NAIMA RAMOS-CHAPMAN

Naima Ramos-Chapman works to tell stories of transformation and understated bravery by rendering the juxtaposition of psycho-spiritual realities we can not see alongside the normalized brutalities “hiding” in everyday life.

Their first short, And Nothing Happened, explored the psychological aftermath of a sexual assault and premiered at the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival. Their second short, Piu Piu, a meditation on frontier justice and victimhood ontology, premiered at Blackstar Film Festival in 2018. In 2017, Naima became a Sundance Institute Screenwriter Intensive Fellow. In 2018, they wrote, directed, acted, and edited for the Peabody award-winning Random Acts of Flyness (HBO). In 2020, as part of a multi-media installation produced by Aljazeera contrast, Naima wrote and directed still here, a virtual reality experience about the obstacles black women face who re-enter society after being kidnapped and traumatized by the prison industrial complex. It premiered in the new frontiers section of the Sundance Film Festival. In 2020, they also co-produced, co-produced, and story edited the tv series betty (HBO), a coming-of-age story of a diverse group of young women navigating their lives through the predominantly male world of skateboarding.

Naima is currently in the metaphorical woods developing several projects in the docu-narrative hybrid space that center BIPOC femmes taking back their power after surviving hierarchal abuses internalized by the dominant social order of white supremacy and toxic masculinity.

JOSEPH LEE ANDERSON

Joseph Lee Anderson is an actor, writer, director and Kansas City-transplant based in LA. He has appeared on Young Rock, Harriet, S.W.A.T., American Soul, Timeless, and much more.

Joseph is also a filmmaker, most known for directing The Jog, a short film which screened at many film festivals including South by South West!

darol olu kae

Darol Olu Kae is an artist and filmmaker from and based in Los Angeles. Kae’s artistic practice disrupts conventional narrative structures of storytelling through its dynamic treatment of sound and image. His collaborative, research-based approach to art and filmmaking grounds itself in the precarious, yet generative power of the black experience in America.

Kae's film work has screened at festivals and institutions worldwide including BlackStar Film Festival, Camden International Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, MoCA Los Angeles, and Sundance Film Festival. He was awarded the Pardino d’oro for Best International Short Film in 2020 at the Locarno Film Festival for his film i ran from it and was still in it. And in 2021, i ran from it… earned Special Jury Recognition for Poetry at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival. Kae recently completed his next short-form project, Keeping Time, and is developing his debut feature, Without a Song, with Arthur Jafa's film production company SunHaus.

dumas haddad

Dumas Haddad grew up in London, whose work elicits powerful uses of analogies and explores the reframing of diaspora identities. Following his 2019 film on fatherhood and mental health “Fathers” his follow up “The Gift” aired the same year on Film 4. He has since partnered up with Letitia Wright to co-direct the short “Things I Never Told My Father”. Haddad is currently developing his debut feature film, a Coming of Age/Sci-Fi film titled Fishbait.

mohammad gorjestani

Mohammad Gorjestani is an Iranian-born Director, Photographer, and Multidisciplinary Artist. Working between fiction and non-fiction forms, his distinct aesthetic and point of view emerge from the intersection of the cultures and communities he was raised in.

In 2014, he was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. His films have received recognition, including the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW, The Tribeca Film Festival “X” Prize, and “Video of the Year” at the Vimeo Awards. Most notably, his film EXIT 12 won six Academy Award qualifying festivals, capped off by an acquisition by Fox Searchlight.. His branded and commercial projects for brands like Beats by Dre, CashApp, and Square have earned awards at Cannes Lion, D&AD, The Clios, The One Show, and others. His work has been featured in The New York Times, DAZED, Teen Vogue, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic.

Mohammad is the artist behind 1-800 Happy Birthday, a voicemail project and upcoming exhibition honoring the Black and Brown lives killed by Police. Mohammad is a founding member of The Adachi Project, a first-of-its-kind art and media partnership between Even/Odd and the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office.

blair barnes

Blair Barnes is a Curator at Vimeo and 1/4 of the team behind Staff Picks. Prior to Vimeo, Blair worked on the creative and production teams of Wieden+Kennedy and VIRTUE, the creative agency by VICE. Before and between all of this, he's contributed to festival winning and selected films, alongside other shortlisted and featured work.