YANCE FORD
DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, WRITER
Yance Ford is an Oscar-nominated director and producer based in New York City. His feature documentary film STRONG ISLAND premiered at Sundance in 2017 to critical acclaim winning a Special Jury Award for storytelling. The film was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature at the 90th Academy Awards, where Ford made history as the first openly transgender director nominated for an Oscar. STRONG ISLAND received the Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film, the Gotham Award for Best Documentary, and the Black Film Critics Circle Award for Best Doc; was nominated for a George Foster Peabody Award; and won for Best Direction, Best Debut, and Best Feature at the Cinema Eye Honors. His work can be seen in the FX series PRIDE, the Netflix series TRIAL BY MEDIA, the Apple+ series THE ME YOU CAN’T SEE, the Showtime comedy WORK IN PROGRESS, and the documentary THE COLOR OF CARE on The Smithsonian Channel. Ford was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019; he is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Directors Guild of America, and the Guild of Future Architects.
YANCE FORD
DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, WRITER
IAN OLDS
EDITOR, WRITER
Ian Olds was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work as a director and editor of both narrative and documentary films. Films he is credited as both director and editor include the Iraq doc OCCUPATION: DREAMLAND (Oscar-shortlisted and winner of the Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit Award), FIXER: THE TAKING OF AJMAL NAQSHBANDI (winner of top jury prizes at Tribeca and Madrid, acquired by HBO Documentary Films and Emmy-nominated), and BURN COUNTRY (Winner Best Actor Award at the Tribeca Film Festival and released by Samuel Goldwyn Films).
Other editing credits include SLOW MACHINE, directed by Paul Felten and Joe DeNardo (New York Film Festival); AS I LAY DYING, directed by James Franco (Cannes Film Festival, Un Certain Regard); Hulu’s doc series CAPTIVE AUDIENCE; and CUL DE SAC, a suburban war story directed by Garrett Scott (Toronto International Film Festival, Arte-France).
SWETA VOHRA
PRODUCER
Sweta Vohra is the Head of Production and a producer at Multitude Films. Her latest films include the Oscar-shortlisted HOW WE GET FREE (HBO Documentary Films) and Netflix Original POWER (Sundance 2024). She also co-executive produced the shorts collection QUEER FUTURES (CPH:DOX 2023). Prior to joining Multitude, she was a producer/director on the first season of The New York Times series THE WEEKLY on FX and Hulu, and produced and directed over a dozen films for Al Jazeera English’s award-winning show FAULT LINES.
She also produced the Netflix / BBC Studios feature documentary, THE ANTHRAX ATTACKS. Sweta is a 2021–2022 DOC NYC 40 Under 40 Filmmaker and has received the National Association of Black Journalists Excellence Award, the Radio Television Digital News Association Kaleidoscope Award, and three News and Documentary Emmy® nominations for her work.
JESS DEVANEY
PRODUCER
Jess Devaney is an Emmy-winning producer and Founder & President of Multitude Films. Their latest films include Oscar-shortlisted HOW WE GET FREE (HBO); the Indigo Girls documentary IT’S ONLY LIFE AFTER ALL (Sundance 2023); Emmy-nominated LOWNDES COUNTY AND THE ROAD TO BLACK POWER (Peacock); Emmy-nominated Netflix Original PRAY AWAY; Oscar-shortlisted CALL CENTER BLUES (Topic Studios); and APART, the Emmy-winning episode of the series THROUGH OUR EYES (HBO Max). Jess created the Ford Foundation-supported QUEER FUTURES series and produced Sundance Award-winning and IDA-nominated ALWAYS IN SEASON (Independent Lens) as well as THE FEELING OF BEING WATCHED (POV), dubbed “a real-world conspiracy thriller” by Variety. Additional credits include Critics' Choice-nominated SPEED SISTERS and MILISUTHANDO. Jess founded QueerDoc and was a Sundance Institute Documentary Edit and Story Lab fellow, Women at Sundance fellow, and Sundance Institute Creative Producing Lab advisor. They have been recognized with the Cinereach Producers Award, DOC NYC and Topic Studios' inaugural 40 Under 40 Award, Doc10’s inaugural Vanguard Award, and the 2023 Sundance Institute Amazon Studios Nonfiction Producers Award.
NETSANET NEGUSSIE
PRODUCER
Netsanet Negussie is an award-winning documentary film & television producer with physical production experience overseeing all aspects of production from ideation and development to distribution. Netsanet’s documentary work is currently featured on HBO, Hulu, Max, Disney+, PBS, Mother Jones, and ABC Network. Her documentaries cover a wide array of topics and genres: from the criminal justice system and right-wing extremism to music documentaries, pop culture and history.
She produced POWER helmed by Oscar-nominated director Yance Ford; Through Our Eyes: Homefront (2021, HBO Max); I Am Not Going to Change 400 Years in Four (2020, Independent Lens); and produced the Emmy Award-winning primetime television series Soul of a Nation for ABC Network and streaming on Hulu. Netsanet was also a Fulbright Scholar in Germany where her research and reporting covers the convoluted matrix of European Union immigration policy, right-wing extremism, mis- and disinformation, and the carceral state.
ROBERT AIKI
AUBREY LOWE
COMPOSER
Robert Aiki Aubrey Loweis an artist, curator and composer who works primarily with voice and modular synthesizers for sound works in the realm of spontaneous music. The marriage of synthesis and the voice has allowed for a heightened physicality in the way of ecstatic music, both in performance and recorded. The sensitivity of analogue modular synthesis echoes the organic nature of vocal expression, which lends itself to Lowe’s aleatoric process. Lowe’s works on paper tend towards human relations to the natural/magical world and the repetition of motifs. Robert has also focused on composition for film and television, both in solo scoring and collaboration. Over the last several years, Robert has collaborated on projects or provided sound in a featured artist capacity for films END OF SUMMER, SICARIO, ARRIVAL, LAST AND FIRST MEN with Johann Johannsson, and IT COMES AT NIGHT with Brian Mcomber. Recently, Robert has scored CANDYMAN (MGM/Universal) for Nia DaCosta, THE COLOR OF CARE and POWER(Netflix) for Yance Ford, MASTER (Amazon) for Mariama Diallo, GRASSHOPPER REPUBLIC for Daniel McCabe and docuseries TELEMARKETERS (HBO).
JULIA C LIU
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Anya Rous
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
Dan Cogan
Jon Bardin
Liz Garbus
ARCHIVIST
Jillian Bergman
ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS
Jot Sahi
Wesley Harris
Ryah Aqel
ADDITIONAL ASSOCIATE PRODUCER
Jonathan Portee
COORDINATING PRODUCER
Colleen Cassingham
CONSULTING PRODUCERS
Stuart Schrader
Lisa Remington
CONSULTING EDITOR
Penelope Falk
PRODUCTION COORDINATORS
Morgan Hulquist
Sarah Fineman
Julia Tinneny
POST-PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR
Grace Mendenhall
ASSISTANT EDITOR
Dominic Stewart
Julia C Liu is a Providence based artist, director and Emmy nominated cinematographer seeking to promote diversity in front of and behind the lens. Her passion for visual storytelling started through her comics, evolving to filmmaking as a way to bring her illustrations to life. She strives for meaningful collaborations, opportunities for creativity and healthy work environments on all her projects. Her narrative directorial debut DRIVING WHILE BLACK MAGIC screened at Urbanworld, Martha’s Vineyard African A778úmerican Film Festival, and the Montreal International Black Film Festival. Liu is the Director of Photography for POWER directed by Yance Ford, the cinematographer for the Emmy award winning documentary STILL: A MICHAEL J. FOX MOVIE, and the Director of Photography and Executive Producer of the Netflix original WHITE HOT: THE RISE & FALL OF ABERCROMBIE & FITCH. Liu is a camera operator in the International Cinematographers Guild and a graduate of Brown University.