Aisha Raison is a womanist, award-winning filmmaker/photographer and poet who has used both skills as a multimedia artist and activist in the Memphis area. She started her career as a slam poet in 1997, becoming the first African American and female representing Memphis in poetry slam. She represented teams in Memphis as well as Winston Salem, then later worked as a mentor with Hattiloo Theatre's Write On Speak Out from 2014 until 2020. She athored her first chapbook of poetry in 1998 called Afrodeessiack, creating the publishing company Afrodeesiack Press that same year while attending Dyersburg State. She would later assemble books such as Speaking in Cursive and Other Adventures of Little Girl Blue in 2012, Heroine Tracks in 2015, and Fear of an Enlightened Black Woman in 2017. In 2016, Aisha  merged her imagination, poetry and vision into award-winning films such as Girls Like Me: a self/love story, Dancin' to the Blue Moon, her Covid-19 short Stolen Moments on the 8th Flo, her short documentary on the Byhalia Pipeline called Toxic Behavior, and her recent documentary on the Tyre Nichols protests called The Blues. She is an activist photographer throughout the city of Memphis since 2014 and works as a photojournalist with Fox 13 in Memphis. She is a 2022 graduate from Southwest Tennessee Community College, a 2023 graduate of the University of Memphis as a student in Africana Herstory, an alumni resident of Crosstown Arts and a 2019 recipient of ArtsMemphis Art Acceleration Grant.

A.J. Riggins is an award-winning filmmaker and producer from North Carolina. He is passionate about exploring the intricate family dynamics of the American South. His short films have been showcased at various film festivals, including Indie Memphis. A.J.'s documentary, "Beautiful Coffee," won the 2022 PRWeek Corporate - Branded Film of the Year. His collection of projects, "The World of Toine," delves into intricate southern family dynamics and provides the foundation for his screenplay, Look at Toine. He is a 2024 screenwriter fellow of the Antigravity Academy Screenwriters Camp and Incubator. A.J. holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, School of Filmmaking.

cai thomas is a documentary filmmaker and cinematographer based in Chicago telling intimate stories at the intersection of location, self determination, and identity about Black youth and elders. She grew up in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood and is deeply interested in stories rooted in place. Her filmmaking exhibits how Black folks are agitating and organizing for the world they want, whether that’s a journalist investigating police misconduct (Beneath The Surface, 2023) , a disabled lesbian elder fighting for an accessible apartment (Queenie, 2020)  or young folks organizing for parks named after folks that look like them (Change The Name Film, 2021).

Antonia Thornton is a documentary filmmaker who earned a MFA in documentary producing and directing from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film & Television. She endeavors always to learn more about herself and others, delivering engrossing stories through captivating subjects who simply tell their truths. During her time at UCLA, Antonia often focused her lens on women of color to explore the human costs of larger systemic issues. For these stories, she garnered awards like the Nikon Storytellers Scholarship, the Edie and Lew Wasserman Thesis Award and the MPAA Award. Her most recent film, Things Long Left Unsaid, was chosen to screen as part of the Director’s Spotlight at the UCLA TFT Film Festival 2022 and won Best Short Documentary at the 2023 Local Sightings Film Festival and the 2024 Spokane International Film Festival.

After interning for a year at Firelight Films and coordinating the 2021 Spark Fund, Antonia Thornton joined Firelight Media as an Artist Programs Coordinator in 2022, focusing her work on their flagship Documentary Lab fellowship.