Operating on a firm belief that reality has been messed with since people started telling stories and writing histories, SARAH EMA FRIEDLAND’s work is rooted in non-fiction but often uses the vocabularies of speculative fiction and fantasy to tweak and re-imagine reality. Friedland’s works have been supported by grants and fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Paul Newman Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Palestine American Research Center, the LABA House of Study, and the MacDowell Colony. She was named one of the “Top 10 Independent Filmmakers to Watch” by the Independent Magazine, is a recipient of the Paul Robeson award from the Newark Museum, and was nominated for a New York Emmy. Her work has been written about in the New York Times, Variety, The Brooklyn Rail, and Filmmaker Magazine. She has published essays and reviews about film in Filmmaker Magazine and the Millenium Film Journal. She is currently working on a feature documentary titled Lyd, which she is co-directing with Rami Younis, and which was selected to pitch at the DocCorner Market at the Cannes Film Festival and Days of Cinema in Ramallah. Friedland received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and the International School of Film and Television in Cuba and her MFA from the Integrated Media Art Program at Hunter College. Friedland is a member of the Meerkat Media Collective and the Director of the MDOCS Storyteller’s Institute at Skidmore College where she is also a Teaching Professor in the MDOCS Program.
Travis Wood 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, Rooftop films, an NY EMMY award, and featured on NoBudge, Booooooom and Directors Notes. He is a current member of the Meerkat Media Artist Collective and part of the commercial directing team at Farm League.
Claudia Zamora-Valencia works at the intersection of ethnography, documentary art, and community organizing. She is a third-year PhD student in anthropology at Temple University and her research interests include labor markets, infrastructure, the state, and nature. Claudia’s doctoral project focuses on the development of the Pacific coast of Oaxaca and the role of mega-projects like the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Interoceanic Corridor in shaping relationships between local communities, capital, and the environment. She earned an MFA in Integrated Media and Arts from CUNY Hunter College, and since 2012, she has worked with organizations that advocate for immigrant and labor rights in New York City. She received a BA in anthropology from the Universidad de las Américas-Puebla and graduated cum laude. Her undergraduate thesis received an honorary mention from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
Claudia has published in academic journals and her personal and collaborative films have screened at Ambulante Film Festival, Society for Visual Anthropology, Camden International Film Festival, DOC NYC, Latin American Studies Association, Single Frame, UnionDocs, Workers Unite Film Festival, PBS Digital Studios, among others. She is a member of the New York based Meerkat Media Collective and a fellow at the Society for Visual Anthropology/Robert Lemelson Foundation, where she is conducting a participatory research and art project with immigrant women working in NYC building trades. Claudia grew up in Oaxaca and lives and works in Philadelphia and NYC.
Chloe Gbai is an Emmy-nominated producer and creative exec on the Original Documentary Films team at Netflix. She joined Netflix from IF/Then Shorts at Field of Vision, a program that identifies and supports original, standalone short documentaries made by filmmakers working in and representing their communities. Previously, as the POV Shorts and Streaming Producer, she launched POV Shorts, which in its first season earned a documentary short Oscar nomination, two Emmy nominations, and an IDA Awards nomination for Best Short Form Series. She is a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, a 2020 Impact Partners Producing Fellow, a DOC NYC New Leader, and a member-in-residence of the Meerkat Media Collective.
Selected program stills from Speculation and Fantasy in Documentary. Courtesy of the filmmaker.