Brown Girls Doc Mafia Panel

On April 3rd at 4PM, NYU Tisch School of the Arts' Fusion Film Festival will offer a Brown Girls Doc Mafia Panel with Founder Iyabo Boyd, plus Emily Cohen Ibañez, Toni Kamau, & Ashley O’Shay. This event will be live via Zoom.

Iyabo Boyd is a writer, director, and producer who strives to tell stories from under-explored perspectives, and to reflect the dynamic humanity of women and people of color. Her short ME TIME, a black feminist comedy about self care and masturbation, played over 25 festivals including Blackstar, Rooftop Films, and Miami Shorts Fest, and won 9 awards including Best Director at the Atlanta Comedy Film Festival. Her feature screenplay, KAYLA & EDDIE EN FRANÇAIS, a collaboration with her dad, is about an estranged Black father and daughter reconnecting in Paris. For this project, Iyabo was a fellow in the Sundance Film Festival’s Talent Forum, the Sundance Film Institute’s Screenwriting Intensive, IFP’s No Borders Project Forum, and was awarded a SFFILM Rainin Screenwriting Grant. Iyabo is also the founder of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, a collective for women filmmakers of color, which has 4,500 members globally. Iyabo was a Ford Foundation JustFilms Fellow, and is a recipient of DocNYC’s New Leader award. Iyabo was a founding team member and later a Co-Director of NYU's Fusion Film Festival. She graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for film, and currently resides in the Bronx, NY.

Toni Kamau is the youngest female African documentary producer to be invited as a member of the Academy for Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences - Documentary Branch. As an award winning producer, writer and founder of We Are Not the Machine, a Nairobi-based production company, she tells stories of outsiders, rebels and change makers. Her past credits include half-hour documentaries for Al Jazeera, MTV Europe and BBC Africa.

The Sundance Special Jury prize winner and POV co-production “Softie”, produced by Toni and directed by Sam Soko, premiered at Sundance in 2020 in the World Cinema Documentary Feature Competition, was selected as the opening night film at Hot Docs 2020, won the Oscar qualifying best African Documentary award at Durban Film Festival and the Documentary Silver Prize at El Gouna Film festival. “I am Samuel”, a feature produced by Toni and directed by 2019 Rory Peck winner Pete Murimi recently had its world premiere at the 2020 edition of Hot Docs and its European premiere at BFI London Film Festival.

Toni is currently in production on a feature documentary about home and belonging and in development on a couple of documentary series and stand alone shorts.

Emily Cohen Ibañez (producer/director/cinematographer/writer) is a Latinx filmmaker with Colombian and Syrian Jewish heritage. She earned her doctorate in Anthropology (2011) with a certificate in Culture and Media at New York University. Her film work pairs lyricism with social activism, advocating for labor, environmental, and health justice. Her directorial feature documentary debut, FRUITS OF LABOR will be having its World Premiere at SXSW 2021. Emily was a Fulbright Scholar in 2007-2008 based in Colombia, South America; she screened her film Bodies at War in 22 rural Colombian municipalities affected by landmines in partnership with the Colombian Campaign Against Landmines. Emily regularly makes commissioned short films for venues like The Guardian, The Intercept, and Independent Lens. She also contributes cinematography to independent films including Bronx Obama (2014) directed by Ryan Murdock which won a “Best in Fest” award at AFI Docs. She is recipient of multiple fellowships and grants including JustFilms Ford Foundation, Firelight Doc Lab, 4th World Indigenous Media Lab, and Field of Vision amongst others.

Ashley O’Shay is a DP and documentarian based in Chicago, IL, whose work focuses on illuminating marginalized voices. She has produced work for national brands, including Lifetime, Nike, KQED, and Dr. Martens. She filmed the final episode of Dr. Martens' "Tough As You" series, starring the band Phony Ppl, accruing over 65K views on social and web. In 2019, she co-produced the Chicago episode of KQED’s award-winning series “If Cities Could Dance,” which became one of their most viewed episodes to date. Her work also appeared in the critically-acclaimed Lifetime docuseries Surviving R. Kelly. Most recently, she premiered her debut feature, Unapologetic, a deep look into the Movement for Black Lives in Chicago, told through the experiences of two young, Black queer women. The film premiered at the 2020 BlackStar Film Festival, and was shortlisted for the International Documentary Association Awards.

The Fusion Film Festival is New York University’s premiere festival dedicated to celebrating women in film, television, and new media from student to icon. Founded in 2003 at Tisch School of the Arts by two students Emma Heald and Gina Abatemarco, Fusion has been passionately guided by Kanbar Professor Susan Sandler.

Fusion offers programming throughout the school year, culminating in a three day spring festival of screenings, industry panels, master classes, retrospectives, networking events, and competitions in fourteen categories all focused on women’s voices and work behind the camera. Fusion is proud to be an Allied Partner of the Sundance Institute’s Women’s Initiative. In the eighteen years since its launch, Fusion has attracted scores of accomplished artists and visionaries from across the industry including Lulu Wang, Eliza Hittman, Nia DaCosta, Melina Matsoukas, Reed Morano, Christine Vachon, Misha Green, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Kasi Lemmons, Lena Dunham, Janet Tamaro, Maria Zuckerman, Kelly Edwards, Amy Emmerich, Lauren Zalaznick to mentor and inspire the next generation of great storytellers.

Instagram: @fusionfilmfest

Facebook: @fusionfilmfestival

Join us for our other 2021 Fusion Film Festival events:

Distribution Masterclass led by Mia Bruno using work by Emory Parker, Denise Zhou, and Gabriella A. Moses on Thursday, April 1st at 8 PM

Woman of the Year Masterclass with Issa Rae on Friday, April 2nd at 8 PM

Fusion Film Festival 2021 Awards Ceremony on April 3rd at 8 pm

2021 Fusion Film Festival Showcase from March 27th to April 10th