Meet the New NYWIFT Member: Natalie Bailey
Let’s give a big welcome to Natalie Bailey as she joins the NYWIFT community! Natalie is a communication specialist whose career path includes working as the Director of Communications at the Dysautonomia Foundation, as an Advocacy Strategist at UNICEF, and more recently, as a Communication and Advocacy Coordinator at the World Health Organization (WHO). Having received a bachelor’s degree in Writing and Mass Communication from Saint Mary’s College and a Master’s in Journalism from Northwestern University, Natalie has also contributed her freelance writing and editing skills to various publications such as the Forbes Travel Guide, GOOD Magazine, Reader’s Digest, and Boston Globe Sunday. Find out more about Natalie as we discuss the value of Corporate Social Responsibility, some film and television shows that raise awareness on relevant social issues, and that one time when she came to the rescue at work through faking a British accent!
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Katherine Allen
Let’s all give a huge NYWIFT welcome to Katherine Allen! Based in Brooklyn, Katherine Allen is a filmmaker whose artistry often addresses the theme of discomfort and include aspects of Magikal Surrealism, horror, and the macabre. Some of her film projects include L’alphabête Noire, The Widow’s Hand, Renaissance of Strings, and several music videos. Outside of filmmaking, some of Katherine’s hobbies are photography and occasionally lurking about during a dark moon. Learn more about Katherine as we converse about her knack for embracing nitty gritty emotions and translating them into art, audiences’ attraction to films that blend fairytale elements with horror, her grandfather’s ongoing influence on her craft, and the spellbinding qualities of seemingly ordinary objects!
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Florence Montmare
Welcome to NYWIFT, Florence Montmare! Florence is an artist, photographer and director based out of New York, Gotland, and Stockholm, Sweden. Her work is represented by Ivy Brown Gallery and Valerie Goodman, New York, and has been exhibited internationally at Les Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles, Casino Luxembourg, Saarlandmuseum, Centre d’art Contemporain du Luxembourg, Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain Belgium, Färgfabriken Sweden and at Fotografiska New York. Florence spoke to us about her remarkable globetrotting career.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Katrina Montgomery
Please join us in welcoming new NYWIFT member Katrina Montgomery! Katrina is an NYC filmmaker with an affinity for the Bronx, the neighborhood where she grew up and still considers home. Katrina served as both Director and Director of Photography for Get Away For A Day with Allyshia Renay, which aired on BRIC, MNN, and BronxNet. Currently, she is studying film directing at Brooklyn College’s Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema and will be receiving her diploma shortly. Katrina spoke to us about her inspirations, using comedy to tackle tough topics, and lessons learned from a successful fundraising campaign.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Kate Walker
With a knack for merging film with her passion for science and journalism, Kate Walker has triumphed as an environmental and science producer, director, writer, and editor. Her projects, which have aired on networks such as PBS, Vice, HBO, IFC, and MSNBC, among other media platforms, typically raise awareness of prevalent social and environmental issues such as marginalized identities and climate change. Read more about this former high school science teacher’s remarkable career journey as we discuss some must-see documentaries and Kate’s approach to developing a captivating filmic style that simultaneously educates and entertains audiences.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Chloë Levine
Welcome to NYWIFT, new member Chloë Levine! Chloë is an award-winning filmmaker who has worked as an actress, director, screenwriter, and producer. Learn more about Chloë as we discuss her 2014 debut short that earned praise at a well-known film festival, some of the screen goddesses that served as her muses during her earlier years, and the wide range of projects she has contributed to artistically, in addition to other fun topics!
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Shiqin Gao
Welcome to NYWIFT, Shiqin Gao! Shiqin is an award-winning NYC-based filmmaker whose versatile range includes but is not limited to directing, editing, sound recording, and producing. Learn more about Shiqin as we chat about her distinct style, the genesis of some of her most intimate projects, and her collaborations with some rockstars and other remarkable artists.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Edna Luise Biesold
Welcome to NYWIFT, new member Edna Luise Biesold! Edna is a German-born and New York-based filmmaker who honed her craft at NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a special focus on cinematography. She received the Franz Wieser Grant from ARRI as DP for the fantasy short film The Molok. She co-wrote and co-directed The Color of Time, and is presently developing 3 Monkeys, a screenplay which earned her a Creative Career Design Fellowship from NYU's Production Lab in 2022. Most recently, Sunscreen, her first film in ASL, has won her a Best Narrative Short award at 1904 Deaf Film Festival and the NYWIFT Award for Excellence in Directing at the 2022 SOHO International Film Festival. Edna spoke to us about her favorite collaborators, the challenges of lighting 16-foot tall puppets, and exploring the subtleties of communication throughout her work.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Seeley Björkstén
Welcome to NYWIFT, Seeley Björkstén! Seeley is an NYC-based filmmaker and digital artist who is mostly interested in telling impactful nonfiction stories through film. Their passion for incorporating animation and other types of unconventional creativity into their work is reflected in their short film Who I Wasn’t, among other projects. Having studied at American University and FAMU, one of the oldest film schools in the world, Seeley is currently the Marketing & Social Media Manager at the Bushwick Film Festival. As someone who believes that art has the power to change the world, they consider their creations to be a form of activism. Seeley spoke to us about what drew them to animation, their creative journey, and their most personal project to date.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Eunice Levis
Welcome to NYWIFT, Eunice Levis! Writer and director Eunice Levis is a first-generation Dominican American from the Bronx, New York. Eunice's work focuses on genre-bending stories that combine her love of horror, sci-fi, thriller, and fantasy, often through a diasporic lens. She seeks to disrupt and challenge dominant narratives around technology, race, gender, history, and diaspora identity by altering the stories we tell about them. Eunice spoke to us about her early inspirations, her latest work, and how genre stories offer a unique opportunity to challenge the status quo.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Vanessa Meyer
Welcome to NYWIFT, Vanessa Meyer! Meyer is a filmmaker, programmer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to having earned a Ph.D. in Communications with a specialization in personal storytelling, she has worked at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, Kiss Off Entertainment, Reel Love Film Festival and most recently, Women in Film and Television Vancouver (WIFTV). As an artist, she is interested in exploring the complexities of feelings, a theme that has repeatedly appeared in her work. Meyer spoke to us about championing unique voices as a programmer, moving to NYC, and finding light in the darkness.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Mohana Rajakumar
Welcome to NYWIFT, Mohana Rajakumar! Mohana is a South Asian American scholar, novelist, screenwriter, and stand-up comic whose work regularly explores feminist themes. Some of her most notable literary accomplishments include winning the She Writes New Novelist Award in 2011 for her coming-of-age novel An Unlikely Goddess and the Best Indie Book Award for Romance in 2013 for Love Comes Later. She co-wrote and appeared in the short film Me Against the World, directed by Kali Bailey, which appeared in NYWIFT’s “Women in Film Night” at the 2022 Montauk Film Festival. Mohana has resided in Qatar since 2005. She spoke to us about working across various art forms, her writing process, and the special honor that comes with writing a banned book!
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Rianne Pyle
Welcome to NYWIFT, Rianne Pyle! Rianne an award-winning filmmaker whose New York City upbringing greatly influences her film projects, some of which raise awareness of societal issues and focus on providing an outlet for people of color to share their stories. She spoke to us about the intersection of film and social change, her approach to documentary filmmaking, how gentrification has impacted her filmmaking as a native New Yorker.
READ MOREMeet the NYWIFT Podcast Team: Leah Curney
The NYWIFT Women Crush Wednesdays Podcast Team works so hard to bring the most informative, empowering, entertaining, and fun interviews to our listeners. Today we are thrilled to highlight our podcast team co-host and contributor Leah Curney. Leah is a writer, director, producer, and performer. She’s directed several award-winning short films and is an accomplished video producer/director in the corporate space, creating content for a global finance company.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Hania Chima
Welcome, new NYWIFT member Hania Chima! We are so happy to introduce Hania, who has so much to offer our community. She is the producer and co-writer of Pakistan’s entry for the 2019 Oscars, Laal Kabootar, and co-founder of the production company Nehr Ghar Films. We’re thrilled to have her join New York Women in Film & Television and can't wait to see what she does next. Hania talked to us about getting to work with her childhood hero, writing and producing her first feature, and why the future is female.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Luchina Fisher
Let’s give a warm NYWIFT welcome to Luchina Fisher! Fisher (she/her) is an award-winning director, writer and producer who works at the intersection of race, gender and identity. She is the founder and CEO of Little Light Productions. Her feature directorial debut Mama Gloria, about Chicago trans icon activist Gloria Allen, was nominated for a 2022 GLAAD Media Award. Previously, Fisher co-executive produced and co-wrote the critically acclaimed feature documentary Birthright: A War Story, about the war on women’s reproductive health. Luchina Fisher spoke to us about her early childhood influences, her next documentary, and her hopes for the future of women in media.
READ MORENYWIFT at DOC NYC: In Conversation with Filmmaker Dawn Porter
NYWIFT Member Dawn Porter’s Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net offers a never-before-seen look behind the curtain of the world-famous circus extravaganza, with an approach that is equally intimate and epic in scale. When Cirque du Soleil moves to reboot its flagship production, "O," more than a year after an abrupt global shutdown, both performers and crew members face uncertainty as they work to return to their world-class standards in time for the (re)opening night curtain in Las Vegas. The film had its world premiere as a Centerpiece film at the 2022 DOC NYC Festival. Porter sat down with us to discuss her unique approach to this story, and how these high-flying artists can offer unique insight into our post-pandemic world.
READ MORENYWIFT at DOC NYC: In Conversation with Filmmaker Fredgy Noël
In the documentary short The House of LaBeija, directed and produced by NYWIFT member Fredgy Noël, we meet the eponymous prominent ballroom family and safe haven for transgender women, queer people, and those in need of community. Over the course of 10 minutes, several members of the house dance, vogue, and celebrate their identities across a strikingly glamorous mansion that seems to be an embodiment of their safe harbor. Fredgy Noël spoke to us about ballroom culture, creative inspirations, and what’s next on her horizon.
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