FILMMAKERS
Filmmaker Nanobah Becker (Navajo) earned her MFA in directing from Columbia University in 2006. Her shorts Flat and Conversion (official selection, Sundance Film Festival) have screened around the world. Her screenplay Into the Ring got her a Sundance Institute-Ford Fellowship, and she was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship for her screenplay Full, which went on to the Tribeca All Access program. Becker’s producer credits include the award-winning Navajo-language short Shimásání (Tribeca and Sundance film festivals). She is a native of Albuquerque and a graduate of Brown University.
Rachel Naninaaq Edwardson is a documentary filmmaker (Inupiat) directed the oral history-based film series History of the Iñupiat for the Alaska Native Education Program, which is run by the North Slope Borough School District (NSBSD) in Barrow, Alaska. The first episode, 1961 The Duck-In, had its theatrical premiere at the 2006 Native American Film + Video Festival. In 2009, for script development of future projects, she was awarded a Sundance Institute Ford Foundation Film Fellowship. Edwardson has taught video production in Iñupiat villages through the NSBSD’s program Youth Speak. She is the videographer and editor of Amiginikun: On Sewing Boat Skins, which won the Best Traditional Culture Film at the Native Voice Film Festival in 2005. Edwardson received a BA from Colorado College in Colorado Springs and lives in Barrow, Alaska.
John Gussman has been a professional photographer for over 40 yrs. After graduating from college with a degree in photography, he started as a photo journalist in California back in 1973. After moving to Washington State he has been sucessfully running his own business, Doubleclick Productions, since 1982. John has lived in Sequim for 35 years, and spends most of his time hiking, camping, fishing and photographing the beautiful Olympic Peninsula. He has long felt a spiritual connection to the Elwha Valley. When dam removal was scheduled, he saw the opportunity to document this once-in-a-lifetime event and decided to focus his creative skills on witnessing the healing of this place and the people who share this land. See www.dcproductions.com for more.
Lexi Justus, Brooklyn Goosby, and Sean Fleetham are students at the Maui Huliau Foundation (http://www.mauihuliaufoundation.org) Their film Distress Call has won several awards at film festivals including an award for Best Youth Film at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival. The Maui Huliau Foundation’s mission is to promote environmental literacy and leadership among Maui’s youth through community-based educational experiences.
Ju-Pong Lin works at the intersection of the aesthetic and the ecological, the performative and the archival, sound and moving image, the narrative and the lyric, media and unmediated pres-ence. An avid knitter, her life entwines multiple strands as an interdisciplinary media and performance artist and educator, immigrant, feminist, mother, compost enthusiast and gardener, and perpetual researcher curious about relationships between land and language, humans and all beings.
Paper Rocket Productions is a company set on telling stories from multiple spectrums of the indigenous perspective. Through our creative vision, we thrive in exposing what mainstream media fails to overlook. Paper Rocket Productions is dedicated to the empowerment filmmaking gives to our viewers and to witness a piece of culture different from their own. Our Production Company promotes native stories, insight and entertainment for indigenous communities from around the world. We partner with filmmakers and artist who have worked within their professional industries to inspire a contemporary vision for Indigenous art. We are committed to straighten our services with grassroots organizations, non-profit organizations, corporate and entrepreneurs who lack professional video and commercial products. By incorporating media into cultural perspectives we will convey to a wider audience that highlights Environmental, Human Rights and Social Discrepancies; evident in our indigenous communities.
Jessica Plumb is a filmmaker focused on the relationship between people and the places they call home. She moved to the Olympic Peninsula a decade ago, after starting her career in Boston and Beijing. Jessica directs a video production company and has produced numerous educational and promotional videos for clients. She has worked on documentary and narrative films screened at festivals in the role of editor, and behind the camera, and has created award-winning short films best described as video poetry. Her video art films have been screened in galleries throughout the United States. Jessica holds a B.A. from Yale University and an interdisciplinary MFA from Goddard College. She also studied documentary film at 911 Media in Seattle and the New School University in New York. See www.plumbproductions.com for more.
Kimi Takesue is Assistant Professor in the Video Program and an award-winning filmmaker working in documentary, narrative and experimental genres. Thematically, many of her films explore the complex dynamics of cross-cultural encounters and representations.