Jenni Olson is a writer, archivist, historian, consultant, and non-fiction filmmaker based in Berkeley, California. She co-founded the pioneering LGBT website PlanetOut.com. Her two feature-length essay films — The Joy of Life (2005) and The Royal Road (2015) — premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Her work as an experimental filmmaker and her expansive personal collection of LGBTQ film prints and memorabilia were acquired in April 2020 by the Harvard Film Archive, and her reflection on the last 30 years of LGBT film history was published as a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema from Oxford University Press in 2021. In 2020, she was named to the Out Magazine Out 100 list. In 2021, she was recognized with the prestigious Special TEDDY Award at the Berlin Film Festival. She also campaigned to have a barrier erected on the Golden Gate Bridge to prevent suicides.
Nancy Kates is an independent filmmaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She directed Regarding Susan Sontag, a feature documentary about the late essayist, novelist, director and activist. Through archival footage, interviews, still photographs and images from popular culture, the film reflects the boldness of Sontag’s work and the cultural importance of her thought, and received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Sundance Documentary Film Program.
Beirut: The Last Home Movie is a 1987 documentary film directed by Jennifer Fox. It follows the life of Gaby Bustros and her family, who live in a 200-year-old mansion in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. The Bustros family, one of the noble families of Beirut, remain in their ancestral home despite the endless war that surrounds them.
Jennifer Lynn Siebel Newsom is an American documentary filmmaker and actress who is the current First Lady of California as the wife of Governor Gavin Newsom. She is the director, writer, and producer of the film Miss Representation (2011), which premiered in the documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival. The film examines how the media has underrepresented women in positions of power. The Mask You Live In (2015), her second film which she wrote, produced and directed, scrutinizes American society's definition of masculinity.
Debra Chasnoff was an American documentary filmmaker and activist whose films address progressive social justice issues. Her production company GroundSpark produces and distributes films, educational resources and campaigns on issues ranging from environmental concerns to affordable housing to preventing prejudice.
Lindy DeKoven is a novelist, television executive, producer, and California state commissioner. She was executive vice president of NBC overseeing movies and miniseries and then served as an executive producer at Paramount/CBS where she developed the comedy, Listen Up for CBS Television as well as, television pilots, miniseries, and made-for-TV movies.
Thomas Allen Harris is a critically acclaimed, interdisciplinary artist who explores family, identity, and spirituality in a participatory practice. Since 1990, Harris has remixed archives from multiple origins throughout his work, challenging hierarchy within historical narratives through the use of pioneering documentary and research methodologies that center vernacular image and collaboration. He is currently working on a new television show, Family Pictures USA, which takes a radical look at neighborhoods and cities of the United States through the lens of family photographs, collaborative performances, and personal testimony sourced from their communities..
Kimberlee Acquaro is an American filmmaker and photojournalist. Acquaro 's work covers human and civil rights, racial and gender justice. She has been nominated for an Academy Award and won an Emmy for Best Documentary. She is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in Film and the Pew Fellowship in International Journalism, Otis College of Art and Design's LA Artist Residency and an Emerging Curator's Fellowship.
Tami Kashia Gold is a documentary filmmaker, visual artist and educator. She is also a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York in the Department of Film and Media Studies.
Crime After Crime is a 2011 award-winning documentary film directed by Yoav Potash about the case of Deborah Peagler, an incarcerated victim of domestic violence whose case was taken up by pro bono attorneys through The California Habeas Project.
The Mask You Live In is a 2015 documentary film written, directed, and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. It premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The film explores what Newsom perceives to be harmful notions about masculinity in mainstream American culture. The film addresses similar themes on identity as her 2011 documentary Miss Representation, such as the impact of gender socialization and gender representation.
Svetlana Cvetko is an American cinematographer and film director. She is most notable for being the cinematographer of several critically acclaimed documentaries including: Oscar winning Inside Job (2010), Oscar nominated Facing Fear (2010), and Sundance US Documentary Special Jury Prize-winning Inequality For All (2013). In addition, she was the first cinematographer on films such as Oscar winning OJ: Made In America and Sundance documentary Miss Representation.
Miss America is a documentary film directed by Lisa Ades that chronicle the Miss America pageant from its very beginnings in 1921 to the present-day pageant.
Jennifer Phang is an American filmmaker, most known for her feature films Advantageous (2015) and Half-Life (2008). Advantageous premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, winning a Special Jury Award for Collaborative Vision, and was based on her award-winning short film of the same name. Half-Life premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and won "Best Film" awards at a number of film festivals including the Gen Art Film Festival, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival as well an "Emerging Director Award" at the Asian American International Film Festival.
Johnny Symons is a documentary filmmaker focusing on LGBT cultural and political issues. He is a professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University, where he runs the documentary program and is the director and co-founder of the Queer Cinema Project. He received his BA from Brown University and his MA in documentary production from Stanford University. He has served as a Fellow in the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program.
Lana Wilson is an American filmmaker. She directed the feature documentaries After Tiller, The Departure, and Miss Americana, as well as the two-part documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields. The first two films were nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary.
Women in documentary film describes the role of women as directors, writers, performers, producers, and other film industry professions. According to a 2017 study by San Diego University's Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, women make up around thirty percent of the population of people working in the documentary film industry, worldwide. In a separate study on the employment of women in indie films, the Center found that overall fewer woman directed independent films were screened at film festivals but that a higher percentage of woman directed documentary films were screened, at 8 films versus 13 documentary films directed by men. In an October 2015 Annenberg study, women documentarians in countries other than the U.S. were 40 percent likely to be “helmers” as opposed to 30 percent likely in the U.S. The study counted films with multiple countries involved “as other countries” but if the U.S. was involved it wasn't counted as “other countries.”
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a 2019 American drama film directed and produced by Joe Talbot in his directorial debut. He wrote the screenplay with Rob Richert and the story with Jimmie Fails, on whose life it is partly based. It stars Fails, Jonathan Majors, Tichina Arnold, Rob Morgan, Mike Epps, Finn Wittrock and Danny Glover.
Kimberlee Bassford is an independent documentary filmmaker from Honolulu, Hawai‘i. In 2005, she founded Making Waves Films LLC, which is a documentary production company. She advocates for gender equity and diversity in films and television. Most of her work focuses on Asian American women and young girls, and her films actively seek to correct underrepresentation of those groups in the media.
Regina K. Scully is an American film producer and philanthropist. Scully is the founder of the Artemis Rising Foundation, an organization which produces documentary and narrative feature films focused on social justice issues. She has produced documentaries including Miss Representation (2011), The Invisible War (2012), The Hunting Ground (2015) and Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018). She has been nominated for two Primetime Emmy awards.
