Joe Brewster

Joe Brewster is a Harvard educated psychiatrist who uses this training in when approaching the social issues that he tackles as an artist and filmmaker. Brewster wrote and directed his first film, "The Keeper" (1995), after a two year-long stint as a prison psychiatrist at the notorious Brooklyn House of Detention. "The Keeper" was screened at the Edinburgh, Toronto, and Sundance Festivals, receiving numerous awards. In the past three decades, Brewster has produced and directed narrative films, documentary films, and immersive media. His feature documentary, "American Promise" (2013) was nominated for three Emmys and won the Jury Prize at Sundance. In 2022, Brewster produced the O-DOGG: An Angeleno Take on Othello, featuring Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter, for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His groundbreaking room-scale production premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and received a jury prize at the Tribeca Festival in 2021 for Best Immersive Experience.

Michèle Stephenson

Filmmaker, artist, and author, Michèle Stephenson pulls from her Haitian and Panamanian roots and experience as a social justice lawyer to think radically about storytelling and disrupt the imaginary in non-fiction spaces. She tells emotionally driven personal stories of resistance and identity that center on the lived experiences of communities of color in the Americas and the Black diaspora. Her feature documentary, "American Promise" (2013), was nominated for three Emmys and won the Jury Prize at Sundance. Her work "Stateless" (2020) was nominated for a Canadian Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary. Most recently, Stephenson collaborated as co-director on the magical realist virtual reality trilogy series on racial terror, "The Changing Same", which was nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Interactive Media Innovative category. It premiered at Sundance Film Festival, and won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Immersive Narrative at the Tribeca Film Festival.