Thair Thursday (he/him) is a trans/queer artist, experimental moving-image maker, educator, and curator. He is an award-winning animator who has screened work globally, was a '23-'25 Jerome Fellow, and is a current MFA candidate at UIUC class of '28. When he isn't making art, Thursday teaches at MCAD, hosts the local show Weird Stuff Only, and spends time with his husband Elliot and their two cats Ms Wendy and Mr Lou.

CC Stanhill founded Studio Mirthrite Animation in 2015. Their films explore themes of queerness and fluidity. At least, that's what they think they're exploring. It's mostly weird shapes moving around in fancy patterns. They were once described by a prominent person as "quite a lucid sort of fellow."

Shafrin Islam is an interdisciplinary artist and illustrator from Bangladesh currently based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Working across illustration, experimental animation, film, poetry, installation, and sound, they explore themes of identity, time, language, and the intersections between natural and imagined worlds through geographical mythology.

Through mixed-media storytelling, Shafrin challenges traditional narratives, blending tactile materials and digital techniques to create worlds that feel both intimate and expansive. Their work invites wonder, playfulness, and introspection, revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary while expanding the boundaries of storytelling.

Sishir Bommakanti is an illustrator, painter and animator from Minneapolis, MN. His work ranges from the surreal, mythological, absurd and experimental. Working in a range of mediums, from painting, drawing animation, 3D, interactive, photography and other experimental mediums. 

His work is a commentary and reaction to the overload and burnout of a society that's been caught in a spiral of endless feed of information and noise. Using mythological characters and fantastical, surreal settings, he builds an entire new world to process and relay our age of informational overproduction.

Mariah Hanson is a storyteller and filmmaker who uses screenwriting, cinematography, and editing to forge meaningful connections with her collaborators. Based in downtown Minneapolis, she dreams of working with local musicians to create lush and distinctive music videos. With an eye for design and a spirit of playfulness, Mariah strives to build film and music video sets that spark creativity and result in work that feels profoundly personal and genuinely unique.

Ryan Stopera is an award winning writer, director, photographer, and producer based in Minneapolis.  A self taught artist, he began his career working with individuals experiencing homelessness, children and families, and foster care youth, as well as in program development and affordable housing development.  He began documenting protests after the recession in 2008.  Ryan’s photos and films helped elevate narratives not seen in the mainstream media, and catalyzed his passion for documentary and narrative storytelling.  His background in social work and community organizing, and his relationships across communities make collaboration essential to his work, whether in creative projects such as filmmaking, or making space for connection, such as producing community events or program development.  Ryan’s latest short film serenity won the Audience Award at Twin Cities Film Fest and Best Short Film at Portugal Indie Film Festival in 2023.

B. Wilson, alternatively known as brilyahnt Peace, is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and community organizer whose work explores the intersections of identity, storytelling, and social justice. With a background in curation, education and equity-driven leadership, they use art as a medium for liberation, healing, and cultural preservation. Their practice spans curating events, writing, performance, and multimedia projects that center Black and brown experiences, disability justice, and LGBTQIA+ narratives.

Ashli Henderson was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN, and is renowned for her talent in delivering raw, authentic comedy that can effortlessly roast a crowd. Her journey into stand-up comedy began in 2016, inspired by her natural ability to be funny with friends and family. Ashli has been featured multiple times on platforms like The Shade Room, World Star Hip Hop, and various social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

She has hosted and performed alongside notable acts such as Just Neesh, Bill Bellamy, Chris Tucker, WatchJazzy, B. Simone, DC Youngfly, Tyler Craig, Kenny Howell, Henry Welch, and many others. Ashli's comedy often explores her experiences as a single mother, her identity within the LGBTQ+ community, and her family life. Her high energy, unique style, and versatility have made her one of the most cherished comedians in the country.

Rumay is a visual artist that has been drawn to the art of storytelling that blends the real with what could be. Born and raised all over the country and world, he draws inspiration from all the walks of life he’s traveled through.

Ibimina Dominique Thompson is a multi-hyphenate artist based in the Midwest and New York. She creates work that centers Black transness and looks to remove a fictional veil of Maya created by whiteness on art. They were recently recognized among “Theater workers to watch” by American Theater magazine.

Joua Lee Grande (she/they) is a filmmaker and community connector whose work explores complex societal issues through raw, personal stories. Her work has received recognition and support from institutions across the nation including Jerome Foundation, PBS, Center for Asian American Media, ITVS, the Daytime Emmys and more. Joua has spent over a decade as a nonprofit community worker, organizer and educator. Her work reflects her passion for community, storytelling and social change.

Prakshi Malik is an award-winning filmmaker working collaboratively to make films that sway our collective imaginations. Prakshi’s films like BAAHAR and EMBERS have screened at film festivals internationally. Her editing work includes an Emmy-nominated short documentary, an award-winning narrative feature, experimental and dance films, and a web series on biking for REI. Prakshi grew up in Delhi, India and is based in Minneapolis, Mni Sota Makoce, on Dakota and Anishinaabe land.

Olu Famule is a Nigerian American visual artist and filmmaker dedicated to amplifying underrepresented voices. He is the Co-Founder and Festival Director of Cinefilmu, a QTBIPOC film festival focused on decolonizing the film industry, and co-founder of TDM5, a visual arts incubator supporting Black artists in the Twin Cities by bridging gaps in resources and opportunities. Influenced by his Yoruba upbringing, Olumide actively sees every project as an opportunity to carry the torch passed down from his ancestors.

Maya Washington is an award-winning narrative and documentary filmmaker, actress, author, poet, and visual artist. Through the Banks of the Red Cedar, about her father Vikings football Legend Gene Washington aired on Big Ten Network and is currently available on PBS platforms including PBS Documentaries Channel through Amazon Prime. Her companion memoir, Through the Banks of the Red Cedar: My Father and the Team that Changed the Game, is an Amazon Editor's Pick for Best History, and was a 2023 Finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. Maya directed episodes of the Fox series “The Killer Next Door” and History Channel’s “I Was There,” for Committee Films, and PBS Kids series Black SciGirls. Her MSPIFF and other festival award-winning narrative short, White Space, (starring ABC Family Switched at Birth’s Ryan Lane) about a deaf performance poet aired on network television and was nominated for a Black Reel Award.

Serena Violet Hodges is a documentary cinematographer and filmmaker. Serena has worked on series including High on the Hog (Netflix) and Asian Americans (PBS). And provided cinematography for feature documentaries Food & Country (Sundance 2023) and Following Harry (Tribeca 2024). Serena is a recipient of the Jerome Foundation Video and Digital production grant (2023) for their personal documentary, Muncie Didu. Serena was a Visual Communications Armed with a Camera fellow in 2020. Her first fiction short, Mango Baby, premiered at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Islander Film Festival and Seattle Asian American Film Festival and was distributed on Alaska Airlines.

Nkaujoua Xiong is a Hmong cinematographer, director, and photographer based out of Milwaukee, WI, with a heart for human-focused documentaries. She specializes in cinematography and lighting and currently works on local productions as a director, cinematographer, grip, and production assistant. She strives to discover and share stories, especially those highlighting the Hmong, immigrant, and BIPOC experiences.

Hasinat is a storyteller focused on faith and family who is originally from Kabul, Afghanistan. She arrived in the United States as a refugee, separated from half of her family. While studying to become a nurse and learn the English language, she was recruited by her friend, entrepreneur and producer Zia Qazizada, to learn documentary directing in a months-long program, Rumee, led by local filmmakers and Muslim storytellers. Her autobiographical short, A RARE FRUIT, emerged from this initiative.

James Christenson is a third-generation Mexican-American whose documentaries explore how new beliefs and technology meet with traditional ways of dealing with crises. In 2014, The New York Times OpDocs commissioned his co-directed short RUNNING ON FUMES IN NORTH DAKOTA, leading to a feature documentary about his birth state’s oil boom and bust history, THE BAKKEN. As producer, he and director Brennan Vance participated in the 2016 IFP Narrative Edit Labs for their feature, THE MISSING SUN. As D.O.P, editor, and producer, his 2017 doc short about cell phone data tracking, HARVEST premiered at Aspen Shortsfest before its digital debut with The Atlantic in 2018. In 2020, he won the If/Then Shorts - American Midwest pitch competition for his solo-directed documentary about the immigration courts system, TO BE RECONCILED, which premiered at Full Frame in 2021 in association with Field of Vision. He continues to develop it into a feature length film in the U.S. and Mexico.

Sequoia Hauck (they/them) is a two-spirit, queer, Anishinaabe and Hupa filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist and director who creates work that indigenizes the process of art-making. Their work weaves Indigenous epistemologies, indigiqueer identity and the possibilities of Indigenous futurism. They graduated from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities with a B.A. in American Indian Studies. Sequoia co-founded alongside Adrienne Zimiga-January and Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha: Mni Giizhik Theatre Ensemble. Sequoia is directing and producing their company’s inaugural show an all Ojibwe rom-com Niizh by Joelle Peter May 9-18, 2025.  Sequoia is a 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellow.

Ajuawak Kapashesit is an actor, writer, and director for stage and screen. His acting credits include Indian Horse (2017), Once Upon a River (2019), Indian Road Trip (2020), Bad Blood (CityTV/Netflix), and Outlander (Starz/Sony). As a filmmaker, his films have been supported by Firelight Media, CAAM, PBS, and the Sundance Institute. He is an alumnus of the CBC Actors Conservatory at the Canadian Film Centre (2019), a Vision Maker Media Shorts Fellow (2020), a 4th World Indigenous Media Fellow (2021), and currently a FilmSparks Fellow (2025). Ajuawak is Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), Cree, and Jewish.

Through public art collaborations across Minnesota, Moira Villiard (pronounced "Miri") is a multidisciplinary artist with a mixed Indigenous and settler heritage who uses art to uplift underrepresented narratives, explore the nuance of society’s historical community intersections, and promote community healing spaces. The outputs of her work include murals, community spaces and programming, exhibits, installations, animated light projections, film, and digital design. 

Moira grew up on the Fond du Lac Reservation in Cloquet, MN and is a Fond du Lac direct descendent. She currently works as a freelance consultant, designer, speaker, and grant-writer and is the lead artist behind organizing the Chief Buffalo Memorial Mural site in Duluth.

Oogie_Push is from the Meskwaki Nation near Tama, Iowa. She is currently creating on Dakota Territory, aka the Twin Cities. She is an actor, playwright, storyteller, dancer, Meskwaki twine bag weaver, production assistant, and award-winning documentarian. Follow her current adventures on Instagram @oogie_push and you can see the content she creates on Youtube @oogie_push. She is currently the Native American Artist in Residence at the MN Historical Society, and the Indigenous Initiatives Specialist at The Walker Arts Center.

Sadie Luetmer has worked as a journalist, researcher, videographer, and multimedia creator since 2011. In 2017 she began applying her skills to documentary cinematography and filmmaking. Her work has appeared in outlets including The Progressive, Al Jazeera English, AJ+, Democracy Now, Unicorn Riot, and More Perfect Union, as well as a number of documentary films and artist collaborations including Finite: The Climate of Change and the Anthropocene River Project.

Luetmer aims to ground her storytelling work in a commitment to interrogating and redistributing agency, access, and impact in cultural production. This has led her to work in community with organizers, artists, journalists, and researchers to explore the strategic and cultural roles of media production in struggling for a more just world. She takes on documentary film as a practice of both radical listening and complex labor, inherently a process of collaboration between filmmakers and subjects to generate truthful representations of social, material, and natural worlds.

 Luetmer completed an undergraduate degree in International Human Rights at the University of Minnesota and a Master of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology at the Central European University.

D.A. Bullock is an award-winning filmmaker and social practice artist in the field of story-based organizing. His films have been featured at national and international festivals including Toronto International Film Festival & Chicago International Film Festival; winner of Best Film at Urbanworld Film Festival.

In 2011 Bullock founded Bully Creative Shop, a feature film, documentary, media arts and digital content social enterprise. Bullock is a 2014 McKnight IFP Media Artist Fellow, 2015 MN State Arts Board Grant recipient, 2016 Intermedia Arts / City of Minneapolis Creative Citymaking Artist, 2017 Bush Fellowship recipient and a 2022-2024 Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellow.

Bullock is formerly a faculty instructor co-director of HECUA’s Making Media, Making Change program. He has recently worked as the Storyteller in Residence for Pillsbury United Communities and as a Narrative Strategist with Reclaim The Block. His cinematography work can be seen currently in the ARRAY Releasing documentary film VANISHING PEARLS available on Netflix.

Nadia Shaarawi is a filmmaker and videographer dedicated to storytelling with social impact. A 2023 Docs in Action Film Fund recipient, she is directing TJ United, a labor documentary on Trader Joe’s workers.

From 2021 to 2022, she worked as a multimedia journalist for BLCK Press, covering policing, environmental justice, labor, and housing. Her work has been featured in Sahan Journal, Unicorn Riot, More Perfect Union, and the documentary The People’s Way. Now a Producer and Cinematographer at Line Break Media, she has contributed to advancing advocacy campaigns, supporting local short films, and launching grassroots political candidates.

She holds a B.A. in Strategic Communications with a minor in Social Justice and is an alum of HECUA’s Making Media, Making Change program, where she studied under D.A. Bullock, Joua Lee Grande, and Erin Walsh. In 2021, in partnership with Media Justice, she contributed to Copaganda Clapback, a media literacy curriculum focused on misinformation and strategies to combat it.

Lorenzo Serna (they/them) is a Chicane queer journalist, documentarian, and creator who’s been on the frontlines of multiple international movements. From the streets of New York City to the rural plains of Standing Rock, they’ve organized processes and assets to coordinate media coverage of mass mobilizations by creating horizontal workflows and non-hierarchical methods of content creation – often in the middle of conflict zones.

Serna is a co-founder of Unicorn Riot, where they spent five years of their professional media career sharing and teaching frontline live video workflows, and the importance of centering frontline voices.

 Now the Director of Tactical Media at the NDN Collective, Serna continues to work on decolonizing media and pushing oral storytelling in live video productions through nonextractive media methods centered around consent.

 They hold a Masters of Arts and a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of North Dakota where they studied creative writing and narrative construction. Their decisions and actions are rooted in their gratitude and knowledge for all of those who came before them, who fought for them, in hopes of leaving a better world for the next generations.

Medina’s poetic visions preserve and recognize tender living migrant memories, fragmented identities due to displacement, and the haunting revelations of our dreams, grounded in reverence for migrant mothers who flee violence towards safety and care. His films were presented at Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, Reykjavik International Film Festival, Provincetown International Film Festival, and many more. Beyond the traditional means of distribution, Medina intentionally screens at accessible communal spaces, parking lots, and gardens for community. Recognitions include The Apichatpong Weerasethakul Playlab, The UFO Film Lab supported by BAM, The Jerome Fellowship, The Jerome Media Production Grant, and The McKnight Fellowship among others. His documentary projects are available on PBS.

Nolan Regan Morice is one of the founders of Line Break Media, a mission-driven production company based in the Twin Cities that crafts stories into powerful instruments for change. On set, he is most often the director of photography and/or Steadicam operator. He also operates a local equipment rental house, Midcity Production Supply.

Reyna Rios-Starr is a multi-hyphenate creative whose work spans acting, producing, and writing. Born in Gómez Palacio, Durango, Mexico, and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, she grew up in a family that instilled in her resilience and an unwavering work ethic values that continue to shape her approach to life and creativity. As someone who is bicultural, themes of identity naturally seep into her work, influencing the stories she tells and the characters she brings to life.

Tommy Franklin is a Minneapolis based filmmaker, writer, producer, creator of Weapon of Choice Podcast and Special Menu Productions. His documentary You Don’t Know My Name, currently in production, has received support from Sundance, ITVS, Firelight Media, Catapult Film Fund, The Marshall Project, The Just Trust, Jerome Foundation, and others. Tommy made four narrative short films, and he collaborates in grassroots organizing communities to produce nonfiction content he believes in. A survivor of incarceration (born in prison and having served time in adulthood), Franklin works along creative culture lines to radically reimagine power structures, focusing on Black liberation. 

Cici Yixuan Wu is a writer, director and producer from Zhengzhou, China. Her background is in architecture and design; after working two years as a set decorator, she joined her husband and filmmaking partner Sebastian Schnabel to run their company and produce fiction and documentary films together. She's passionate about film projects created in dialogue with the community. In 2022, Schnabel and Wu produced a short documentary on clean transportation funded by The Redford Center, which has been featured in publications and events nationwide including Forbes, StarTribune and Climate Week NYC. Wu is a 2024 FilmNorth Inclusive and Socially Conscious Filmmaking Lab Fellow and serves on the selection team of the EDU Film Festival.

Sebastian Schnabel is an immigrant writer-director, born and raised in rural Germany. Together with his wife and filmmaking partner Cici Yixuan Wu, Schnabel runs MindTwist Studio – a production company that uses character-driven storytelling to create positive social change. Their films have screened worldwide: “The Flour That Made Us'' was nominated for the Shibuya Diversity Award at the 2022 Short Shorts Film Festival in Tokyo. In the same year, Wu and Schnabel created a short documentary with The Redford Center, for which he received two Upper Midwest Emmy® Nominations. His work has been featured in Forbes, StarTribune, MPR News, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Climate Week NYC. Schnabel is a 2024. FilmNorth Inclusive and Socially Conscious Filmmaking Lab Fellow and a Short Film Programmer at Twin Cities Film Festival.

Reilly Adeline Miller (any pronouns) is a 26 year old, multidisciplinary artist-educator-schemer that lives in their beloved south Minneapolis. Reilly holds a bachelor’s degree in Gender, Women, and Sexuality studies with a minor in [photographic and ceramic] art from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Reilly organizes intimate public activations above— and under— ground. In January of 2020, they co-founded an educational analog project, DRKRM MPLS, in Southeast Minneapolis. Now they serve as the community engagement and studio coordinator and teach fellow, emerging artists how to hand develop and process their own analog film. Reilly has spent significant time in West Germany, in the cities of Cologne and Münster, learning from mentors and friends how to throw clay, survive within global beaurocratic systems, and how to love with humility. If she is not DJing in her bedroom, making new images, or shaping clay, she might be trying to finish a book or imagine futures of collaboration and interdependency.

Drew Arrieta is a documentary photographer and visual artist, working at the intersections of resilience, solidarity, and human connection through photography and interdisciplinary storytelling. They combine photography with materials like textiles and collage to tell layered stories—ones that challenge the usual narratives and create room for imagining different, more connected futures.. Rooted in community engagement, their work uses photography as a tool for witnessing and amplification. Arrieta’s work has been featured in NBC News, Vogue, and the Columbia Journalism Review. They are the recipient of the 2024 Minnesota Book Arts and Jerome Book Arts Residency, the 2023 and 2024 Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Individuals Grant, and the 2024 Urban-Rural Solidarity Artist Grant.

Sara A. Osman is a legal advocate, documentary filmmaker, and Somali cultural practitioner from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is a co-founder and current Director of Creative Initiatives for The Qalanjo Project, a Somali cultural organization and creative arts studio in Minneapolis that promotes cultural production, community archival work, and grassroots social change through the arts. Themes of home, belonging, and cultural preservation are central to her work. Sara is a lifelong community organizer and anti-racist advocate who has worked extensively on migration and human rights issues across multiple regions, including the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. She is driven by a passion for reimagining narratives of displacement and belonging, especially for Black/Muslim communities worldwide. Her legal and creative interests lie in how cultural and legal frameworks interact, how policies shape identities and narratives, and how storytelling, in turn, can serve as a form of advocacy and resistance.

W. Geedi is a Somali writer, filmmaker, producer, and thinker from Minneapolis, MN. A former community organizer and teacher, her work revolves around Somali life and history, surveillance, and themes of dis/connection. Geedi’s passion for justice, Somalinimo, speculative fiction, and spirituality inform all aspects of her work.

Rosy Simas (Seneca, Heron clan) is a transdisciplinary and dance artist. Simas’ knowledge of her Hodinöšyö:nih family and lineage underpins her relationship to culture and history—stored in her body—expressed through her work—of moving people, images, and objects that she makes for stage and installation. Simas’ work weaves personal and collective identity themes with family, sovereignty, equality, and healing. Simas’ works for stage and installations have toured through Turtle Island. Simas is a Doris Duke Artist, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, McKnight Foundation Fellow, Dance/USA Fellow, United States Artists Fellow, First People's Fund Performing Arts Fellow, and a Joyce Awardee. Her other accolades include a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation SHIFT award and awards from the New England Foundation for the Arts, the MAP Fund, and the National Performance Network. Simas is currently a Walker Art Center artist in residence, where she is creating A:gajë:gwah dësa’nigöëwë:nye:' (i hope it will stir your mind).

Independently-owned and operated, FAST FOTO FILM LAB has been preserving memories for professional photographers and film enthusiasts for over 30 years. Our mission is simple, to provide the best quality product and services possible. We take great pride in our quality customer service, the care we put into our image processing, scanning, handling, and our long lasting customer relationships. We strive to exceed your expectations at reasonable rates and the fastest possible turnaround times.

Raven Jackson is an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and photographer from Tennessee. Her work often explores landscapes of indefinable experiences and emotions, intimacy, connection, and the body’s relationship to nature. Recently nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Director, Raven’s debut narrative film, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, made in partnership with Maria Altamirano, PASTEL, and A24, world-premiered in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, and was named one of the top ten movies of the year by The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and RogerEbert.com. The film has screened at the New York Film Festival, San Sebastián International Film Festival, BFI London, AFI Fest, and more.

A featured artist on Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, she has served as a Story Editor for HBO's adaptation of Sula, based on Toni Morrison's novel, and co-wrote an episode of the Apple TV+ Series Surface. She is a 2024 Sundance Momentum Fellow and Rideback Rise Resident, and her short films Nettles and A Guide to Breathing Underwater are currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. Stories From a Place Where All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, the companion book for her debut feature, is currently out from A24. Her photography can be found in the book, as well as in BOMB Magazine. She is a Cave Canem fellow and holds MFAs from New York University's Graduate Film Program and the New School's Writing Program. Her chapbook of poetry, little violences, is available from Cutbank Literary Magazine.