our team

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Kim Nelson

director

Kim Nelson is the Director of the Humanities Research Group and an Associate Professor of Cinema Arts in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Windsor in Canada. Her feature length documentaries have screened at film festivals and on university campuses in Canada, the US and Europe and has been funded by SSHRC (the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada), and the Ontario Arts Council, among others. Her past fellowships include a year-long DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) in Germany, and another at the Cinema Research Institute at NYU. Her work has screened at international film festivals and on university campuses in Canada, the US, and Europe, on the CBC nationally, as well as online with KCET in the US. Her latest project Live Interactive Documentary as Social Cinema was recently awarded a 3-year SSHRC. She was the recipient of both the Emerging and Mid-Career Awards for Excellence in Scholarship, Research and Creative Activity at the University of Windsor.

web: thekimnelson.com

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Robert Nelson

historian, narrator

Robert L. Nelson is Head of the Department of History at the University of Windsor, Canada. His revised Cambridge dissertation appeared in 2011 as German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War. Earlier he published the edited volume Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East: 1850 Through the Present (2009). He has won fellowships from the Killam Trust, the Humboldt Foundation, and a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. He has also been awarded the University of Windsor’s highest honours in both teaching and research, the Alumni Award for Distinguished Contributions to University Teaching and the UWindsor Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity.

web: robertlnelson.com

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Brent Lee

composer, multimedia programmer

Brent Lee is a composer, media artist, and musician whose work explores the relationships between sound, image, and technology, especially through multimedia performance. He has created more than one hundred works, ranging from orchestral music to interactive media pieces to film soundtracks. He holds degrees from McGill University and the University of British Columbia, where he completed his doctoral studies in 1999. In addition to performances and broadcasts in many countries, several of his works have been commercially recorded. He is a co-founder of the Noiseborder Ensemble and has been awarded significant funding for research/creation through SSHRC, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the OAC. He is a Professor of Integrated Media in the School of Creative Arts, and the Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Windsor. He continues to work on a longer-term project that explores research methodologies relating to creative work.

web: Noiseborder Ensemble

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Nick Hector

editor

Nick Hector is a filmmaker and educator with more than thirty years of experience. He has worked at the industry’s highest level with such celebrated film-artists as Allan King, Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis, Alfonso Cuarón, Jennifer Baichwal, and Sturla Gunnarsson. Nick has edited or produced more than 150 documentary films and programs across North & Central America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. He began his career in television journalism and soon specialized in long-form documentary, particularly cinéma-vérité. Nick’s work has been screened at most major international festivals and include 2 films on Criterion, 3 Top Ten Canadian films, 5 films at MoMA, 11 at TIFF, and 16 at HotDocs. He has been nominated for 34 national film craft awards and is the winner of thirteen; including Canadian Screen, HotDocs, Directors Guild of Canada, Canadian Cinema Editors, and Gemini Awards. His creative works have won 48 national and international awards. Nick is a member of the Cinema Arts faculty at the University of Windsor’s School of Creative Arts.

web: nickhector.com

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Cyrus Sundar Singh

creative collaborator

Cyrus is an AcademiCreActivist: a Gemini Award-winning filmmaker, composer, singer-songwriter, poet, author and change-maker currently pursuing a PhD in Communications & Culture. Cyrus’ directorial debut Film Club won both a Gemini and the NFB’s Reel Diversity Award; his writings are published in peer-reviewed journals and poetry anthologies; his on-location productions have taken him around the world including: India, Israel, Spain, Haiti, Jamaica, and Sri Lanka. On the foundation of his successful sixteen-year documentary/storytelling career, he conceived and successfully explored the new site-specific live-documentary genre, Performing the Documentary, with back-to-back world-premieres at Hot Docs International Documentary Festival: Brothers In The Kitchen in 2016; Africville in Black and White in 2017 and in 2018 at the Atlantic Film Festival. Cyrus’ credits as a composer on award-winning films include: Moving Day (Genie); Twisted Sheets (Gemini nominee), Film Club (Gemini); Salaam Shalom: The Jews of India (GoldPlaque@INTERCOM, Chicago; Worldfest, Houston). 

 web: cyrusmedia8.wixsite.com/cyrus1

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Svjetlana Oppen

technical director

Svjetlana Oppen is a Bosnian-Canadian filmmaker residing in Windsor, Ontario. Svjetlana’s research focuses on the complexities of the immigrants’ fragmented national identities, with emphasis on personal and collective memories and nostalgia. She was awarded an SSHRC research grant for her directorial debut documentary, The Last Yugoslavs, which led to her recognition as one of the top twenty-five “SSHRC Story Tellers” in Canada. She was the recipient of WEA’s first Lois Smedick Emerging Artist Grant In Visual Arts, and the University of Windsor’s Pat Noonan “Women In Film” Scholarship. She has worked as a cinematographer on numerous documentaries and short narratives which have screened at festivals worldwide, some of which include 130 Year Road Trip Live, On Girls, The Card-CBC Short Film Face Off finalist, Through Their Eyes, What Is Home, and CBC's long-standing series Land and Sea: Bud and Ron's Northern Life. Svjetlana holds a Masters Degree in Film And Media Arts from the University of Windsor and currently resides as Technical Director of the Windsor International Film Festival.

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Nuha Elalem

visual artist, photography

Nuha Elalem is a Libyan-Canadian filmmaker with a background in Visual Arts. Her portfolio crosses multi-disciplinary works, including documentary mini-series to narrative films. She is currently developing a Windsor-based music documentary and writing an animated short, in which she aims to use striking visuals and music to tell each respective story.

website: www.nuhaelalem.com

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Cherry Theresanathan

visual artist, photography

Cherry Theresanathan is a filmmaker who loves to travel and has worked on national and international projects including a feature documentary “Last of the Yugoslavs, Croatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina” and TV CBC series Land and Sea “Bud and Ron’s Northern Life” set in Kapuskasing Ontario. Along with his international travels, Cherry loves helping out locally as well; he has been an active volunteer with the Windsor International Film Festival for the last 10 years. Cherry was the recipient for Best Cinematographer award from Broken City Labs, and won Best Film of the Year award for the production of “Thugnificient” at the University of Windsor Film Festival. Cherry loves aerial photography and videography, and experimenting with drone shots. He is passionate about learning and leveraging new technology to enhance every project. He also works as an Operations Technician at the University of Windsor.

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Alysha Baker-Diaz

visual artist, photography

Alysha Baker-Diaz is an emerging filmmaker driven by a passion for bringing stories to life. She focuses on story-driven narratives with compelling characters. Alysha has concentrated primarily on four roles: assistant editor, editor, cinematographer, and producer. She is Franco-Ontarian, fluent in both English and French.

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Avi Lewis

creative collaborator

Avi Lewis is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, and lecturer in Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. His 25-year journalism career has spanned award-winning theatrically-released documentaries to local news reporting, and he has appeared on television networks worldwide including Canada’s City TV, MuchMusic, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Channel 4 in the UK, and Al Jazeera English. He is the director and producer of the 2015 feature documentary This Changes Everything, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released theatrically worldwide; it has since been shown in more than 1300 community screenings and translated into 20 languages. Avi co-created and became the long-time host of Fault Lines, an acclaimed weekly documentary series on Al Jazeera English Television. He hosted a series of current affairs and political talk shows on CBC Television, City TV, and MuchMusic. He is the Senior Strategic Advisor and Co-Founder of The Leap, an organization launched in 2017 to upend our collective response to the crises of climate, inequality, and racism.

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Gemma Eva

production assistant

Gemma Eva is a filmmaker and theatre artist. She began her artistic journey at the age of seven when she started acting on stage. At 16, she began writing, producing, directing plays around her community, and eventually developing a passion for filmmaking. Gemma has worked on short and feature films, commercials, and television shows. Her recent credits, Rabbit and the Snare, Rough Love, and Boys vs. Girls, are films that have screened and have won awards at film festivals worldwide. She received a SSHRC grant for her upcoming musical film and research project called Big Little Show. Gemma received her honours BA degree in Communication, Media and Film and recently completed her MFA in Film and Media Arts.

web: gemmaeva.com

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Calum Hotchkiss

research assistant, editing

Calum Hotchkiss is an active cinematographer, director, and editor. His love of filmmaking stems from an early interest in nature photography. Always an avid movie watcher, he discovered his true passion for the cinematic art form in his first media arts class in high school. Calum holds an MFA in Film and Media Arts at the University of Windsor. His academic work explores sensorialism in film with respect to feelings of cultural dissonance and generational divides. His recent projects include Rabbit and the Snare (2019, short film, co-director/cinematographer), Care Work Is Essential Work. It's Also Climate Work, featuring Naomi Klein and directed by Nick Hector (2020, short documentary, assistant editor), and Corporate Rent Strike! produced by The Leap (2020, short documentary, editor).

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Liam Brownrigg Bartra

research assistant, editing

Liam Brownrigg Bartra is originally from Lima, Peru. He is finishing his BAH in Communication, Media & Film & a minor in Business at the University of Windsor. His work ranges from a variety of genres with an emphasis on post-production work. His interests include giving a voice to the marginalized and learning from those unique experiences and stories. 

His most recent projects include his edited work in Lookin’ Good, Feelin’ Good a short documentary regarding female body image and an edited mini web-series on Instagram called What’s in Windsor that brings attention to local businesses in Windsor.