FOUNDER & CEO

Kweighbaye Kotee is a Liberian born, Brooklyn-based entrepreneur, writer, and filmmaker. She attended public school in Newark, received a Wight Foundation scholarship to attend Blair Academy, and graduated from NYU with a B.S. in Media, Culture, and Communications.

Developing creative platforms that equally include women and other underrepresented voices is a personal mission of hers and a significant component of her projects and businesses including Bushwick Film Festival, Bushwick Film Institute, and CAE.

She has been featured on NBC, Fox, NY1, Huff Post, and AMNY and was featured in Delta Air Lines and POPSUGAR’s 2017 campaign about women committed to making a change in their communities.

Hali Traina is an artist and film theorist whose written work focuses on queer and gender theory in cinema. Her short films have screened at SUNYWide Film Festival, Montreal International Film Festival, NHdocs: the New Haven Documentary Film Festival, Los Angeles Lift-Off Film Festival, and won Best Experimental Short at Rome Prisma Awards.

She is currently working as a Shorts Programmer and Festival Producer for Bushwick Film Festival.

Miriam García has over 15 years of experience in the creative industries, including film, music, and event production. In film, she has extensive experience in developing, curating, and producing a wider variety of artists' programs and creative support initiatives. She was a Digital Producer for the Sundance Institute where she curated and produced a series of Masterclasses and courses with high-level industry experts to support emergent filmmakers. She is also a film programmer for different festivals including Tribeca, DOC NYC, and the Hamptons International Film Festival. Miriam collaborated in the marketing departments for Women Make Movies and IFP. In 2019, she was selected to participate in the prestigious Locarno Industry Academy. Besides her work in film, she is a frequent collaborator of the Kickstarter site The Creative Independent and produces events for the New Latin Wave, a media platform for Latinx artists.

Chantel Simpson is a writer, director, and producer based in NYC. She's been programming films for the Bushwick Film Festival for three years.

Nicholas Payne Santos is a bi-racial (Black/white) filmmaker based in Brooklyn. Nicholas’ feature directorial debut IT CUTS DEEP was released by Dark Sky Films in 2020 and is now streaming on Showtime and Shudder. The feature UNCLE PECKERHEAD, produced by Santos, was released in 2020 by Epic Pictures and currently sits at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Delaware born Earthling. Religious belief - Human Imagination. Fond of Los Angeles, New Orleans and New York. Performs role of Filmmaker, Lyricist and Screenwriting Professor. Currently in post on feature documentary about the ethics of sex with robots.

Brandon Haynes is an award-winning narrative and commercial cinematographer based in Brooklyn, NY. He started his creative journey as a photographer in 2009 and fell in love with cinematography after attending Denver's SeriesFest in 2016. Teaching himself the rules and tricks of the trade, he now blends the worlds of music, fashion, and sports with his love for TV and cinema.

Brandon's approach to filmmaking stems from his love and his past life as an athlete. He sees filmmaking as one of the most team-centric art forms. Everyone comes together for a common goal to do their best and create something everyone is proud of, getting the big Win! This love for the craft has allowed him to hold workshops with industry-leading companies like Abel Cine. He always wants to impart the knowledge he has learned to his peers and the next generation of cinematographers. Especially cinematographers and filmmakers of color.

Brandon's cinematography has garnered awards and accolades for Best Cinematography, Best Cinematographer, and Best Film across many film festivals and competitions, such as Rhode Island International Film Festival (Academy Award/BAFTA Qualifying), San Francisco Doc Fest, Bushwick Film Festival, New York Cinematography Awards, Wales International Film Festival and BLVD Film Festival.

Kira works in non-fiction development, currently at CNN Original Series. In this capacity, she works closely to details pertaining to the ongoing development and production of CNN Original Series. This includes ushering projects from the first pitch to their launch on the network, cultivating relationships across the industry, and assisting the program development teams in both NY and LA. Additionally, she works closely with the CNN Audio team and has produced joint CNN Original Series & Films/CNN Audio podcasts including Behind the Desk: The Story of Late Night with Bill Carter and Three Identical Strangers: The Science Behind The Story with Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Beyond her work at CNN, she currently serves as a non-fiction shorts programmer at the Bushwick Film Festival.

She studied Contemporary Culture and Creative Production at NYU, with a culminating thesis that focused on the female gaze in contemporary film festivals.

Zealey Bess is an award-winning filmmaker and theatre director. Her work has crossed boundaries and platforms for many years as an independent director and producer.

She has specialized in new work since she arrived on these shores and established her company, Weird Sisters, as a theatrical entity in 1997. Recent Films include the award-winning Mary and Louise, Icarus Stops For Breakfast. Currently in production, The Lion with Judith Roberts Icon of screen and stage, shoots in the Fall.

She is on the Faculty for the Graduate Film Program at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and is represented by Linda Weaver at Access Talent.

www.weirdsistersfilms.com

Mark Street has been making films, videos and installations for 30 years. His work has moved from tactile, abstract explorations of 16mm film to essays on the urban experience to improvised feature length narratives. He has shown at places like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery in Washington DC as well as venues such as the Point Reyes California Oyster Farm. He graduated from Bard College (B.A, 1986) and the San Francisco Art Institute (MFA 1992). He has shown work in the New York Museum of Modern Art Cineprobe series (1991, 1994), at Anthology Film Archives (1993, 2006, 2009), Millennium (1990,1996), and the San Francisco Cinematheque (1986, 1992, 2009). His work has appeared at the Tribeca (5 times), Sundance, Rotterdam, New York, London, San Francisco, New York Underground, Sarajevo, Viennale, Ourense (Spain), Mill Valley, South by Southwest, and other film festivals.

www.markstreetfilms.com

David James Schultz is a Brooklyn-based, multidisciplinary filmmaker. David's work as a production designer has been featured on HBO. His most recent screenplays have competed in Austin, Slamdance, and Screencraft. His no-budget thesis feature THE GIRL IN THE STRAW HAT has cleaned up awards at various regional festivals around the country. If he isn’t cooking up bizarre projects, you will most likely either find him staring at a small screen editing commercial work for national brands (Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi, Adidas), or preferably at a larger screen in one of NYC’s many repertory movie theaters.

Sarah Kamaras is an award-winning independent producer and director. Previously, you may have seen her at Vox Media, Great Big Story/CNN and NowThis. Sarah holds a BS in film from Boston University.

Hemwant Tiwari is an actor writer director whose debut feature film LOMAD ran a successful film festival circuit.

LOMAD is first black n white single take film and with 22 wins it has become maximum award winning one shot film.

He rose to fame with his international series MEDINAH in which he acted and shared the screen with Eric Robert.

He will soon announce his next feature film.

Julia Muniz is an award-winner Brazilian storyteller based in Los Angeles with over a decade of work that aims to inspire, raise awareness and create dialogues through multimedia JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) storytelling in front of and behind the camera, producing commercials, narratives, documentaries, events and directing photography. www.thisisjumuniz.com

We are The Sposatos, an Emmy nominated married filmmaking duo based in Harrington Park, NJ. We're parents to a two year old daughter Lola, and a dog named Mouse.

Courtney is a filmmaker and freelance editor at Showtime, and an Austin Film Festival Script Competition Finalist. Mark is a screenwriter, director, designer, and professor at the School of Visual Arts. Our goal is to bring audacious yet grounded stories to a diverse audience.