Team

Shalon 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 first born son Parris, she started to work towards a nonprofit for young adults that engages them with the resources they need for success. She 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 currently the CEO/Founder of the Parris J. Lane Memorial Foundation. in love, in memory is her directorial debut.

Drew Swedberg is a documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and educator living and working in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. His filmmaking orbits around dreams, utilizing a patient and poetic lens to navigate intimate stories of community, interiority, and memory, all while engaging in modes of storytelling that collectively reimagine accountability, collaboration, and truth-telling. As an artist-in-residence and teaching artist, he has produced over 50 youth films through his workshops in the Lehigh Valley. He is the founder of the digital storytelling initiative, Collaborative Media Expressions, which is focused on engaging, supporting, and cultivating youth voices in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He currently teaches an array of media and film classes from elementary after-school programs to college classrooms and coaches 5th grade basketball at Jefferson Elementary School.

Nandini is a filmmaker, dancer-choreographer, author, 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.

Graciela is an independent documentary filmmaker and is currently working as a media specialist and educator at Lincoln Leadership Academy Charter School in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She has been making films since the age of twelve as a part of HYPE, a community-based program out of Muhlenberg College. Her documentary work is anchored in racial inequality, social justice movements, and education advocacy. Being from Allentown, and now an educator within it, she teaches her students the value of being able to use their voice through digital storytelling and story-making.

Haley is a 2020 Skidmore Storytellers’ Institute Visiting Fellow and a recent Muhlenberg College Media & Communications and Film Studies graduate. As an undergraduate, Hnatuk edited “Dos Hermanxs: The Blood of the California Fields,” a short documentary in which Luis Magaña, an immigrant rights organizer, recounts the tragic losses of two indigenous youth from México working in Central Valley vineyards. This film has been screened at festivals internationally. Additionally, while studying abroad at Dublin City University, she worked as a Production Assistant at Motherland, an award winning Irish production company that produces commercials, films and documentaries.

Nasheera is a freshman at LCCC and a junior at Dieruff High School in Allentown, PA. She is a poet, songwriter, filmmaker, and actor who looks to positively impact her community. She has been in multiple plays, including Twelve Angry Jurors, Hairspray, Cabaret, and The Interlude of the Sentimental Me. She is the writer and director of the short film “america, a black hole“. Upon graduation, she plans to study at Muhlenberg College, engaging with intersections of politics, theater, and film.

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