Co-presented by the National Museum of Women in the Arts and Women in Film and Video
Featuring Morgan Heim (Director, Cormie), Liz Smith (Director, Changing Seas), Anjali Nayar (Director, Oil and Water), and Abigail Fuller (Director, Shepherd's Song), moderated by Melani Douglass (Director of Public Programs, National Museum of Women in the Arts).
Morgan Heim is a conservation photographer and filmmaker focused on stories of wildlife and human coexistence. She is the founder of Neon Raven Story Labs, a storytelling and strategy platform for conservation, and in 2020, co-launched Her Wild Vision Initiative with Jaymi Heimbuch, aimed at raising the voices of diverse women in the craft of conservation storytelling. Morgan is a Senior Fellow with the International League of Conservation Photographers. Her work appears in outlets such as Smithsonian, Audubon and National Geographic. Her films, which include Deer 139, The End of Snow and The Snow Guardian have appeared and toured in Telluride Mountain Film, Banff, Wild & Scenic, Adventure Film and the International Wildlife Film Festival among others. Throughout her career, she’s had the distinction of being pooped on by endangered Chinese crested terns, ventured in the tunnels of Chicago’s sewer system and traipsed across mountains following the path of Deer 139, all of which reminds her of how wonderfully small she is in this great big world.
Liz Smith is a producer, writer, and impact strategist with a focus on using media to create systemic change. She co-produced the feature documentary YOUTH v GOV, which is also screening at DCEFF. She produces and writes for the South Florida PBS series CHANGING SEAS, recently winning a Regional Emmy Award for her episode on the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and she is executive producing and writing a new digital educational series set to launch later this year. As a media producer, she’s spent more than a cumulative year at sea aboard research vessels in the Pacific, Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Gulf of Mexico; and has explored 2,000-year-old shipwrecks, searched for Amelia Earhart, and worked with Dr. Robert Ballard to bring live feeds from the deep sea directly into the classroom. She’s been a Fulbright Specialist and holds an MFA in Science and Natural History Filmmaking.
Anjali Nayar is an award-winning filmmaker and entrepreneur. In 2019 she was named one of the top 40 filmmakers under 40 by DOCNYC and POC a director on the rise by Free The Work. Anjali’s documentary Silas about land and corruption in West Africa, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2017,and has gone on to win awards around the world and is available on Amazon Prime. Anjali’s feature debut, Gun Runners (Hot Docs 2016) was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award, a Director’s Guild of Canada Award and is now on Netflix. Anjali has a Masters from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, a Masters in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford. Anjali sits on several advisory committees, including the Environment and Human Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. She has sat on selection committees and juries for film festivals and film and technology funds around the world. Anjali also lectures in film, technology and journalism, with an emphasis on representation, democratizing narratives and whose stories we have the right to tell.
Abigail Fuller is an award winning documentary filmmaker whose work includes four seasons on the Emmy-nominated series Chef’s Table, Dear Oprah for Apple TV+, and the feature documentary Do You Dream in Color? She is a member of the D&AD Impact Council that seeks to honor projects that accelerate positive change, and directs commercial content for various clients, represented by NonFiction Unlimited. Recently she was the recipient of The Move Mountains Filmmaker Grant presented by The North Face. Her work has twice premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Telluride’s MountainFilm, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to name a few. Abby is dedicated to telling deeply human stories that allow for empathy and sharing new perspectives.
Melani Douglass is the Director of Public Programs at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC where she cultivates a network of diverse constituents through community partnerships and collaborations. She also heads the groundbreaking Women, Arts and Social Change initiative, which elevates museum programming to a new standard with curated conversations, communal dinners and transformative events. Prior to her position at NMWA, Douglass founded the Family Arts Museum, a nomadic institution that celebrates and documents family as fine art. Douglass has over ten years of experience engaging communities through the arts. Douglass holds a Master of Fine Arts in Curatorial Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art. A native Baltimorean, she is also a proud mother and educator.
- Year2021
- Runtime33 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryUnited States
- DirectorDCEFF
Co-presented by the National Museum of Women in the Arts and Women in Film and Video
Featuring Morgan Heim (Director, Cormie), Liz Smith (Director, Changing Seas), Anjali Nayar (Director, Oil and Water), and Abigail Fuller (Director, Shepherd's Song), moderated by Melani Douglass (Director of Public Programs, National Museum of Women in the Arts).
Morgan Heim is a conservation photographer and filmmaker focused on stories of wildlife and human coexistence. She is the founder of Neon Raven Story Labs, a storytelling and strategy platform for conservation, and in 2020, co-launched Her Wild Vision Initiative with Jaymi Heimbuch, aimed at raising the voices of diverse women in the craft of conservation storytelling. Morgan is a Senior Fellow with the International League of Conservation Photographers. Her work appears in outlets such as Smithsonian, Audubon and National Geographic. Her films, which include Deer 139, The End of Snow and The Snow Guardian have appeared and toured in Telluride Mountain Film, Banff, Wild & Scenic, Adventure Film and the International Wildlife Film Festival among others. Throughout her career, she’s had the distinction of being pooped on by endangered Chinese crested terns, ventured in the tunnels of Chicago’s sewer system and traipsed across mountains following the path of Deer 139, all of which reminds her of how wonderfully small she is in this great big world.
Liz Smith is a producer, writer, and impact strategist with a focus on using media to create systemic change. She co-produced the feature documentary YOUTH v GOV, which is also screening at DCEFF. She produces and writes for the South Florida PBS series CHANGING SEAS, recently winning a Regional Emmy Award for her episode on the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and she is executive producing and writing a new digital educational series set to launch later this year. As a media producer, she’s spent more than a cumulative year at sea aboard research vessels in the Pacific, Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Gulf of Mexico; and has explored 2,000-year-old shipwrecks, searched for Amelia Earhart, and worked with Dr. Robert Ballard to bring live feeds from the deep sea directly into the classroom. She’s been a Fulbright Specialist and holds an MFA in Science and Natural History Filmmaking.
Anjali Nayar is an award-winning filmmaker and entrepreneur. In 2019 she was named one of the top 40 filmmakers under 40 by DOCNYC and POC a director on the rise by Free The Work. Anjali’s documentary Silas about land and corruption in West Africa, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2017,and has gone on to win awards around the world and is available on Amazon Prime. Anjali’s feature debut, Gun Runners (Hot Docs 2016) was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award, a Director’s Guild of Canada Award and is now on Netflix. Anjali has a Masters from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, a Masters in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford. Anjali sits on several advisory committees, including the Environment and Human Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. She has sat on selection committees and juries for film festivals and film and technology funds around the world. Anjali also lectures in film, technology and journalism, with an emphasis on representation, democratizing narratives and whose stories we have the right to tell.
Abigail Fuller is an award winning documentary filmmaker whose work includes four seasons on the Emmy-nominated series Chef’s Table, Dear Oprah for Apple TV+, and the feature documentary Do You Dream in Color? She is a member of the D&AD Impact Council that seeks to honor projects that accelerate positive change, and directs commercial content for various clients, represented by NonFiction Unlimited. Recently she was the recipient of The Move Mountains Filmmaker Grant presented by The North Face. Her work has twice premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Telluride’s MountainFilm, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to name a few. Abby is dedicated to telling deeply human stories that allow for empathy and sharing new perspectives.
Melani Douglass is the Director of Public Programs at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC where she cultivates a network of diverse constituents through community partnerships and collaborations. She also heads the groundbreaking Women, Arts and Social Change initiative, which elevates museum programming to a new standard with curated conversations, communal dinners and transformative events. Prior to her position at NMWA, Douglass founded the Family Arts Museum, a nomadic institution that celebrates and documents family as fine art. Douglass has over ten years of experience engaging communities through the arts. Douglass holds a Master of Fine Arts in Curatorial Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art. A native Baltimorean, she is also a proud mother and educator.
- Year2021
- Runtime33 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryUnited States
- DirectorDCEFF
