Jason DaSilva
Jason DaSilva is a prolific filmmaker. He has written and directed four short films and four feature length documentaries. In 2005, Jason was diagnosed with primary progressive MS and he turned the camera on himself, advocating and giving a voice to people with disabilities through his films. This led to the start of the non-profit AXS Lab, where he serves as president, overseeing AXS Map and AXS Film Fund. AXS Lab produced Jason’s feature When I Walk (2013) (Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Programming) and its sequel When We Walk (2019) (Best documentary at CAAMFest). Jason is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has also won the following awards: the Christopher Award for Excellence in Film and, Made in New York recognition at the Gotham Awards, and most recently, was recognized by NYWIFT with the Loreen Arbus Changemaker Award at the MUSE awards.
Deann Borshay Liem
Deann Borshay Liem is an Emmy Award-winning documentarian known for films that explore war, memory, family and identity including her landmark adoption films First Person Plural, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee and Geographies of Kinship. Her work on the Korean War including Memory of Forgotten War, Crossings and the oral history project, Legacies of the Korean War, explores divided families and women’s role in peacemaking. She has served as Executive Producer, Producer, Executive in Charge and consultant for numerous films including The Apology, Mimi & Dona, Seeing Allred, Dorothea Lange: Grab A Hunk of Lightning, Ishi’s Return, The Eddy Zheng Story and AKA Don Bonus. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, California Humanities, Sundance Institute, Rockefeller Foundation, San Francisco Film Society and others. She is currently serving as Producer for the ITVS-supported film, Vivien’s Wild Ride.
Farihah Zaman
Farihah Zaman is a queer Bangladeshi-American filmmaker, critic, educator, and curator whose award-winning work as a director has screened at Sundance, Toronto, New York Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, and more. Her first feature was Remote Area Medical, followed by This Time Next Year, and the doc-fiction hybrid Feast of the Epiphany, as well as several shorts (Kombit, Nobody Loves Me, American Carnage, and To Be Queen, part of the Emmy-nominated NYT Op-Doc series From Here to Home). She produced the Sundance-award winning Netflix Original Ghosts of Sugar Land, which was shortlisted for 2020 Academy Award nomination. Zaman currently serves as the Director of Grants + Fellowships at nonfiction nonprofit Brown Girls Doc Mafia. She was Documentarian in Residence at Bard College 2018-2019, named a Top 40 under 40 filmmaker by Doc NYC, is currently an Impact Partners Producing Fellow and Firelight Spark Fund Recipient, and is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.