Kazua Melissa Vang (she/her/hers) is a Hmong American filmmaker, photographer, teaching artist, and producer based in Minnesota. Vang production-managed Nice, an independent pilot, and official selection for the Indie Episodic Category at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. She co-founded the Asian Pacific Island American Minnesota Film Collective (APIA MN Film Collective). Her first short film, Rhaub, was an official selection at the 2018 Qhia Dab Neeg Film Festival in Saint Paul, MN. Vang received the Forecast Public Art Early-Career Artist Project Grant and developed a short experimental film, Hmong Ephemera, as a writer/director. She is a producer for Hmong Organization, a comedic web series.

Project Statement

The Chaperone is a semi-autobiographical comedic short film that follows Ghia Na, a teen who must accompany her older sister Hlee Anne when they are out of the house. Ghia Na serves as the chaperone while Hlee Anne rendezvous with her boyfriend in the park. Set amidst the backdrop of the mid-90s and the strict rules that governed Hmong girls’ bodies, this film follows Ghia Na as she befriends other “younger sister” chaperones.

Photo by Katherina Vang.

Maribeth Romslo (she/her/hers) is a director, cinematographer, and producer who believes that well-told stories have the power to change the world. Her films have played at festivals from Toronto to Mumbai. Recent projects include an original documentary series (Handmade*Mostly) for Reese Witherspoon’s new media platform called Hello Sunshine; a conceptual dance film (Kitchen Dance) about the work of women; a historical fiction content series (Spark) to inspire girls interested in STEM; and a documentary about student free-speech in America (Raise Your Voice).

Project Statement

Growing Up In A Pandemic is a multimedia storytelling project that focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on youth. The project pairs audio stories told by youth with animation that supports and enhances the content of the stories.

Photo by Spencer Nelson.

Atlas O. Phoenix (they/them/theirs) is a director, writer, producer, actor, and editor. “At this point in my filmmaking journey, as I embrace becoming trans-masculine, at 50, I want to create films that not only explore the darkness of the soul; I want to examine its flight to the light.

Queer filmmakers are an enormous inspiration to me because our stories are powerful and are about overcoming obscene social obstacles based on our sexual orientation and gender expression. For some, this includes a radical bias towards the color of our skin. If we are vigilant about rejecting tropes, cliches, and tokenism, queer cinema will continue to evolve into a powerful and inspiring force for good in the world.”

Project Statement

Beautiful Boi is an experimental, narrative documentary. This genre-bending film is about Phoenix’ transition at 50 and their mental health journey over 34 years. As Phoenix transitions, they have many questions that range from being seen by men as a potential threat to questioning their spirituality. Their experience with the surgeries and hormone replacement therapy are part of the journey, but not the whole journey. Phoenix shares their gender transition to create a legacy of this mental, physical, sexual, and spiritual journey. This legacy may be someone else’s survival guide.

Photo by Atlas O. Phoenix.

Liberian-American filmmaker Raven Johnson’s (she/her/hers) work deals with the realities of Black experiences in White spaces. Originally from Minnesota, she graduated with her MFA from NYU’s Tisch Graduate Film program and was recently named filmmaker-in-residence at Augsburg University in Minneapolis. Johnson is a 2021 Jerome Emerging Artist-in-Residence at the Anderson Center at Tower View and was recipient of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival’s Cinéfondation Residence in Paris. In 2017, Johnson was named one of AT&T’s Emerging Filmmakers for her short film, TWEEN. She is currently developing her first feature film, Ruby: Portrait of a Black Teen in an American Suburb (working title).

Project Statement

Ruby: Portrait of a Black Teen in an American Suburb (working title) is a coming-of-age tale about Ruby, a 16-year-old, second-generation Liberian immigrant living in a predominately white suburb outside of Minneapolis. Set in the summer of 2020 during the racial justice protest over the murder of George Floyd and at the height of Covid-19 pandemic, Ruby must deal with her immigrant parents’ impending divorce and the breakup with her closest friend.

Photo by Raven Jackson.

Helga Davis is a vocalist and performance artist with feet planted on the most prestigious international stages and with firm roots in the realities and concerns of her local community whose work draws out insights that illuminate how artistic leaps for an individual can offer connection among audiences. Davis was principal actor in the 25th-anniversary international revival of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s seminal opera Einstein on the Beach. She also starred in Wilson’s The Temptation of St. Anthony, with libretto and score by Bernice Johnson Reagon. Among the collaborative and works written for her are Oceanic Verses by Paola Prestini, You Us We All by Shara Nova and Andrew Ondrejcak and Yet Unheard, a tribute to Sandra Bland by Courtney Bryan, based on the poem by Sharan Strange. She has conceived and performed First Responder and Wanna as responses to Until and The Let Go by multidisciplinary artist Nick Cave. She is artist in residence at National Sawdust and Joe’s Pub, host of the eponymous podcast HELGA on WQXR, winner of the 2019 Greenfield Prize in composition, a 2019 Alpert Award finalist, and the 2018–21 visiting curator for the performing arts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra a.k.a. Lady Xøk (Maya-Lenca tribal citizen) is a Twin Cities-based multi/interdisciplinary artist, musician, and culture bearer whose work is rooted in Indigenous Futurisms. Performing as Lady Xøk, she creates multimedia light and shadow installations for immersive experimental storytelling mixing electric and Mesoamerican instruments. She co-founded Electric Machete Studios, a Latinx Art + Music cultural production house. Past works include Dimensions of Indigenous in 2016 at Intermedia Arts; Petroglyphs and Borders as part of the inaugural 2018 artist-in-residence at The M–Minnesota Museum of American Art; Star Girl Clan in 2018 at In the Heart of the Beast PuppetLab Fellow; Decolonial Maya Constellation Maps in 2019 at Minnesota Center for Book Arts as part of the Jerome Mentorship Fellow; and ongoing installation performances developed in part by Redeye Theatre, New Native Theatre, Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop, Catalyst Arts, ArtShanty and current residency with New York-based theatre La MaMa. www.rebekahcrisanta.com

Fellowship Statement

My experimental interdisciplinary social practice (visual art, music, theatre, dance, literature, and puppetry) seeks to shift consciousness around immigration, borders, exodus and interconnectedness of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and shared and erased ancient histories of collective liberation. Rooted in Indigenous Futurisms, Lenca cosmovision of Managuara, Latinx artesenias of Mesoamerica, and liberation theology of El Salvador, I am interested in the intersection of Low Art, High Art and the Nepantla in-between spaces where God, ancestors, timelessness, and dreams live. I explore the threads of connection between the seen and unseen worlds. I work from a generative space of meditation, ancestor whispers, play, and somatic response. I use transdisciplinary methods to reconstruct into living form Lenca archeology, to document and reimagine my people’s unwritten ancient history for a new future where Central Americans in exodus, First Americans, have a basic human right to migration on Turtle Island, a land travelled for millennia.

Photo by Valerie Oliviero