Anna Samo was born in 1980 in Russia. On her first job in Moscow while scanning and coloring hand drawn animation, she witnessed how thousands of separated drawings put together, suddenly turn into a living character. She experienced the tickling feeling of surprise and wonder. This feeling has not left her ever since.

Samo studied animation in Russia and Germany. She was encouraged to create very personal work and to strive for her own authentic voice. As an independent filmmaker she uses a variety of analog animation techniques to create emotional and poetic work. Her films have been screened and won awards at highly acclaimed film festivals around the globe such as Anima Mundi, Krakow Film Festival, Full Frame, DOC NYC, Berlin Film Festival - Berlinale, Annecy Film Festival and Sundance among many others. Samo relocated to the USA in 2013. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Fellowship Statement

I look around and filter what I find through what's inside me. And while doing so I discover something I did not know before. I am inspired by clowns, poets and fools.

Animation is a super power! You can create anything you want – it just takes time. The time spent outside the studio is being condensed, changed through the time spent in the studio. Hours, days, months become pressed into the seconds of film-time. And like the hero of an old tale, who has to wear out seven pairs of iron shoes, I have to paint over thousands of pages and draw down hundreds of pencils before I can arrive at my destination. I don't know where I am heading, but I like walking.

Photo by Tom Bergmann

Stefani Saintonge is a Haitian-American filmmaker, educator and editor who won the juried and audience award at BlackStar Film Festival for her short film, Fucked Like A Star. Her work has screened at several festivals and institutions internationally including Edinburgh International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Hammer Museum and the Smithsonian National African American Museum. As a member of New Negress Film Society, she co-created their annual Black Women’s Film Conference. She has received support from SFFILM, Jerome Foundation and Bronx Arts Council and served as an artist in residence with Haiti Cultural Exchange. Her work as an editor has screened at Sundance Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Guggenheim Museum and PBS.

Fellowship Statement

The process of liberation fascinates me. Whether it's physical labor, spiritual awakenings or self-interrogation, my work investigates the minutia (and oftentimes the mundanity) of building a new world. It could be a spiritual plane where meditation yields new imaginings or an actual massive, rapid undoing. I am drawn to the repetitive physical acts that force growth. I will use this time to develop a feature film about the week leading up to the slave rebellion that would spark the Haitian Revolution.

Photo by Babas Denis

LaJuné McMillian is a new media artist, and creative technologist making art that integrates performance, virtual reality, and physical computing to question our current forms of communication. McMillian has had the opportunity to show and speak about their work at Pioneer Works, National Sawdust, Leaders in Software and Art, Creative Tech Week, and Art & Code’s Weird Reality. McMillian was previously the Director of Skating at Figure Skating in Harlem, where they integrated STEAM and figure skating to teach girls of color about movement and technology. They have continued their research on Blackness, movement, and technology during residencies and fellowships at Eyebeam, Pioneer Works, Abrons Arts Center, Barbarian Group, and Barnard College.

Fellowship Statement

As an artist, I leverage embodied and digital technologies to research and develop various artistic works across platforms (digital, and in person). During this Fellowship I plan to continue my work on The Black Movement Library. A library for Black people to learn about digital technologies in relation to Blackness, our movements, our histories, and our liberation.

Photo by Sarah O’Connell

Benjamin May’s directorial debut, The Legend of Swee’ Pea, premiered at DOC: NYC and played at over 40 festivals worldwide, winning five Best Documentary Feature awards and two Best Director awards. His second feature, Wet House, an immersive film about the largest harm reduction facility for chronic alcoholics in the US, is distributed by 1091Pictures and Saboteur Media. Ben's work has been funded by grants from the McKnight Foundation, St. Paul Cultural Star, and the Jerome Foundation.

Fellowship Statement

As a documentary filmmaker, I am most interested in subjects and environments we might consider strange or remote—not because they are inherently more interesting or offer more conflict—but because I believe we are all a lot more similar than we are different. Everyone is susceptible to abandonment, failure, and loss. And because film is a deeply intimate endeavor it is the ideal medium to probe our proximity, question our biases, and examine the constructions we take for granted.

Humans are robust, but life is fragile. Working as a neuroradiologist for the past ten years, I have learned that, despite our powerful tools to observe the nature of life, truth is elusive, and certainty is non-existent. As a physician and a filmmaker, I find this idea both terrifying and inspiring and it is the crux of my work.

Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich is a filmmaker and artist. Her work has screened all over the world including at the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of Art in New York and in Film Festivals such as True/False, New Orleans Film Festival, Doclisboa, and Blackstar Film Festival. She was named to Filmmaker Magazine's 2020 “25 New Faces of Independent Cinema List” and is the recipient of a 2020 San Francisco Film Society Rainin Grant, as well as a finalist in the 2020 Venice Film Festival’s prestigious film lab the Biennale Cinema College. She received a 2019 Rema Hort Mann Award, a 2019 UNDO Fellowship, a 2015 TFI Future Filmmaker Award, and a 2014 Princess Grace Award in film.

Fellowship Statement

I am interested in modes of filmmaking and remembering that are liberatory for black women. My work deconstructs the default conventions of representation that we have been taught, weaving together non-fiction, theatrical performance, narrative intervention, and fantasy. The result is a style of storytelling where the past is always present, and time is not linear but in fact a constant weave.

Photo by Dominick Lewis

Joua Lee Grande is a filmmaker, photographer and community educator whose goal to highlight underrepresented perspectives and communities drives her work. She produces documentaries and edits the news part-time at WCCO TV 4 News. She has produced short documentaries such as Legislating from Home and Laos Girls Teen Project. Grande was a 2019 Diverse Voices in Docs Fellow through Kartemquin Films and Community Film Workshop of Chicago. She is a member of collectives such as A-Doc and Brown Girls Doc Mafia and a community educator and worker. She teaches media production and related arts at the Saint Paul Neighborhood Network and other institutions throughout the Twin Cities. She is currently in early production for her first feature documentary Spirited.

Fellowship Statement

I believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth, and that storytelling serves as a tool to share versions of the truth. I utilize documentary filmmaking as a tool to elevate voices, perspectives and experiences from communities that are either underrepresented or misrepresented in the larger society. My work often pushes into topics that are deemed uncomfortable such as menstruation taboo and guest-daughter traditions. My goals are to build connection, draw out commonalities amidst human differences, and push viewers into places of discomfort so they can engage in conversations that ultimately lead to positive change. I am a big believer in contributing to a community that lifts others up to tell their own stories. So much of what I learn in my own journey to become a stronger filmmaker, I willingly share with others.

Cy Dodson, owner of Minneapolis-based, Triumph Pictures, is focused on producing award-winning documentary content. Dodson combines his use of cinematography and editing to craft compelling tales of the human spirit creating memorable, gripping productions. His latest film Say His Name: Five Days for George Floyd was commissioned by Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) for their 2020 Project, premiering in April 2021. His third film, Emmy-nominated Beneath the Ink (2018) hits on complex racial issues in his Ohio hometown that highlights human stories of forgiveness and redemption. The film won numerous jury and audience awards at festivals worldwide including DocEdge (Academy qualifying), BendFilm, and Palm Springs Shortfest. Conde Nast acquired the film for their GQ Stories platform and it was selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick. Dodson is also the recipient of a 2020 McKnight Media Artist Fellowship, administered by FilmNorth and funded by the McKnight Foundation.

Fellowship Statement

I am unassuming by nature, introverted even. My quiet personality allows me to connect with my subjects. They find the freedom to confide intimate stories with honesty and sincerity. My path to documentary filmmaking was not immediate, but now I feel it’s my purpose. For example, with the recent unrest in my neighborhood in Minneapolis, I was compelled to tell my community’s story with Say His Name. My duty as a documentary filmmaker is to continue be there, letting voices be heard in the name of social justice and reform. I seek out stories that are unique yet universal, that have multiple layers of complexity yet make a direct, personal connection to viewers that can be reflective and change perceptions. My responsibility is to exercise my craft––as a cinematographer and editor––in such a way that voices are heightened. Their voices, in turn, are my voice, and my art.

Photo by Mark Brown

Lyle Mitchell Corbine, Jr. is a filmmaker. His short films Shinaab and Shinaab, Part II premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 and 2019 and the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017 and 2018. He was supported at the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab and Directors Lab in 2017 and 2018. He has been a recipient of numerous grants and fellowships from the Sundance Institute, McKnight Foundation, Time Warner Foundation, Maryland Film Festival, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. His first feature, Wild Indian, will premiere in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Corbine is one of Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch for 2021.

Fellowship Statement

While I love making ambitious personal films like the Shinaab series and my first feature Wild Indian, I want to pursue making genre films that are accessible and for everyone. I am currently working on a number of both types of projects. Stay tuned...

Photo by Joel Feld

Daniel Chew and Micaela Durand have been collaborators for ten years since film at NYU. Latent in their films are issues of intimacy and connection, two feelings that are increasingly difficult to discern and cultivate in our technologically mediated present. For them, collaboration is one way of dealing with this alienated condition. It is also a political decision that not only acknowledges filmmaking as a collaborative effort, but also strives to move beyond the idea of an artistic genius with its attendant ideas around gender, race, and sexuality. Their work has been shown extensively in the U.S. and abroad including at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, MoMA PS1, White Columns, 47 Canal, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Parish Art Museum, and MoCA LA. In Spring 2020, they were fellows at MacDowell.

Fellowship Statement

We are currently finishing a trilogy of films that we describe as showing the internet without showing the internet. By this, we mean that instead of relying on literal translations of technology and social media, we strive to show how the internet makes us feel and how our digital selves and physical bodies are intimately intertwined in our current moment. The trilogy started with First (2019), a film that follows a teenage girl who interacts with friends and strangers, receiving messages both benign and threatening. The second, Negative Two (2020), revolves around a twenty-something gay man navigating loneliness and the city through gay hook-up apps. We are currently in post-production for 38 (2021) which tells the story of a 38-year-old woman who obsessively watches the social media accounts of the young woman who broke up her marriage.

Photo by Tony Jackson

Nathan Yungerberg is a Brooklyn-based Afrosurrealist and storyteller whose plays have been developed or featured by The Cherry Lane Theatre, JAG Productions, LAByrinth Theater, Lorraine Hansberry Theater, The National Black Theatre, The Fire This Time Festival, 48 Hours in Harlem, The Lark, Roundabout Theatre Company, The Playwrights’ Center, Crowded Fire Theater, and The Bushwick Starr. He is one of seven Black playwrights commissioned by The New Black Fest for HANDS UP: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments published by Concord Theatricals, and adapted by BBC radio. Nathan’s play Esai’s Table was featured in The Cherry Lane Theatre’s 2017 Mentor Project (Mentored by Stephen Adly Guirgis). Awards, honors, and residencies: 2021 National Black Theatre of Harlem I AM SOUL residency, Blue Ink Playwriting Award (Finalist), 2019 Djerassi Resident Artist, The 2016 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (Semifinalist), Ken Davenport 10-Minute Play Festival (Winner). Nathan is also a writer for Sesame Street.

Fellowship Statement

My work is driven by my journey of creating a black identity. I was adopted at two weeks old and raised by white parents in Wisconsin. My innovation is rooted in investing less in what hasn’t been done before and more into what is not done enough. For generations, the negative portrayals of black bodies have demonized and desecrated a culture filled with light. I seek to share the radiance and the heart of the Black soul in a way that is aspirational and illuminating. I am currently working on a play called Sweetwater: The Gospel of Iman for a residency at the National Black Theatre in Harlem. Sweetwater follows a brotherhood of six Black gay men through the 1980s AIDS crisis in New York City who call themselves the New Apostles, and their god is a god called joy, or resilience, a god of tactics, a god called tomorrow.

Photo by Robert Feliciano