Filmmakers

Originally from the Philippines, Syjuco moved to New York City in 2000 and worked in film distribution at Focus Features, booking the theatrical releases of independent, commercial, and Academy Award-winning films. In 2004, he took a leap of faith to pursue his passion: nonfiction filmmaking. In 2005, he produced the one-hour film Atrapado en la… Show more Injusticia, which was broadcast on Spanish national television. He developed it into the feature-length documentary, Give Up Tomorrow. The film was an ITVS co-production and commissioned by Nick Fraser for BBC’s Storyville, with support from the Sundance Documentary Film Program, CAAM, Tribeca Film Institute, Fledgling Fund, Bertha Foundation and BRITDOC, among others. To date it has broadcast in over 10 territories, including BBC, DR, SVT, Canal+ and as part of POV’s 25th anniversary season. In addition to being nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, Give Up Tomorrow has received recognition from the Grierson British Awards, Cinema Eye Honors, Amnesty International’s Media Awards, and the Puma Impact Award. Show less

Laura Green is a documentary director and editor based in San Francisco. She has directed, produced and edited five short documentaries, which played at numerous festivals, including Palm Springs Shortfest, Aspen Shortsfest, Sarasota Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, and Outfest. She edited True Son (2014), a feature length documentary,… Show more which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and the new documentary web-series The F Word. Green is also a lecturer at Stanford University, California College of the Arts, and the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. Show less

Rodney Evans has been making award-winning films for more than twenty years. He is the writer/director/producer of the feature film Brother to Brother, which won the Special Jury Prize in Drama at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. The film had its European premiere at The Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for two IFP Gotham Awards and… Show more four Independent Spirit Awards including Best First Film, Best First Screenplay, and Best Debut Performance for Anthony Mackie. His second feature-length screenplay, Day Dream, was the first place winner of the Newfest Screenplay competition. Evans has received funding from The Guggenheim Foundation, The Creative Capital Foundation, The NY State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), and ITVS. His second narrative feature, The Happy Sad, has played at more than thirty film festivals throughout the world and had its U.S. theatrical premiere in August 2013 at the IFC Center in NYC and the Sundance Sunset Cinema in Los Angeles. It was released in major cities in the U.S. throughout 2013 and was distributed on all major digital platforms through Sundance Artist Services and Cinedigm. Show less

Nicole Opper is an Emmy®-nominated filmmaker who directed and produced the feature documentary Off and Running, an Audience Favorite at Tribeca and winner of ten international awards including Best Documentary at Outfest and Best Documentary Screenplay at Silverdocs. The film was nationally broadcast on P.O.V. in 2010. She received a Fulbright… Show more Fellowship to direct Visitor’s Day which is supported by New York State Council on the Arts, Chicken & Egg Pictures and ITVS. She’s also produced films for the Discovery Channel and Here TV, and was selected for Filmmaker Magazine’s annual "25 New Faces of Independent Film." Nicole has taught filmmaking at Stanford University and San Francisco State University, among other schools. Show less

Shaleece is a documentary filmmaker based in Oakland, CA. She is the co-producer of the 2013 documentary film, The Genius of Marian, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on POV in 2014. Her 2010 documentary short, Old People Driving, premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS NewsHour as part of the… Show more Economist Film Project. In addition to her work as a director/producer, Shaleece is an instructor of video storytelling at the Berkeley Advanced Media Institute, a program of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. She is a 2015 Film Independent Documentary Lab Fellow, a 2012 Working Films (Reel Aging) fellow and a member of the Queer Producers Collective. Prior to starting her work in documentary film, Shaleece worked as an editorial photographer and radio producer and was a founding staff member of the national oral history project, StoryCorps. She is a graduate of the documentary film program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism Show less

Born in the Bronx and raised in New York City and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Thomas Allen Harris is a graduate of Harvard College with a degree in biology. His critically acclaimed documentary, É Minha Cara/That’s My Face (2001), premiered at the Toronto, Sundance, and Tribeca Film Festivals and won seven international awards, including the Prize of the… Show more Ecumenical Jury of Christian Churches at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival. A recipient of the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, CPB/PBS Producers and Sundance Directors Fellowships, Harris is currently a professor of media arts at Sarah Lawrence College. He worked as a producer for public television in New York prior to founding Chimpanzee Productions, Inc. Chimpanzee Productions is currently developing new projects, including a documentary entitled, Through a Len Darkly: The History of Black Photographers from 1840 to the Present, as well as a narrative feature entitled, Tears From Lagos. Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela is Harris’ third film to make its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and has won over five international awards and honors including the Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit Award Nomination, Best Documentary at the Pan African Film Festival, and the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking from the Roxbury Film Festival. Show less