Shalon Buskirk is a community leader who has dedicated her life to protecting, helping, and saving young adults from violence within her community. She was born and raised in Allentown, PA. After the tragic death of her firstborn son, Parris, she started to work towards a nonprofit for young adults that engages them with the resources they need for success. Buskirk was a driving force behind the first major funding in the city for youth violence prevention. She is a storyteller, a mother of eight children, and the CEO/Founder of the Parris J. Lane Memorial Foundation. She was a Film Independent Documentary Lab Fellow in 2022, a Visiting Fellow at MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute in 2020 and 2022, Cucalorus Works-in-Progress Lab Filmmaker in 2023, and the co-author of United Hearts for Autism: Stories from Caregivers and Self-Advocates. She is a board member for Community Bike Works, and on the advisory council for Allentown’s Salvation Army and Youth Teen Renovations. 

Drew Swedberg is a documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, educator, and film programmer. Through a relational process and poetic approach, his filmmaking orbits around the everyday dreams, rituals, and forces that shape the places he calls home. As a teaching artist based in Eastern Pennsylvania, he designs spaces for aspiring filmmakers to create media-based stories. He is currently teaching as an adjunct professor in Lafayette College’s Film and Media Studies Program. Drew has led an array of film classes from elementary to college classrooms, most recently as a program facilitator for PBS39’s Production U and a visiting instructor in the LVAIC Documentary Storymaking program. He was a Film Independent Documentary Lab Fellow in 2022, Visiting Fellow at Skidmore College’s MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute in 2020 and 2022, and an Artist-in-Residence for the Cultural Coalition of Allentown in 2019 and 2021.

Nandini Sikand is a filmmaker, dancer-choreographer, writer, and cultural anthropologist. Her interdisciplinary work is informed by the fluidity of working between and within the fields of film and media, and dance and performance, in both India and the United States. She has published articles on cinema, performance, a book on Odissi dance, and made films on subjects such as immigration, nationalism, sex work, breast cancer, and counter-culture music. Sikand’s films have screened and won awards at over 100 domestic and international film festivals, and aired on PBS. Her work has been recognized by The Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Center for Asian American Media. She is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, the co-founder and co-director of Sakshi Productions, the Associate Director/Choreographer for Harmattan Theater, and has served on the board of directors of Women Make Movies from 1997-2006. Sikand is an Associate Professor of an interdisciplinary film and media studies program at Lafayette College, PA.

Dr. Tiffany E. Barber is a prize-winning, internationally-recognized scholar, curator, and critic whose writing and expert commentary appears in top-tier academic journals, popular media outlets, and award-winning documentaries. Her work spans abstraction, dance, fashion, feminism, film, and the ethics of representation, focusing on artists of the Black diaspora working in the United States and the broader Atlantic world. Her latest curatorial project, a virtual, multimedia exhibition for Google Arts and Culture, examines the value of Afrofuturism in times of crisis. Dr. Barber is currently Assistant Professor of African American Art at the University of California-Los Angeles as well as curator-in-residence at the Delaware Contemporary. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA, she was Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Art History at the University of Delaware. She has completed fellowships at ArtTable, the Delaware Art Museum, the University of Virginia’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, and the Getty Research Institute. Dr. Barber is the recipient of the Smithsonian’s 2022 National Portrait Gallery Director’s Essay Prize.

Jessica Beshir is a Mexican-Ethiopian writer, director, producer and cinematographer based in Brooklyn. Her feature debut, FAYA DAYI, premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize & Fipresci Award at Visions du Reel, the Audience Award at Hot Docs, the Grand Jury Award and the emerging artist award at the Full Frame Film Festival among others. Her short films, HAIRAT/Criterion, HE WHO DANCES ON WOOD/PBS and HEROIN/Topic have played in festivals and museums around the world including at IFFR, IDFA and the Eye Film Museum. Beshir has been honored with grant support from the Sundance Film Institute, the Doha Film Institute, NYSCA and the Jerome Foundation.

Ahya Simone is an eclectically elusive siren and multidisciplinary artist from Detroit. As a harpist, composer, and filmmaker, she traverses through the world of sound, moving image, and performance. Ever since she began singing in a church choir as a child, her passion for music has only grown when she was introduced to the harp as a teen. Drawing inspiration from her favorite contemporary artists, she began to mix R&B/soul, jazz, and experimental elements into her works and performances. Additionally, Ahya’s music caught the eye of acclaimed filmmaker, dream hampton, where she co- composed music for “Treasure: From Tragedy To Trans Justice Mapping A Detroit Story ” (2015)- sparking her interest in exploring sound and image. With the support of Detroit Narrative Agency, in 2018 Ahya directed and her first short film, “Femme Queen Chronicles” (co-created with Paige Wood and Brè Rivera) about three Black trans women living in Detroit which was lauded at several film festivals for its exploration of identity through visuals and sound.

Ash Goh Hua is a filmmaker working between New York and Singapore. Utilizing both documentary and narrative forms, Ash tells personal stories that reveal the inherently embodied politics of relation, society and culture. Named one of the 25 New Faces of Film by Filmmaker Magazine in 2022 and a 2024 Berlinale Talent, Ash has been supported by institutions such as Sundance, Jerome Foundation, and ITVS. Their 2020 documentary I’M FREE NOW, YOU ARE FREE (distributed by PBS POV Shorts) has screened and won awards at film festivals internationally: Sheffield Doc/Fest, BlackStar Film Festival, Camden International Film Festival, Big Sky Documentary, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and more. Ash’s 2022 film is the Oscar®-qualifying THE FEELING OF BEING CLOSE TO YOU (distributed by The New Yorker), which won Best Documentary Short Award at the New Orleans Film Festival and screened at Palm Springs International Film Festival, Singapore International Film Festival, and True/False, among others. Ash is currently working on their first narrative short FULL MONTH, with support from Jerome Foundation’s Production Grant, IMDA, and Berlinale Talents’ Short Form Station.

Haley Hnatuk is an award-winning film editor from Pennsylvania, who is dedicated to working on projects that drive tangible change. A 2020 Visiting Fellow at Skidmore’s Storytellers’ Institute and a graduate of Muhlenberg College in Media & Communications and Film Studies, her editing credits include Dos Hermanxs: The Blood of the California Fields and Como Vivimos, which is distributed by the PBS WORLD Channel as part of the America ReFramed series. Committed to centering community in her work, Hnatuk also serves on the Board of Directors at CinéSPEAK, a Philadelphia-based film nonprofit.