The Jacob Burns Film Center (JBFC) Announces New Roster of Creative Culture Filmmaking Fellows

Jacob Burns Film Center (JBFC) announced the artists selected for spring 2022 fellowships in Creative Culture, an inclusive program for emerging professional filmmakers. 

Creative Culture provides 10-month-long experiences for filmmakers to produce short film projects in a collaborative community. In addition to participating in weekly sessions with their peers, the fellowship includes access to mentorship, stipend support, production equipment, post-production facilities and software, and the JBFC’s industry network.

Since its inception in 2016, the program has supported a diverse group of 41 fellows, with over half of the cohort identifying as women, people of color, and/or LGBTQ+. The program has produced 59 short films, four of which were ultimately Oscar-qualified. Renowned national and international film festivals and media outlets have screened and distributed Creative Culture films, including Sundance, Berlinale, SXSW, The Criterion Channel, HBOMax, The New York Times’ Op-Docs, and POV Shorts. 

“We are so proud to welcome these eight profoundly talented filmmakers into our Creative Culture fellowship program,” said Sean Weiner, Director of Programs, Media Arts Lab. “This collective of artists represents a compelling intersection of wildly different approaches to filmic storytelling. There is power not only in the subject matter of each of their stories, but in the creative innovation each filmmaker brings to how they will tell these narratives. We look forward to supporting their important work within a community of inclusion and collaboration.” 

Here is the current list of fellows:

Natalie Jasmine Harris
Silver Spring, Maryland

Natalie is a Black Queer filmmaker whose work spans narrative, documentary, and experimental forms but is centered around a mission to tell stories that capture coming-of-age experiences, showcase Black joy, and reimagine liberation for marginalized communities.

Justice Jamal Jones
Omaha, Nebraska

Justice, a Black Queer alchemist, is a filmmaker, actor, and writer who integrates Black Feminist Queer theory into their art alongside Black diasporic spirituality. 

Maliyamungu Muhande
Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo

Maliyamungu is a Congolese artist and filmmaker pursuing anti-colonial filmmaking and artistic practice rooted in inquisitiveness around identity, Blackness, and diasporic history.

Grace Remington
Seattle, Washington

Grace is a producer and director who has worked in documentary film and television in the United States, Mexico, and Peru. 

Sophia Feuer
Chicago, Illinois

Sophia is a filmmaker and multimedia artist who works primarily with 16mm film; she uses documentary and narrative techniques, combining an anthropological lens with sci-fi and horror tropes. 

Rebecca Blandón
The Bronx, New York

Rebecca is a Nicaraguan-American journalist and filmmaker who hopes to make the invisible visible through the practice of compassionate storytelling, accountability journalism, and documentary filmmaking. 

Marcie LaCerte
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Marcie is a Chinese-American experimental animator interested in creating work exploring human psychology through a humorous and surreal lens. 

Ramiel Petros
Mountain View, California

Ramiel is a first-generation Iraqi-American writer/director who fiercely believes in filmmaking’s power to depict universal narratives through diverse lenses.