FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, AND ARTIST SUPPORT: HOW TO LEVERAGE YOUR AGE AND TALENT

Tyler Rabinowitz is an award-winning writer, director, and producer and an Academy Nicholl Semifinalist. As a writer-director, Tyler's credits include the short film SEE YOU SOON (Short of the Week, Vimeo Staff Pick, Outfest '20, New Orleans '20). As a producer, Tyler's credits include the short films LAVENDER (Sundance '19, SXSW '19), which was acquired by Searchlight Pictures, and THE MESS HE MADE (SXSW '17). He also produced the music video for the platinum-hit song "Lights Down Low" by MAX ft. gnash. His work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, the Jacob Burns Film Center, the National YoungArts Foundation, and the Inside Out LGBT Film Finance Forum. In 2011, he was honored by the Barack Obama Administration as a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts. He's currently developing his first feature film.

Teen Actor-Director-Writer Dusan Brown, hails from Chicago, but has resided in Hollywood since 2010. Brown is an esteemed 2020 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts (Film) and a prestigious National YoungArts Foundation Winner (Film). Brown's short film, Reece, which he wrote, directed, edited and colored as a junior in high school, has won five awards at various national film festivals: Best Student Film (2x), The Spark Award, Best Overall and Best Cinematography, earned a total of 15 nominations and was selected to screen at 14 festivals to include Los Angeles International Shorts, Sacramento International, WILDsound Diversity (Toronto), Baltimore International, and American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase (Cannes), to name a few. His latest short to hit the film fest circuit, Cereal, a hard hitting, coming of age, drama in which Brown wrote, directed and stars in, within just a month of submissions, is creating quite a rapid, buzz and establishing him as the “Director to watch” of the future.

Thomas Percy Kim is a Korean-American writer/director. His stop-motion animated short film, Trejur, has screened at venues such as Heartland and Busan International and has received the Harry Winston Brilliant Futures Award and YoungArts gold medal by the age of 17. Currently at USC, he is represented by the Bruce Lee Foundation, and his latest project, Si, starring Ki Hong Lee (Maze Runner, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), will premiere at the 2020 LAAPFF after being distributed by all HBO platforms.

Lydia Cornett is a filmmaker based in Columbus, OH and Brooklyn, NY. She was the Valentine & Clark Emerging Artist Fellow at the Jacob Burns Film Center, a CoLab Fellow at UnionDocs, and a two-time recipient of the NYC Women's Fund for Media, Music and Theatre. In 2019, her film Narmin's Birthday won the Festival Jury Runner-Up Award at the Nitehawk Shorts Festival and premiered online with NoBudge. Her subsequent film Yves & Variation premiered at BAMcinemaFest and went on to screen at the Hamptons International Film Festival, DOC NYC, Big Sky Documentary Festival, and Aspen ShortsFest. It was acquired for The New Yorker's documentary series in August 2020. Lydia graduated from Princeton University with a degree in History, and she is a classically trained violinist. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Art & Technology at Ohio State University.

Jalena Keane-Lee is a director, cinematographer, and producer who explores intergenerational trauma and healing through an intersectional lens. Jalena is the co-founder of Breaktide Productions, an all women of color video production company that has carried out national video campaigns for brands like Nike and Thinx. Their branded content has won two Cannes Lion awards — and in 2019, were named to YBCA’s 100 list of changemakers. Jalena produced a short film for Independent Lens and her films have screened at the UN, HIFF, CAAMFest, and LAAPFF. She has been supported by NeXt Doc, The Jacob Burns Creative Culture Fellowship, PIC, and Nia Tero.

Varun Chopra is an India/US based filmmaker and Sundance Institute's Ignite Fellow. He is one of the seven fellows of Academy supported Visual Communication's Armed with a Camera fellowship and Film Independent+LMU Incubator Lab Fellow.

Born and raised in New Delhi, Varun graduated from LMU School of Film and Television in Los Angeles where he was the recipient of the coveted SFTV Dean’s Scholarship.

His work has screened at varied film festivals worldwide including Oaxaca, IFFLA, Bogoshorts, San Sebastian HR, NFFTY, LAAPFF among others. His short film "Abandon" played at festivals across the globe and was picked up by PBS for a nationwide broadcast and worldwide online release. His subsequent film “Wreck It Raj” was supported by The Academy and was picked up by Comcast and Alaska Airlines. It is also being included in Spotify Studio's API filmmaker series. His work has been covered by leading Indian publications such as Outlook and Hindustan Times.

Varun has worked with legendary designer/director Kyle Cooper on multiple studio films, shadowed director Malik Vitthal on a Paramount Feature and created content for brands like Asus, Condé Nast, National Geographic and Fox Life. Currently, he’s directing a mixed media project for Participant Media and developing his debut feature film project.

Maya is an award-winning director and producer for films and radio. Her work has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered, Latino USA, Spotify, The Atlantic, Teen Vogue, and National Geographic and her films have screened at SXSW, Palm Springs International ShortFest, Full Frame Documentary Festival, and DOC NYC. Her short documentary, THE PROVIDER, won an Emmy at the College Television Awards via the Television Academy Foundation in 2015. Maya’s other short animated documentary ONLY THE MOON premiered at Full Frame Documentary Festival in 2019 and won Best Animated film at the Official Latino Film and Arts Festival. Maya was also a recipient of the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund, part of the Tribeca Film Institute, in 2019. She was a 2019 Sundance Ignite Fellow, a North Star Fellow part of the Points North Institute, a 2019 Film Independent Documentary Lab fellow, and a fellow at the Jacob Burns Film Center. Her first feature documentary, ON THE DIVIDE, was also selected to be part of the Tribeca Film Institute/A&E StoryLab in 2020. She is currently a 2020 BAVC MediaMaker fellow.