Summer of Rage

Angela Tucker is an Emmy nominated producer, writer and director. She is in her sixth year as Series Producer of the PBS strand, Afropop and was Co-Producer on The New Black. Previously, she was the Director of Production at Big Mouth Films, a social issue documentary production company. There, she worked on several award-winning documentaries, including Pushing the Elephant (PBS’ Independent Lens). Her directorial work includes Paper Chase, a teen comedy in pre production; All Styles, a dance movie in post production starring Fik-Shun (So You Think You Can Dance) and Heather Morris (Glee); Black Folk Don’t, a documentary web series in its fourth season featured in Time Magazine’s “10 Ideas That Are Changing Your Life” and (A)Sexual a feature length documentary about people who experience no sexual attraction that streamed on Netflix and Hulu for three years. In 2006, she co-founded TuckerGurl LLC, a production company passionate about telling compelling and irreverent stories about underrepresented communities. Tucker was a Sundance Institute Women Filmmakers Initiative fellow. She received her MFA in Film from Columbia University.

Cynthia Lowen is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and award-winning writer whose work uses the power of story to catalyze meaningful change, confronting timely social issues from bullying to online harassment to reproductive rights. Most recently, she is the director and producer of Battleground, an urgently timely window into the intersection of abortion and politics in America, premiering at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. She is also the director/producer of Netizens (HBO), a feature documentary about women and online harassment. “Bristling with rightful fury,” says Teen Vogue of the film, ‘Netizens’ follows three women as they confront digital abuse and strive for justice online. Cynthia is also the producer and writer of Bully, a feature documentary following five kids and families through a ‘year in the life’ of America’s bullying crisis. Bully was nominated for two Emmys, shortlisted for the Oscars, screened at The White House and received a DuPont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Journalism. Cynthia has held residencies at MacDowell, the Banff Center, Yaddo, Hedgebook, the Berlinale Talent Campus, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown among others, and received the Hedgebrook Women Authoring Change Fellowship from William Morris Entertainment. She has been a member of the Producers Guild of America since 2014.

Emmy-nominated filmmaker Emma Pildes has an extensive background in, and boundless love for, non-fiction storytelling. The Janes is Emma’s directorial debut. As one of Pentimento Productions‘ principal producers, Emma produced Spielberg, Jane Fonda in Five Acts, and Very Ralph — all for HBO Documentary Films. Spielberg had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival in 2017 and was later nominated for an Emmy. Jane Fonda in Five Acts had its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival in 2018 and its international premiere at Cannes Film Festival. The film was nominated for the 2019 Emmys. Emma worked as a consulting producer on The One and Only Dick Gregory which aired on Showtime in 2021. At PBS’ American Masters, Emma helped to produce the Emmy and Peabody-award winning LennoNYC, Emmy-award winning Inventing David Geffen, as well as American Masters: Billie Jean King. Born and raised in Chicago, Emma graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and is based in Brooklyn, NY. She is a Chicken & Egg grant recipient and a member of the Directors Guild of America.

Tracy Droz Tragos is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose credits include the Emmy-nominated HBO film Abortion: Stories Women Tell, about personal stories of unplanned pregnancies, which premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, and Rich Hill, about at-risk teenagers living in her father’s hometown in rural Missouri, which won the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. In 2018, Tragos completed The Smartest Kids in the World, based on the best-selling book by Amanda Ripley, which premiered at DOC NYC. Tragos’ first film, Be Good, Smile Pretty, won the Emmy Award for Best Documentary in 2004 and was lauded for its honest exploration of the profound and complicated feelings of loss caused by the deaths of American men in the Vietnam War, some 35 years later.