan’s practice is guided by simplicity and a fascination with language, color and typography. He has contributed illustrations to The New York Times, spoken at Type Directors Club in NYC and exhibited his work in various group shows around the world.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Lydia Cornett is a filmmaker, composer and artist based between Budapest and New York. Her films have screened at Sheffield DocFest, AFI Fest, Slamdance, BAMCinemaFest, Aspen Shortsfest, Palm Springs International Short Fest, Hamptons International Film Festival, DOC NYC and the Ann Arbor Film Festival, where she was awarded the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker in 2023. Her work has been distributed and featured by The New Yorker, POV Documentary, Nowness, Paper Magazine, Stereogum, Nylon Magazine, and Vimeo Staff Picks.​

​Lydia received a BA in History from Princeton University and an MFA in Art from the Ohio State University. She has taught filmmaking at The New School, is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, and currently holds a Fulbright Scholarship to Hungary.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Danielle is a creative producer based in Brooklyn. After six years in the corporate world, Danielle began her film career while living in London, drawing on her love of storytelling and background in business to produce long-form documentaries for television (Netflix, Channel 4 UK, VICE TV, Peacock, Oxygen). She joined RAVA films in 2023, where she has crafted films around art and culture for the National Gallery of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Hyundai, The Smithsonian, Glenstone Museum, PBS, Hauser & Wirth, and Lehmann Maupin.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Website (opens in a new tab)

Sue Ding is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and visual artist based in Los Angeles. Her work explores power, place, and perspective through popular and visual culture.

Sue directed and edited the short documentaries The Claudia Kishi Club (SXSW ’20), Makeover Movie (IDFA ’23), and How the West Was Fun (True/False ’25). Her films can be found on Netflix, PBS, and Vimeo Staff Picks. In 2023, she was featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film”. She is a 2026 Creative Capital Awardee and Concordia Fellow.

Sue also consults and lectures widely on nonfiction filmmaking and has a decade of producing experience. She holds a BA from Brown University (Visual Arts) and a MS from MIT (Comparative Media).

Select Art21 films
Charles Gaines: Systems & Structures

Website (opens in a new tab)

Vicky Du is a Taiwanese-American filmmaker based in New York. Her short film Gaysians (Frameline Film Festival, 2016) screened at over 35 film festivals around the world, had a public television broadcast on KQED, and was distributed to over 1,000 middle and high school LGBTQ student groups. She has directed, produced, and edited digital and broadcast short documentaries for National Geographic, The New York Times, The History Channel, and The New Yorker. Vicky is currently working on her first feature documentary with support from the Center for Asian American Media, Sundance, ITVS, Points North Institute, and Bay Area Video Coalition.

“Beijing”
Jordan Casteel Stays in the Moment
Rachel Rossin’s Digital Homes

Website (opens in a new tab)

Gisela Fulla-Silvestre is a music producer, performer, sound designer and mixer originally from Barcelona and currently living and working in Brooklyn. Some of her credits include the award-winning narrative films “Suite Française”, “The Europa Report” and Larry Clark’s “Marfa Girl.” Performing under the name NOIA, Gisela combines traditional singing with electronic production and has released two albums via Cascine Records.

Art in the Twenty-First Century, Season 10
Firelei Báez: An Open Horizon (or) The Stillness of a Wound
Shaun Leonardo: The Freedom to Move
Bryan Zanisnik’s Big Pivot

Website (opens in a new tab)

Leah Galant is a filmmaker and Fulbright Scholar whose storytelling focuses on unexpected narratives that challenge perceptions. In 2022, she was recognized as one of DOC NYC’s 40 under 40. Leah’s directorial debut ON THE DIVIDE premiered at the Tribeca 2021 Film Festival and was broadcast on POV PBS on April 18, 2022. She was a Sundance Ignite and Jacob Burns Fellow where she created DEATH METAL GRANDMA (SXSW 2018) about a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor named Inge Ginsberg who sings death metal, which is a NY Times Op-Doc. While at Ithaca College in 2015 she was named one of Variety’s “110 Students to Watch in Film and Media” for her work on THE PROVIDER (SXSW 2016, Student Emmy Award) and BEYOND THE WALL. She is also a member-owner at Meerkat Media cooperative and working on her second feature-length film on memory culture that is supported by Claims Conference, Jewish Story Partners, and the Jewish Film Institute.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Naiti Gámez is a NYC & Miami-based filmmaker. Naiti has worked as a director and cinematographer on award-winning films and television series. Her film, Love, Sadie premiered at the Festival de Cannes Short Film Corner. She recently directed episodes of the docuseries Monster Factory (AppleTV+). Recent cinematography credits include Listening to Kenny G (HBOmax); Ailey (PBS); Through the Night; and Hail Satan? Her film credits have screened at dozens of festivals worldwide including Festival de Cannes, Sundance Film Festival, Berlinale, Camerimage, Tribeca Film Festival, and SXSW. Her TV credits include HBO, Showtime, PBS, ESPN, MTV, Discovery Channel, and many more.

Naiti has also worked at non-profit organizations and as an educator. She holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Smith College, and an M.F.A. in Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Adam Golfer is an artist and filmmaker based in Queens, New York. He studied photography at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, and got his start photographing portraits and reportage stories for The New York Times, M Le Magazine du Monde, FT Weekend, Harper’s, and The New Yorker, among others. He has directed a number of experimental documentary films, including Router, about a Nazi World War II reenactor from Boston and a Jewish performance artist from Manhattan. Recent exhibitions of his photographic work have been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago (MoCP); NurtureArt; 205 Hudson Gallery at Hunter College, Brooklyn; the Goethe Institut; and the 92nd Street Y. He continues to work at the intersection of art, documentary and experimental film, working for hire as a director and cinematographer, shooting documentaries and working on commission for clients such as Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, and VOGUE, among others. He is a proud member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective since 2016. He is presently at work on a film essay in the Rio Grande Valley, which focuses on the histories of the small towns along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Select Art21 films
I Wanna Be With You Everywhere
Salman Toor’s Emerald Green
Meriem Bennani’s Exploded Visions
Elle Pérez Works Between the Frame

Website (opens in a new tab)

Website (opens in a new tab)

Michelle is a freelance filmmaker and editor with a strong background in visual journalism. They’re based in Brooklyn and primarily work as a freelance assistant editor for Art21 while pursuing other editing and DP gigs on the side. Before that, Michelle worked as a staff photo and video journalist for USA Today. They are a graduate of Western Kentucky University’s photojournalism program and of the Danish School of Media and Journalism’s international photo program and a proud member of the Video Consortium, A-Doc, and BIPOC Editors.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Sean Hanley is a documentary cinematographer based in New York City whose work has screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, MoMA Documentary Fortnight, BAMCinemafest, the National Gallery of Art (DC), the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the New Orleans Film Festival among others. His work has appeared online at The Criterion Channel, MUBI, DAFilms, and Art21. He holds a BFA in Film Production from Emerson College and an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College (CUNY).

Website (opens in a new tab)

Jason is a writer/director living in Brooklyn with his wife, daughter and cat. After studying German at Princeton, he started making films about subjects ranging from Senegalese smugglers to Vietnam War veterans. His directorial debut at Sundance 2024, As We Speak (Paramount+), is a documentary about the growing use of rap lyrics as evidence in the U.S. criminal justice system.

A multi-hyphenate documentarian,​ he Executive Produced the Peabody-nominated, Daughters (Netflix), and has edited four features including the Emmy-nominated jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy (Netflix), A Kid from Coney Island (Netflix) about the life of Stephon Marbury and Down a Dark Stairwell (Criterion Channel) about the NYPD murder of Akai Gurley. His contributions to the industry were further acknowledged when he was named to DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40” list in 2024. In 2025, he was awarded the prestigious Concordia Fellowship and Film Independent Amplifier Fellowship.

Things Don’t Have to Be Like This

Website (opens in a new tab)

Carrie A. Hawks (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, designer, and artist. Their award-winning animated documentary black enuf* was funded in part by The Jerome Foundation, broadcast on American public television, and screened at over 40 events including the Ann Arbor and BlackStar Film Festivals. Their art spans a variety of media including drawing, doll-making, and performance and they have exhibited internationally at venues like the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The New Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum, and The Museum of Fine Arts Houston. They also create motion graphics, multimedia design, and animation for clients like Al Jazeera America, Carnegie Hall, Cartoon Network, and Carnegie Hall.

Select Art21 films
Kameelah Janan Rasheed: The Edge of Legibility

Website (opens in a new tab)

Troy Herion is an Emmy-winning composer, editor, and producer. He has scored multiple award-winning films including 306 Hollywood, The Hottest August, Bulletproof, Born to Be, The Disrupted, The Dog, and Mountain Fire Personnel, which have premiered at major festivals including Sundance, Toronto, SXSW, HotDocs, Tribeca, MoMA, NYFF, and True/False.

A classically trained multi-instrumentalist, Herion is a scholar of visual music and a Princeton University PhD fellow. Herion has collaborated extensively with artists from multiple disciplines including dance, theater, and opera companies with performances at Carnegie Hall, The Academy of Music, and The Annenberg Center among others. Recent commissions include the ballet Archiva for The Pennsylvania Ballet and the opera A Period of Animate Existence, for Pig Iron Theatre Co. His concert works have been performed by So Percussion, JACK Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Nash Ensemble of London, and Brentano Quartet.

Bryan Zanisnik’s Big Pivot
Kevin Beasley’s Raw Materials

Website (opens in a new tab)

Riley Hooper is a documentary film director and editor. Her forthcoming feature, VESTIBULE, has received support from the 2024 Sundance Documentary Fund, and won the 2024 Points North Pitch as well as the 2023 Ji.hlava U.S. New Visions Pitch. Her short documentaries have won numerous “Best of festival” awards and screened at festivals across the U.S. and internationally—including Hot Docs, Camden, and DOC NYC. Her films have appeared on The New York Times Op Docs, Vimeo Staff Picks, Short of the Week, and The New Yorker. She is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Nikita Iziev is a London-based interdisciplinary designer and director that works at the intersection of form, type and moving image.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Chiemi Karasawa is an award-winning Director-Producer and founder of Isotope Films based in Brooklyn, NY.  Notable documentary credits include:  Aretha Franklin Amazing Grace (Neon), AKA Jane Roe (FX Network), Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me (IFC), Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes, The Betrayal: Nerakhoon (POV), and Billy The Kid (HBO).  Her films have premiered at Sundance, Berlin, SXSW, Tribeca, and Venice Film Festivals, garnered an Emmy Award, Oscar nomination and numerous festival awards. She has guest lectured at The New School, SVA, Boston University, SFAI and NYU on Documentary Film,  and is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy for Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS). She is currently at work on a feature documentary about Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Amanda Nguyen.

Select Art21 Films
“Friends & Strangers”

Website (opens in a new tab)

Jessica Kingdon is a Chinese-American director/producer named one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine and selected for the 2020 DOC NYC 40 Under 40 list. Her first documentary feature, Ascension (2021), won a nomination at the 94th Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Feature category as well as Best Documentary at the Tribeca Festival and Hamptons International Film Festival. The film has received nominations from the DGA Awards, Spirit Awards, the Gotham and the International Documentary Association along with five Cinema Eye nominations and six Critic’s Choice nominations. Her award-winning Vimeo Staff Pick short, Commodity City (2017) played at over 50 film festivals. She co-directed the short It’s Coming! (2020), and Routine Island (2019). Her work has been supported by organizations including SFFILM, Chicken & Egg, Cinereach, Sundance, Field of Vision, and Firelight Media.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Ephraim Kirkwood is a New York based filmmaker and editor whose work has appeared on Netflix, CNN, Showtime, PBS, Discovery, and A&E. Credits include the Official Sundance-selected and Emmy-nominated Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men for Showtime, Roger Ross Wiliam’s High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Changed America documentary series for Netflix, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me for HBO, Stanley Nelson’s Vick for ESPN’s 30 for 30 sports documentary series, and the 1619 Project for Hulu.

Select Art21 films
Doreen Garner on Her Own Terms
Doreen Garner’s Invisible Man Tattoo

Travis LaBella is a two-time Emmy award winning Cinematographer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, CA.

Originally from New York, he got his start shooting documentaries and was the recipient of the ASC Student Heritage Documentary Award for Language of the Unheard, which was featured in American Cinematographer.

He now shoots a range of narrative, commercial, and documentary work. In 2021 Travis won an LA Emmy for his work on Artbound: Light & Space for PBS. He set the look for The Kardashians in 2022 when the show moved to Hulu, which debuted as the highest viewed premiere in Hulu’s history at the time.

His work can also be seen on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, PBS, BBC, and Vice.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Sebastián is a Spanish-American filmmaker and cinematographer based in Brooklyn, NY whose work has been featured at SXSW, DOC NYC, New Orleans Film Fest, SFDoc Fest, the Margaret Mead Film Festival, Pioneer Works, BRIC, and published by The NYTimes, PBS, and Art21. His short documentary film Esquilas en la montaña / Bells in the Mountains (2017) portrays the annual pilgrimage (transhumance) of two hundred cows up the Spanish Pyrenees mountains before summer. Sebastián is currently in post-production on his first feature documentary about an indigenous Chuj-Maya family from Guatemala who cross Mexico to visit and advocate for the release of their niece after she was wrongfully imprisoned for over seven years.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Jia Li is a documentary director, cinematographer, and editor based in Brooklyn. She studied studio art, journalism, and interaction science before picking up the camera. She has shot for features such as One Child Nation, Leftover Women, Hidden Letters, and a number of projects focused on the spaces where cultures overlap, in Asia and beyond. Her short film Noodle School (Brooklyn Film Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival, TOPIC) portrayed the underclass of students attending a vocational noodle school in northwestern China. Her work in video journalism has won Edward R. Murrow, Ellies, and Webby awards. She is currently working on a feature-length documentary exploring the world of child influencers.

Jes Fan: Infectious Beauty
Rachel Rossin’s Digital Homes

Website (opens in a new tab)

Matteo Lonardi is an Italian photographer, filmmaker, and VR director based between Nairobi and Milan. He graduated from Columbia Journalism School in 2014. Since 2010, Lonardi has documented artists around the world through photography, video, and VR. Lonardi founded the multimedia project Reframe Iran, which won a Magic Grant from The Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia University in 2014.

Lonardi’s written, photographic and video work has appeared in international publications such as BBC, Creative Time, The Guardian, La Stampa, The Huffington Post and Il Corriere Della Sera and others.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Born and raised in the South, Jane Macedo Yang is a Chinese-Cambodian/Mexican-American cinematographer based in Brooklyn. As the daughter of a refugee and immigrants, she aims to highlight underrepresented stories and voices, as well as stories focused on social justice issues, the environment and our connection to it, and on identity and community. Jane’s work has been featured on PBS, Snapchat, Museum of Modern Art, Apple TV, and others. They focus on documentaries, commercials, and narrative work.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Sana A. Malik is an Emmy-nominated director, writer, and producer. Sana’s directorial credits include the BAFTA-winning short and New Yorker documentary showcased film, GUANAJUATO NORTE. She wrote and directed AWAY, TOGETHER, a film supported by the North Face’s Move Mountains Film Grant.  As an owner and filmmaker at the production cooperative Meerkat Media, she was an executive producer and director of the Sesame Street Racial Justice Initiative.

Previously, she worked as a journalist and produced episodic series for NatGeo, BBC Reel, Frontline PBS, HBO and MTV and her early life was spent between London, UK, Lahore, Pakistan, and Cape Breton, Canada. Sana has a Master’s in Documentary Film from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and degrees from the University of London (LSHTM) and the University of Toronto. She is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers’ Collective, and Brown Girls Doc Mafia. She also teaches and mentors emerging storytellers through the Institute of Contemporary Photography, Columbia University, and the the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Website (opens in a new tab)

César Martínez Barba is a San Antonio, TX born filmmaker and editor living in NYC. He is a graduate of Occidental College. César has been selected as a Sundance Institute 2020 Art of Editing Fellow, a 2022 North Star Fellow at the Points North Institute, the Fall 2018 Social Justice Filmmaker Fellow at the Jacob Burns Film Center, a 2018 NeXt Doc Fellow, and is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective. His editorial work has appeared on the Criterion Collection, BET, ABC, and at festivals such as HotDocs, SFFILM, and Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. His films have been featured on POV and The New Yorker.

Select Art21 films
Guadalupe Maravilla’s “Mariposa Relámpago”
Howardena Pindell: Inner Circle
Esteban Cabeza de Baca’s Time Travels

Website (opens in a new tab)

Jonna is a filmmaker and artist based in Baltimore, MD. Her work explores memory, landscape, and power. She directs and produces nonfiction features and shorts, and her photography has been shown in galleries and museums around the US. Her films have played at Sundance, True/False, CPH:Dox, IDFA, SXSW and Visions du Reel, among others. As a producer, her first feature, All Light, Everywhere, won a Special Jury Award for Nonfiction Experimentation at Sundance, a special jury mention at CPH:Dox, and played the closing night of New Directors/New Films. She also produced Margie Soudek’s Salt & Pepper Shakers (Sundance, The New Yorker, 2023), the hybrid mid-length film Your Final Meditation (Rockaway, 2024), The Tallest Dwarf (SXSW 2025, forthcoming on Independent Lens), and To Use a Mountain, which received a Special Jury Award at Visions du Réel, where it premiered in 2025.

Souki Mehdaoui is a French-Moroccan director, writer, cinematographer and subject relations consultant for documentaries. Her work can be seen on Netflix, HBO, New York Times, A+E, Yahoo, Refinery29 and Topic, as well as in the Sundance-premiering documentaries “The Great Hack,” “Mucho Mucho Amor,” and “Cusp”. When not making films, she works as director of community development and mentorships for the Video Consortium, a community dedicated to supporting nonfiction filmmakers all over the world.

Firelei Báez: An Open Horizon (or) the Stillness of a Wound

Website (opens in a new tab)

Motheo Moeng is a Johannesburg-based cinematographer. He was born in Cape Town and studied at the National College of Photography. His work has been recognised by the South African Society of Cinematographers (SASC), of which he is a member. He has shot numerous TV series, music videos, short films, documentaries, and features, most recently Matewtwe which was directed by Kagiso Lediga.

“Johannesburg”
David Goldblatt: A Monument to Apartheid in Fietas
Zanele Muholi: Mobile Studios

Website (opens in a new tab)

Tyler McPherron is a director of photography and cinematographer specializing in commercials, documentaries and music videos in the San Francisco Bay Area. He got his start as a cinematographer shooting a year-long, fifty-part documentary series for YouTube in which he travelled to ten cities in the U.S. and shot five short documentaries in each city. As a member of Yours Truly, a collective of filmmakers and storytellers focusing on helping musicians tell their stories, Tyler worked and collaborated with some of his favorite musicians, including Future Islands, FKA Twigs, Moses Sumney, Sylvan Esso, and Toro y Moi. His clients now include Google, Pixar, Target, Facebook, Microsoft, Kraft, Intel, Levi’s, Method, Uber, Nest, Casper, One Medical PBS, ESPN, Fox Sports, Complex, Nowness, and Pandora. For Tyler, there is nothing more interesting than real life, which is why he’s drawn to non-fiction stories that shine a light on some sort of truth. He especially loves to work with artists, musicians, creatives, and anyone who has a point of view worth sharing.

“San Francisco Bay Area”

Website (opens in a new tab)

Nadine Mundo is a Los Angeles-based Afro Latina editor and director. Passionate about music and movement, her forte is creating emotionally provocative and stylistically nuanced non-fiction stories. She has created and edited content for Beats By Dre, Pepsi, Timex, CNN Films, Great Big Story, ESPN, Amazon, Al Jazeera, and Tastemade. Working with her sister Rena Mundo Croshere, their ESPN film Rowdy Ronda Rousey became the most viewed short in ESPN history. In 2015, the duo created and directed What Makes Us, a series about elite female athletes for ESPN Films. Their feature documentary, American Commune, premiered to critical acclaim at the HotDocs International Film Festival and was released on Amazon.

Select Art21 films
Doreen Garner on Her Own Terms
Bryan Zanisnik’s Big Pivot
Shaun Leonardo: The Freedom to Move

Website (opens in a new tab)

Andrew Nadkarni is an Oscar-shortlisted filmmaker based in Brooklyn. His directorial debut, Between Earth & Sky (POV/PBS), won ‘Best Documentary Short’ at Big Sky and Hot Springs, earned Critics’ Choice and Cinema Eye nominations, and screened at over 100 festival and community events before being shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Awards. A multiracial filmmaker, Andrew excavates intergenerational narratives of resilience within diaspora communities, embracing contradiction and the power of being in process. 

A 2023 BRIClab Artist in Residence, Andrew serves on festival juries and reads for grant organizations. He recently directed an episode of Firelight/American Masters’ In the Making series for PBS. He is currently working on projects with REI, and Refugee Women’s Network. Past production credits span documentary and narrative, including Bel Canto (Peacock), Glass Onion (Netflix), and Actual People (MUBI).

Website (opens in a new tab)

Stanley Nelson is one of the foremost chroniclers of the African American experience working in nonfiction film today. His films, many of which have aired on PBS, combine compelling narratives with deeply researched historical detail, shining new light on both familiar and under-explored aspects of the American past. Nelson, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, has received numerous honors over the course of his career, including five Primetime Emmy Awards and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the National Academy of Television Arts Sciences, the Emmys, the Peabodys, and IDA. In 2013, Nelson received the National Medal in the Humanities from President Barack Obama. His latest film, ​Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool​, chronicling the life and times of the prolific jazz musician, premiered at Sundance in January 2019. In 2000, Mr. Nelson, along with his wife, Marcia A. Smith, founded Firelight Media, a nonprofit production company dedicated to using non-fiction filmmaking to advance contemporary social justice causes, and to mentoring, inspiring and training a new generation of diverse young filmmakers committed to telling underrepresented stories.

“Chicago”

Website (opens in a new tab)

Colin Nusbaum is a documentary film editor, cinematographer and director whose work has screened at the Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, HotDocs, Sheffield Doc/Fest, DOCNYC, AFI Docs, Full Frame, and many others.

Colin’s recent editing credits include Everything You Have Is Yours (DOCNYC 2024) directed by Tatyana Tenenbaum, Gioncarlo Valentine: Exposures (DOCNYC 2024, PBS) directed by Zeshawn Ali, and 399: Queen of the Tetons (Big Sky 2024, PBS) directed by Elizabeth Leiter. He was a co-editor of Confessions of a Good Samaritan (SXSW 2023) by Penny Lane.

Website (opens in a new tab)

American Music Award winning composer and multi-instrumentalist, Andrew Orkin, draws influence from a wide array of genres, combining modular synthesis with acoustic instrumentation and experimental production techniques to create unique sonic pallets for each project he scores. His festival laurels include Sundance, Tribeca, Champs-Élysées, SXSW, Berlinale, TIFF and AFI as well as series and films on Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Mubi, Discovery+, PBS and the CBC. Andrew is also a Fulbright Scholar and Arts Research Africa fellow.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Addison Post is a New York City-based filmmaker, editor, and colorist. In 2009, Addison began documenting local music in Allston, Massachusetts for the free alt-weekly, Boston Phoenix. Since co-founding Loroto Productions in 2010, Addison has directed content for Converse, Adidas, Sub Pop, Atlas Obscura, Italians Do It Better, CR Fashionbook, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Addison began documenting People’s History and Labor Movements in West Virginia in 2017, examining the resurgence of interest in the West Virginia Mine Wars, workforce transition, economic migration, and labor movements. Addison has published documentary content with The Intercept, Topic, MeansTV, Teen Vogue, and Left Voice.

Select Art21 films
Firelei Báez: An Open Horizon (or) the Stillness of a Wound
Loie Hollowell’s Transcendent Bodies
Rachel Rossin’s Digital Homes

Website (opens in a new tab)

Raised in rural upstate New York, Pete is a Queens based cinematographer and director. He’s drawn to working-class communities and stories across the country, with a specific focus on the mass incarceration system.

His work has screened at Cannes, Sundance, MOMA, SXSW, and been programmed on The New York Times, Vimeo Staff Picks, and Short of the Week. He was a 2024 Woodstock Filmmaker Resident.

Website (opens in a new tab)

For a decade, Chris Ramey was the in-house finishing & online editor at The Criterion Collection. He crafted and graded broadcast quality deliverables on hundreds of original video interviews, documentaries, and archival materials for DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD. Chris is currently a freelance colorist specializing in documentary content, working primarily out of Red Hook Post in Brooklyn and with clients including Ark Media, ESPN Films, PBS, and VICE. Recent feature documentary credits include Ricky Powell: The Individualist and Slay the Dragon.

Select Art21 films
“London”
Jes Fan In Flux
Bryan Zanisnik’s Big Pivot

Website (opens in a new tab)

Naima Ramos-Chapman is a Brooklyn-based director, writer, and performer with a wide range of narrative and documentary credits, working to tell stories of personal transformation and understated bravery. Her first short, Nothing Happened, premiered at the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival. Her second short, Piu Piu, premiered at the 2018 BlackStar Film Festival. Since 2018 she has written, directed, and acted in the Peabody Award-winning HBO Series Random Acts of Flyness. In 2020, she co-produced and story edited for the HBO coming-of-age series Betty. She was also a 2018 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Intensive Fellow and a 2021 United States Artists Fellow. Raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn, she studied dance from childhood and attended the Alvin Ailey School for Dance and continues to perform.

Select Art21 films
Doreen Garner on Her Own Terms

Hailing from the Dominican Republic, multi-hyphenated NYC-based Alina Rancier is a director, producer, writer, editor, motion designer, and actor. She is the owner of Amala Studio, an NYC-based video content studio.

For over 18 years she has collaborated with some of the best agencies (Anomaly, Google Creative Lab, more) and brands (Google, The New York Times, Visa, HP, Mastercard, AMEX, PBS, Nike, Converse, and many more) in the world; creating campaigns, promos, and multimedia pieces with them.

Alina’s entry into filmmaking began with her video art, creating pieces that explore intimacy, psychology and the way unconscious behaviours control our lives. As a director, she has created short documentaries for Art 21, MGM International, and Davidoff Cigars, written and directed several short narratives, video art pieces, and music videos. Her most recent pieces are a short film called “Aurora” (2023) and an art video piece called “Mala Mujer” (2022).

Her video artwork and short films have been presented in galleries, art fairs, and museums in New York City, Miami, and Santo Domingo as well as in festivals in like: The NY Latino Film Festival, Marfa Film Festival, Philadelphia Latino Festival, Evolution Mallorca Festival, and Austin Music Video Festival.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Working collaboratively since 2012, rava films’s Rafael Salazar and Ava Wiland produce thought-provoking independent works and engaging non-fiction videos for institutions, organizations, and companies in the world of the arts, culture, entertainment, and beyond. One of New York City’s leading creators of films on contemporary art, the team has directed, produced, shot, and edited for the Whitney Museum of American Art, TATE, Arte TV, and Storm King Art Center, among others. Longtime Art21 contributors with a unique flair for visually-driven filmmaking, Rafa and Ava have been responsible for some of Art21’s most celebrated and popular films, screening at prestigious venues and festivals across the globe, and garnering industry honors, including a Vimeo Staff Pick.

“Borderlands”
Tanya Aguiñiga in “Borderlands”
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in “Borderlands”
Richard Misrach in “Borderlands”
Postcommodity in “Borderlands”“Berlin”
Aki Sasamoto: An Artist Walks into a Bar
Bryan Zanisnik & Eric Winkler’s Animated Conversation
Guadalupe Maravilla & the Sound of Healing

Website (opens in a new tab)

Brian Redondo is a Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker committed to telling stories about traditionally marginalized communities, often exploring issues of race, immigration, and how these topics intersect with culture. His first short documentaries, Why We Rise (Loni Ding Award, CAAMFest 2014) and The Lookout (CAAMFest 2017), examine immigration through the perspectives of undocumented youth in New York City and volunteers aiding refugees in Greece, respectively. He is currently working on his next short documentary, exploring family separation and deportations in Boston’s Southeast Asian community. He is also a senior video editor at The New Yorker magazine.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed: The Edge of Legibility
Jes Fan In Flux
Doreen Garner Sculpts Our Trauma

Website (opens in a new tab)

Morgan Riles is a Brooklyn-based editor. She has edited for OWN Network, College Humor, Magnet Media, and docyourstory. Her feature documentary, BIOMODD [ATH1]: A Living Game Computer As Social Sculpture, follows the work of Belgian artist and TED fellow Angelo Vermeulen, and screened at the 27th International Festival of Films on Art, and the Houston Cinema Arts Festival, in 2009. Morgan is a longtime contributor to Art21, having edited dozens of episodes from Art21’s Extended Play short film series, as well as an episode of Art21’s flagship television series, Art in the Twenty-First Century.

“Johannesburg”
“London”
Luchita Hurtado: Here I Am
Alex Da Corte: 57 Varieties

Website (opens in a new tab)

Zara Serabian-Arthur is a documentary film editor, producer and director, whose work has been featured on Hulu, PBS, National Geographic, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, screened at Sundance, and distributed theatrically. Her documentary feature and broadcast credits include Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence (Series Editor), Justice (Editor), Sky Blossom (Editor), Emergent City (Consulting Editor), and Dark Money (Additional Editor), among others. She has also directed, produced and edited scores of short films commissioned by NYC’s leading nonprofits, foundations and cultural institutions, including the Tenement Museum, Ford Foundation, and the Participatory Budgeting Project, among many others. In both her commissioned and independent work, she has prioritized telling stories that shift narratives in support of movements for social, economic and racial justice, sustainability, and democracy. Zara is also actively involved in the cooperative and solidarity economy movements in NYC. She has worked on mapping, organizing, and community-based research projects with SolidarityNYC, is a former Board Member of New York City Network of Worker Cooperatives, and a Peer Educator with the Cooperative Economics Alliance of New York City. She is a member of the cooperatively owned production company Meerkat Media.

Mary Ann Toman is an accomplished documentary and television editor whose credits include the Emmy-winning series, Reel 13 and NYC Arts, both produced by WNET/Thirteen. Independent documentaries include I Sing Beijing and the award-winning Losing It. Additional television credits include work for A&E, VH1, and PBS, as well as Emmy-nominated segments for New York Voices on WNET/Thirteen. As a producer and director, Mary Ann has created a series of profiles for the Ms Foundation for Women. Her documentary, The Female Offender, was screened internationally including New Directors/New Films and the Leipzig Documentary Festival. Mary Ann is a longtime contributor for Art21, having edited the Webby Award-nominated first season of Art21’s New York Close Up short film series as well as three episodes of Art21’s flagship television series, Art in the Twenty-First Century.

Select Art21 films

“San Francisco Bay Area”
“Vancouver”
David Brooks Hits the Pavement

Website (opens in a new tab)

Lynn True is a documentary director/producer and editor, and co-founder of True Walker Productions. Her feature documentaries include LUMO (PBS/P.O.V. 2007), about a young woman’s recovery from sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and SUMMER PASTURE (PBS/Independent Lens 2012), which follows a nomad family in the mountains of Tibet. Called “enthralling” and made a Critic’s Pick by The New York Times, SUMMER PASTURE was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an IFP Gotham Award, and won a Peabody Award. Her last film, IN TRANSIT (Tribeca Film Festival 2015, Special Jury Prize), a collaboration with the late Albert Maysles, is a documentary portrait of America as seen through the stories of passengers aboard the country’s busiest long-distance train route. Lynn’s work has been supported by the Sundance Film Institute, IFP, Cinereach, National Endowment for the Arts, International Documentary Association, ITVS, Film Independent, and NYSCA, among others.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Nathan Truesdell is a multi-hyphenate filmmaker from Clark, Missouri who has been nominated for an Academy Award, a PGA Award, an IDA Award, was selected for the inaugural “DOC NYC 40 Under 40” list, and won a Cinema Eye Honor for Cinematography. His directorial work includes the award-winning BALLOONFEST, THE WATER SLIDE, WHEN THE LAPD BLOWS UP YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, THE ART OF MAKING MONEY, and IT’S COMING! He was the Camera Department Head for three seasons of the HBO series HOW TO WITH JOHN WILSON. He produced and co-DP’ed the Tribeca winner ASCENSION (2021). He produced documentaries such as WE ALWAYS LIE TO STRANGERS (SXSW, 2013), CAUCUS (Hot Docs, 2013), CONVENTION (LAFF, 2010), PEACE IN THE VALLEY (Sundance, 2016), and co-produced THE GOSPEL OF EUREKA (SXSW, 2018). He was a cinematographer on DOPE IS DEATH (True/False, 2020), DEPROGRAMMED (Tribeca, 2015), and was a cinematographer and editor on KILLING THEM SAFELY (Tribeca, 2015). He also served as art director for the narrative film YOU’RE NEXT (TIFF, 2011). 

Website (opens in a new tab)

Christine Turner is a filmmaker based in New York. Her critically-acclaimed documentary, Homegoings, about a funeral director in Harlem, premiered at Documentary Fortnight at MoMA and was broadcast nationally on the PBS series, POV. Christine’s short fiction films have screened at festivals internationally, including Sundance and Tribeca. As a director and producer, Christine also collaborates on non-fiction series and documentary specials for television. Recent directing credits include the “Dead is Better” episode for HBO’s Lenny. Christine also produced the finale episode of CNN’s original series, Tricky Dick.

Select Art21 films

Kevin Beasley’s Raw Materials
“San Francisco Bay Area”

Website (opens in a new tab)

Meeting as graduate students in the School for Visual Arts’ Social Documentary program, cinematographer and director Amitabh Joshi and producer Erik Spink founded Vacant Light, a media production company dedicated to non-fiction and commercial storytelling. Their work has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Pictures, The Ford Foundation, The Center for Public Broadcast, Center for Asian American Media, and film festivals internationally.

Select Art21 films

Dan Herschlein Looks Inside
Doreen Garner’s Invisible Man Tattoo

Website (opens in a new tab)

Danielle Varga is an independent nonfiction producer who has been working in documentary film for the past decade.

She most recently produced an episode for the PBS Peabody Award-winning series Art in the Twenty-First Century titled “Bodies of Knowledge,” and co-produced the feature documentary The Stroll, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and was released by HBO. Varga produced Bulletproof (SXSW 2020) and the critically acclaimed documentary The Hottest August (True/False 2019), both of which are distributed by PBS Independent Lens and Grasshopper Film. She co-produced the award-winning and Oscar shortlisted film Cameraperson (Sundance 2016) and produced the short documentary Watched (Tribeca 2017). She has been a consulting producer, archival producer, and field producer on a number of additional documentaries for film and television.

Varga was listed on DOC NYC’s inaugural list of “40 Under 40” filmmakers to watch, was a Sundance Creative Producing Fellow, has led producing workshops at Union Docs and has pitched projects at Hot Docs Forum, CPH:DOX Forum, Sheffield MeetMarket, IFP Week and the Sundance Creative Producing Summit.

She produces films under her production company, Walking Productions, and through collaborations with other filmmakers, producers and production companies making bold and singular work.

Select Art21 Films
“Bodies of Knowledge”

Website (opens in a new tab)

Rosie Walunas is a documentary film editor with a passion for vérité and character-driven films. Her longform editing work includes Meltdown in Dixie and AKA Jane Roe. She has also worked on numerous documentary series such as America Divided, Time: The Kalief Browder Story, and No Passport Required with Marcus Samuelsson. Rosie has also edited short documentaries such as The Monolith, which premiered on Vimeo as a Staff Pick and on Short of the Week, and The Last Conversation for The New Yorker. When not editing she enjoys gardening and exploring wilderness areas.

Jack Whitten: An Artist’s Life
Kara Walker & Jason Moran: Sending Out a Signal
Marcel Dzama: Drawing with Raymond Pettibon
Wangechi Mutu: Between the Earth and the Sky

Website (opens in a new tab)

Stephanie Wang Breal is an award-winning documentary writer and director.

Blowin’ Up, her third film, had its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2018 and was awarded the Best Documentary Feature award at the San Diego Asian Film Festival and the Society of Authors Award at the Film Des Femmes in Paris, France. Stephanie’s first film, Wo Ai Ni Mommy (I Love You, Mommy), played in over 50 film festivals around the world and was the recipient of three Grand Jury Best Documentary Awards at the AFI/ Discovery Silverdocs Film Festival, the Asian American International Film Festival and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, as well as a 2011 CINE special Jury Award. All of her films have had a national broadcast on PBS’ POV.

In 2019, Stephanie was awarded a Chicken and Egg Artist Award. In 2020, she was the recipient of a Creative Capital Artist Award, as well as a 2020 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2024. Stephanie is a proud member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Currently, she is an Adjunct Professor at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Travis is a director from Minneapolis, sometimes based in Brooklyn. His short films have been selected for multiple Vimeo Staff Picks, SXSW film festival, True/False, Tribeca, Rooftop films, an NY EMMY award, and featured on NoBudge, Booooooom, and Directors Notes. He was one of ten filmmakers selected for Lena Waithe’s Rising Voices program, where he directed the short film, Black Santa, that premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Festival. Most recently his debut feature film, The Travel Companion, co-directed with Alex Mallis will premiere the 2025 Tribeca Festival. He is a member of the cooperatively owned production company Meerkat Media.

Website (opens in a new tab)

Working across a diverse array of genres and formats, Russell Yaffe’s editorial work spans television documentaries for HBO Sports to independent narrative feature films and web series. Frequent collaborators include the filmmaker Eleanor Gaver, the artist Sam Messer, and RAVA Films, for which Russell has edited digital series for The Metropolitan Museum of Art and A Blade of Grass. He has also edited numerous viral videos for Buzzfeed. Russell’s work has screened across the globe at the Austin, Atlanta, Bogotá Shorts and New York Film Festivals among others and was exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum.

Select Art21 films

“Borderlands”
Tanya Aguiñiga in “Borderlands”
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in “Borderlands”
Richard Misrach in “Borderlands”
Postcommodity in “Borderlands”

Website (opens in a new tab)

Malika Zouhali-Worrall is a British/Moroccan filmmaker based in New York. Her films examine the intimacy created by networks of care and community, whether through art, caregiving, or political action.

An Emmy Award-winning director, her directing credits include the feature-length documentaries, CALL ME KUCHU (2012, Berlin Film Festival, Netflix, BBC World) and THANK YOU FOR PLAYING (2015, Tribeca, POV/ITVS, News & Television Emmy Award), both of which were theatrically released to critical acclaim in the U.S. As an Emmy-nominated editor, she most recently edited THROUGH THE NIGHT (2020, Tribeca, POV), a feature-length film by Loira Limbal that was selected for the 2019 Sundance Edit & Story Lab, chosen as a Critic’s Pick by The New York Times and The Hollywood Reporter, and recently named as one of The Guardian’s Best Documentaries of 2020.

Malika’s episodic and short form directing credits include an hour-long episode of the long-running TV series Art in the Twenty-First Century, which will broadcast nationally in June 2023, as well as her recent short documentary VIDEO VISIT (2022), which was released by Field of Vision after festival screenings including SXSW, AFI Fest, Blackstar, and BAM Cinemafest. Malika has also directed short films for The New York Times OpDocs, French broadcaster ARTE, and PBS American Masters, which broadcast Malika’s film STRANGE GRACE: THE ART OF AMYRA LEÓN in 2020.

Malika’s films have been supported by the Sundance Film Institute, Cinereach, San Francisco Film, Field of Vision, Doc Society, The New York Times OpDocs, and Catapult Film Fund, among others.

Malika is a 2019 Chicken & Egg Awardee, a 2020 Sundance Momentum Fellow, a 2020 William Greaves Award recipient, and a 2021 Adobe Women at Sundance fellow.

Select Art21 films

“Bodies of Knowledge”

Website (opens in a new tab)

Amber Arnold is a Fine Arts Instructional Coach in the Atlanta, GA, area and a former Visual Arts classroom educator. Amber taught K-5 Elementary Visual Arts for over 12 years and in her current role supports the K-12 Fine Arts teachers in her district. This includes both the Visual and Performing Arts. Her responsibilities include managing the Fine Arts new teacher mentor program, facilitating professional learning, and working with teachers one-on-one as a learning partner.

Amber earned her BFA and MAEd. in Art Education from the University of Georgia and her EdS. in Art Education from Piedmont University. As an Art21 Educators Program alumni and Connected Arts Networks Teacher Leader through the National Art Education Association, she is passionate about life-long learning through collaboration, connection, and building community.

Cristina Ann Correa is pleased to be spending her 19th year in art education by leading the award-winning, nationally-recognized visual arts department at Plano Senior High School. Prior to teaching at PSHS, she taught at IDEA College Preparatory San Juan (San Juan, TX) for 14 years and Weslaco East High School (Weslaco, TX) for three.

Correa is currently both the high school and Central Cluster lead visual arts teacher for Plano ISD and a member of the Arts Centre of Plano Education Committee. She is the Arts Chair for the College Board National Academic Assembly Council, At-Large Commissioner for the National Art Education Association (NAEA) Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Commission, and a 2023-25 Texas Education Agency Teacher Leadership Senior Fellow. Correa is a 2024 NAEA School For Art Leaders Graduate, Art21 Educator, and an Advanced Placement (AP) Art & Design Consultant, Mentor, Exam Development Committee Member and Reading Question Leader. She was selected as the 2024 recipient of the UT-RGV College of Fine Arts Young Alumnus Merit Award and 2024 Pride of Plano Award for Art Education. She is featured in multiple AP Daily videos and has presented for multiple K-12 and collegiate art education programs, at the College Board’s Preparate Conference, the TAEA and NAEA conventions, and SCAD Workshops for AP Educators. Correa is a candidate for National Board Certification in Art and spends her summers teaching at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in NYC.

Correa earned her BS in Mass Communications and Graphic Design from Texas Woman’s University in May of 2006 and MFA in Visual Arts, Latin American Art History, and Mexican American Studies from the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley in December of 2018. She has completed two figural painting marathons at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture, interned at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, and conducted research on the Incan paintings of Colonial Peru in the archives of Cusco during graduate school.

When she is not teaching art, Correa enjoys knitting, sewing, cooking, hiking, and spending time with her family and two cats.

Debra Shushan is an educator, artist and California native plant advocate. She has been teaching Studio Art, Photography and most recently, Media Arts, to high school students at Salesian College Preparatory in Richmond, CA for 24 years and also serves as the Visual and Performing Arts Chairperson. Shushan joined Art21 Educators in 2021, began foregrounding big questions and Art21 materials in her curriculum and felt a sense of community and belonging right away. Shushan centers social-emotional learning, a trauma-informed approach and differentiated instruction in her work with students. She is committed to the practice of habitat restoration. Shushan’s CA native garden was on the 2024 Bringing Back the Natives tour in the Bay Area. 

As an artist, art educator and creative leader with nearly 30 years of experience in K-12 art education, I have always focused on both artmaking and teaching and how the two can feed one another for the benefit of the students and larger community. My focus in both fields has always been that of a life-long learner whose focus on collaboration and connection has led to innovation in meaningful and purposeful ways. Currently, I teach visual art to grades 7-12 at the Trinity School in New York City.

Recent exhibits of my drawing, paintings and collaborations include a solo show in Brooklyn, a group show with Young Soy gallery of Hong Kong as well as shows in New York, Amsterdam, Chicago and Miami for Art Basel. My work is a part of private and public collections around the world including the permanent collection of White & Case, Aston Martin, American Copper Building, Jack Daniels and the Baltimore Museum of Art. I also serve on the Board of Directors for the Poetry Society of New York and have been an Art21 Educator for the past 3 years.

Kandice Stewart is based in the Greater New York City area. She believes that art is love, connection, spirit, energy, life, and healing. Kandice states that she is human first, while also being an educator, mother, caretaker, sister, activist, enthusiast, explorer, student, and collaborator. She has been teaching for over ten years in only communities of ethnically diverse backgrounds given her deep passion for equity and inclusion. She aims to use her work for personal, community and global activism.

Beyond being a proud mother of three amazing human beings, she is a Doctoral student at Columbia University studying teacher identity development in the public sector, and she is a full-time AP Art History and Studio Art teacher at Columbia High School. She has been a member, mentor, and writer for Art21’s Educator programs. She has partnered with institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, University of Florida’s Art Education program, and the NY Historical Society, CCNY City College, the Art of Education University, and the Academy of Fellows.