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Resita Cox’s films are a poetic portrayal of her community’s irrepressible spirit and resilience in the face of racism. Born and raised in the South, her films center Southern, Black communities and use them as a lens to examine topics ranging from environmental justice to racial justice. She is the director of Freedom Hill, a documentary about the environmental racism that is washing away the first town chartered by Black people in the nation, with which she was named a 2021 Hulu/Kartemquin Accelerator Fellow and premiered at the 2022 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. She holds an MFA from Northwestern University in Documentary Film and is a 2021 North Star fellow with Points North Institute. Resita was recently named a 2022 Esteemed Artist by the City of Chicago and is one of Elevate’s 2022 Climate Changemakers.

Soraya Sélène is a director and cinematographer working in documentary, narrative and experimental works. Born in France and raised on the lower east side of New York City, photojournalism was Soraya’s early passion. She studied photography at the School of Visual Arts, and photographed for La Nación, Chile’s national newspaper, while studying and backpacking throughout South America. The recipient of several awards for her short films, feature credits include cinematographer on documentary Half The Picture, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Her current project, Normal Never Worked, is a personal lyrical documentary which explores education in this disruptive moment. Soraya received her MFA in Directing & Cinematography from UCLA and her BA in Sociology/Psychology from Wesleyan University. She is a member of the Brown Girls Doc Mafia and a founding member of the International Collective of Female Cinematographers (ICFC). Soraya is also an educator, teaching documentary and cinematography as faculty at CalArts.

After 15 years of working as a cinematographer, Cat Deakins shifted into documentary film producing. As a DP, she worked with Soraya Sélène on Amy Adrion’s documentary feature Half the Picture which premiered at Sundance. She has shot all over the world (Bolivia, Croatia, France, Hungary, Mexico) for commercial, doc and narrative projects including the indie feature Love, Sex and Missed Connections (directed by Emmy-nominated Eric Kissack), which won many festival awards. She also collaborated with choreographer/filmmaker Benjamin Millepied on several dance films, multimedia and performance projects including Portals (directed by Millepied and 2018 Sundance Editing fellow and Emmy winner Kate Hackett, ACE). For 7 years, she also taught photography to incarcerated youth in the LA County Probation system. Prior to becoming a DP, Cat freelanced as a music photographer for Rolling Stone Magazine. She holds an MFA in Cinematography from UCLA and BA from Harvard (Sociology). She is currently also co-producing and developing a documentary feature Private Money Public Power about elite philanthropy in the U.S. with Matt Landfield (dir/co-prod) and producer Jane Wells (3 Generations).

Dawne Langford grew up in Baltimore and Washington, D.C.; she is a documentary filmmaker and 2022 Sundance Producer’s Lab Fellow. After years of working in public media as a broadcast television editor, she transitioned to producing. In 2013 Dawne was accepted to the PBS Producers Academy and then began working in a freelance capacity on independent documentaries, including; CHECK IT, KANDAHAR JOURNALS, and FINDING JOSEPH I, about the lead singer of the seminal all-Black punk band, Bad Brains. Her recent projects include working at Moxie Pictures in N.Y.C. as a story producer on a docuseries with director Lee Hirsch. She is also producing a project chronicling the descendants of the enslaved GU272 descendants in conjunction with Georgetown University. Her primary interest is in amplifying traditionally suppressed narratives and presentations of historic events to deepen understanding, support learning, and stimulate community dialogue.