Tales From the Field

Ciara Lacy is a native Hawaiian filmmaker whose interest lies in crafting films that use strong characters and investigative journalism to challenge the creative and political status quo. She has produced documentary content for film and television, managed independent features, as well as coordinated product placement and clearances for various platforms. Her work has shown in theaters and has aired on PBS, ABC, TLC, Discovery, Bravo, and A&E. She has also benefited from fellowships with Firelight Media‘s Documentary Lab, the Sundance Institute and Time Warner Foundation, the Sundance Institute’s NativeLab, Tribeca All Access, the Princess Grace Foundation, and IFP. Ciara holds a BA from Yale University, and graduated from Hawai’i’s Kamehameha Schools.

Elizabeth Lo is an award-winning director, editor, cinematographer, and producer whose work has been broadcast and showcased internationally, including at Sundance, SXSW, MoMA, Tribeca, IDFA, True/False, BFI London, New York Times Op-Docs, Field of Vision, and PBS’ POV. Elizabeth has been selected for DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 List, the 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine, the New Directors’ Showcase at Cannes Lion, the New York Film Festival Artists Academy, and the Locarno Film Festival Filmmakers Academy. Elizabeth’s work includes Stray (2020), Mother’s Day (2017), The Disclosure President (2016), Bisonhead (2016), Notes From Buena Vista (2016), Hotel 22 (2015), Treasure Island (2014), and Last Stop in Santa Rosa (2013), among others. Her award-winning shorts were released as a collection for distribution to educational institutions and libraries around the world and have played at over 100 film festivals. Elizabeth’s debut feature documentary, Stray, won the Top Jury Prize at the Hot Docs and was nominated for a Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit Award after premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2020. Stray will be released theatrically by Magnolia Pictures in March, 2021. Most recently, Elizabeth was selected for the Concordia Studio Fellowship to develop her second feature-length film.

Jamila Wignot is a documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn. Her directing work includes two episodes of the Peabody, Emmy and NAACP award-winning series The African-Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (PBS), hosted by Henry Louis Gates and chronicling the five hundred year history of African Americans; Town Hall (co-directed with Sierra Pettingill), a feature-length co-production with ITVS following Tea Party activists determined to unseat Barack Obama; and, for PBS’s American Experience series, the Peabody Award-winning Triangle Fire and Emmy-nominated Walt Whitman. Jamila’s producing credits include W. Kamau Bell’s Bring The Pain (A&E); Sundance award-winning director Musa Syeed‘s narrative feature A Stray (SXSW); Street Fighting Men; and The Rehnquist Revolution, the fourth episode of WNET’s series The Supreme Court, which was an IDA Best Limited Series winner. Her latest film Ailey (Sundance ’21) will be released theatrically by NEON.

Jane Schoenbrun is a non-binary filmmaker whose first narrative We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is set to premiere in the NEXT section at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Jane is the co-creator of the ongoing touring variety series The Eyeslicer, a collaboration with hundreds of filmmakers including David Lowery, Ari Aster, Shaka King, Jennifer Reeder, Bridey Elliott, and many more. The Eyeslicer has screened in hundreds of venues across the world including MoMA, the Tribeca Film Festival, and Kansas City’s oldest porn theater. In 2018, Jane created the Radical Film Fair, a film flea market and mentorship event that drew thousands of attendees. Jane is the director of the feature documentary A Self-Induced Hallucination (Rotterdam 2019), a producer on Aaron Schimberg’s Chained for Life (Kino Lorber 2019), an EP on season one of Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness (HBO 2018), and the creator of the omnibus ‘dream film’ collective:unconscious (SXSW 2016). Jane sometimes publishes the column “Continue Watching” for Filmmaker Magazine, and has previously worked as the Senior Film Lead at Kickstarter and as the Associate Director of Programming at IFP.