In this episode of Film & Impact, Zephrine meets up with Michèle Stephenson, a badass filmmaker, artist and author who pulls from her Panamanian and Haitian roots and international experience as a human rights attorney to tell compelling deeply personal stories in a variety of media that resonate beyond the margins.

In today’s episode, we talk about making American Promise, her 13-year, Emmy-nominated documentary, the ethical challenges of telling a documentary story, the key role of advocates when approaching gatekeepers for funding, and looking at the intersections between art and politics.  

Co-founder of the Rada Film Group, Michèle’s work has appeared on a variety of broadcast and web platforms, including PBS, Showtime and MTV. Her most recent film, American Promise, was nominated for three Emmys including Best Documentary and Best News Coverage of a Contemporary Issue. The film also won the Jury Prize at Sundance, and was selected for the New York Film Festivals’ Main Slate Program. Stephenson was recently awarded the Chicken & Egg Pictures Filmmaker Breakthrough Award and is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow. Her current work, Hispaniola, is supported by the likes of the National Film Board of Canada, the MacArthur Foundation, Telefilm Canada, the Ford Foundation and the Sundance Documentary Fund.

Michèle Stephenson is one of the founders of and has co-produced several short documentaries in The Conversation, a series of Op Ed documentaries for the New York Times, including An Education in Equality, A Conversation With White People on Race, and A Conversation with Black Women on Race.

Her community engagement accomplishments include the PUMA BritDoc Impact Award for a Film with the Greatest Impact on Society, a Revere Award Nomination from the American Publishers Association, and she is a fellow of Skoll Storytellers of Change. Promises Kept, written along with co-authors Joe Brewster and Hilary Beard, won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work.

See Michèle’s work:

Website: http://radastudio.org/projects/

Connect with Michèle:

•  Instagram @michele_0608
• Twitter @michele0608
• Facebook @Michèle Stephenson