Maya Castronovo is a filmmaker and documentarian from Wisconsin. Her work uses historical objects and archives in order to explore the connections between collective memory and environmental apocalypse. Her writing on documentary aesthetics has appeared in Bright Lights Film Journal and the Journal of Folklore and Education. She has a B.A. in Film and Media Studies from Columbia University.

Alan Medina is an artist, filmmaker & programmer interested in archival imaginaries, histories of labor, and alternative forms of self-organization within pedagogical frameworks. With a public practice of film programming and independent publishing, he has created autonomous learning and viewing spaces with an emphasis on community building. He is a co-founder of Inga Books and filmfront (Chicago, IL).

Victor Ramos is a documentary filmmaker from Chillicothe, IL by way of Northern California. Growing up in a town with a population under 7,000 has shaped his filmmaking focus to highlight underrepresented voices, and aim to foster empathy by showcasing triumphs, struggles, and commonalities between communities. While earning his BA at Northern Illinois University, Victor discovered his love for storytelling and produced the award-winning documentary, Already Home. Following his undergraduate studies, he self-produced a number of documentaries, leading to post-production contributions at VICE News and camera operation for CNN. At NU, Victor looks forward to exploring techniques that immerse the viewer through diegetic audio and learning new ways to approach filmmaking.

Fan Wang (fr. Yantai, China) is perhaps a human being living in this universe. She engages with the world through her filmmaking practice and the creation of insignificant poetry. She is drawn to the borderlands, philosophically as well as physically, and enjoys traversing the murky waters of pain and joy. Witnessing the manifestation and dissolution of politics in the everyday mundane, she trusts more than ever in the power of unhistorical acts and the human capability to appreciate the beauty in the brokenness and wholeness of their own being. She takes guidance from life only. She erases her past as she moves forward. She grew up by the sea and loves to hike deep into the anonymous mountains.

Laïssa C. Alexis (she/her) is a New Jersey-raised Haitian artist, researcher, and filmmaker. Her work as a documentarian seeks to capture Black and queer life as it exists now as ancestral preservation. Laïssa enjoys daydreaming about the future and hopes to use cinema to articulate these dreams.

Megan Martinez Goltz is a queer Chicanx storyteller from California. Their practice is rooted in creating immersive soundscapes woven with vibrant histories that span generations, borders, and languages. Their recent short docu-series “Historias de Cultura: Oaxaca en Santa Cruz” explores how immigrants preserve cultural identity through traditional food, medicine, and music. The series has since become an educational tool in classrooms, where Megan facilitates discussions to encourage cross-cultural understanding and the value of community storytelling. At Northwestern, Megan looks forward to connecting with the broader Chicago community and deepening their interdisciplinary approach to filmmaking. Passionate about Indigenous sovereignty, queer and trans liberation, and weaving medicine into media, Megan embraces storytelling as a pathway for ancestral and collective connection.

Shireen Seno is an artist and filmmaker whose work addresses memory, history, and image-making, often in relation to the idea of home. She was born to a Filipino family in Japan, where she spent most of her childhood, and received a B.A. in Architectural studies and Cinema studies from the University of Toronto. Shireen was a 2022 Film Fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin program. Together with John Torres, she is a co-founder of Los Otros (Manila, Philippines), a platform dedicated to the intersections of film and art, with a focus on process over product. As a duo, they realized the exhibition Cloudy with a chance of coconuts at Portikus (Frankfurt) in 2019.