“For more than thirty years, Lynne Sachs has constructed short, bold mid-length, and feature films incorporating elements of the essay film, collage, performance, and observational documentary. Her highly self-reflexive films have variously explored the relations between the body, camera, and the materiality of film itself; histories of personal, social, and political trauma; marginalized communities and their labor; and her own family life, slipping seamlessly between modes, from documentary essays to diaristic shorts.” (Edo Choi, Asst. Curator, Museum of the Moving Image)

Thérèse Heliczer graduated from THE FILM SCHOOL and Wesleyan University. As an emerging filmmaker, Heliczer has been very active in the independent Seattle film community for the past several years, and thanks the mentorship and resources from the Seattle Documentary Association, Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), Women in Film, and Northwest Film Forum. Heliczer was a programmer for the Post Alley Film Festival which spotlights women filmmakers and was a cast member in the short film Signs Everywhere, as well as the feature film The Boy Who Lived Before. Heliczer has also spent the last 30 years in public sector communications and project management. Currently, she is a project manager at the Seattle Department of Transportation where she manages over $50 million in transportation projects. This experience has given her the skills to produce and direct her first feature-length documentary film, The Invisible Father.

Darol Olu Kae is an artist from Los Angeles. His collaborative, research-based approach to filmmaking is inspired by community histories; it explores themes like filiation and inheritance. His work blurs boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, challenging the medium to express the complexity of Black life and culture. He is currently in pre-production on his next project, Keeping Time, and he is developing his debut narrative feature, Without a Song.

Alvin Tsang is a filmmaker and artist based in New York City. His work explores the more personal human experience to inform on bigger issues such as humanism, community and migration. His award-winning documentary Reunification (2015), about memories of migration and Tsang’s once intact family, was lauded for “explor[ing] the past with a Proustian sensitivity” (The Boston Globe), its “clear-eyed honesty” (Meredith Monk), and being “the film that’s come closest to feeling like a truly distinct Asian-American [film] language” (Salon). Tsang studied film under the tutelage of Babette Mangolte (late Chantal Akerman’s cinematographer) and Jean-Pierre Gorin (co-director of Tout va bien (1972) with Jean-Luc Godard). He is currently working on When Home is Elsewhere (2021), a sequel to Reunification, and is collaborating with artist Siyan Wong on her ongoing Five Cents a Can Art Exhibitions (2019-2022) by creating a “gold mountain” and several other conceptual installations out of 5,000+ gold soda cans in order to shed light on the people (mainly immigrants and elderly) who must collect cans and bottles for a living in our land of plenty.