Artemis Rising Foundation Filmmaker Fellowship Program

We welcome proposals from filmmakers across a wide range of practice, including those with interests in documentary filmmaking, cinematography, film direction, screenwriting and digital film production. Applicants should embrace a commitment to advancing women in film and share Barnard's commitment to bold women's leadership.

We are looking for filmmakers who are interested in teaching semester-long courses as well as those interested in teaching 1-credit short courses that last two to four weeks. 

We are looking for individuals with experience teaching in an undergraduate setting.

Filmmakers and storytellers interested in being considered for the ARFF Fellowship, should complete this interest form. 

Responses to the interest form are reviewed on a rolling basis. Potential Fellows may be contacted by a member of the hiring committee to discuss their proposed course and provide more information. 

Barnard is looking for visiting filmmakers who can offer a variety of film and media literacy courses that complement the Film Program’s existing offerings. Below are some examples of topics and themes that are particularly interesting to the committee as this time, though this is by no means an exhaustive list of what can or should be proposed:

• Intro to Animation
• Aspects of writing or producing for television
• Technically-focused production courses. i.e. Advanced/Creative Lighting Techniques, Editing for Narrative/Documentary, Sound Design, etc. 
• The business of filmmaking (i.e. funding, pitching, etc.)

Barnard welcomes proposals from filmmakers based anywhere in the world; however, ARFF courses are delivered in-person on the Barnard College campus in Morningside Heights, New York City. As such, Fellows must arrange to be in New York City and available in person for the length of their course (whether it be two weeks or a full semester).

Housing is not provided for visiting filmmakers. However, there is a modest amount of funding available to cover transportation and housing for filmmakers who are not based in NYC.

Stipends begin at $5,000 and vary based on the course length.

Barnard will welcome up to 4 Artemis Rising Foundation Filmmaker Fellows each semester. We are looking for filmmakers who are interested in teaching semester-long courses as well as those interested in teaching 1-credit short courses that last two to four weeks. 

The selection committee is composed of faculty and staff from Barnard College and Columbia University.

Sekiya Dorsett, a GLAAD award-winning filmmaker, received the inaugural ARFF Fellowship. Dorsett's body of work is notable for its intimate storytelling that shines a light on diversity and gender equity. Her first feature, The Revival: Women and the Word, screened at the 2017 Athena Film Festival. 

Her course at Barnard was titled "Social Justice Documentary Filmmaking" and supported a dozen students working on short, social justice, documentary films. Several of these films screened as part of a Student Showcase at the 2023 Athena Film Festival. 

Abbesi Akhamie joined Barnard in the spring of 2023 to teach a mini-course on the business of filmmaking. 

Born in Heidelberg, Germany, Abbesi Akhamie is a Nigerian-American writer-director and producer working between Lagos and Washington D.C. Her work focuses on African and diaspora experiences as well as the politics of culture and identity. Her debut short film, Still Water Runs Deep (2017) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and her latest short film, The Couple Next Door (2020), premiered at Aspen ShortsFest and won the Audience Choice Award at the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival. Currently, she is developing her debut feature film, In My Father’s House, which has graciously been supported by SFFILM Rainin, Athena Film Festival Writer's Lab, TIFF Writer's Studio and Filmmaker Lab, and the Attagirl Residency program. Abbesi was also selected to participate in the Black Rock Artist residency founded in Dakar, Senegal, by renowned American artist and Obama presidential portraitist, Kehinde Wiley.  In her free time, she enjoys mentoring emerging filmmakers and supporting BIPOC and women creatives.

Cynthia Lowen joined Barnard in the spring of 2023 to teach a mini-course on writing for non-fiction filmmaking. In this course, students honed their writing skills for a non-fiction project for which they had already begun production, and created decks, delivered pitches, drafted sample grants, and considered whether to incorporate elements like voiceover, narration, text cards, or other writing into their final film. 

Cynthia Lowen is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and award-winning writer whose work uses the power of story to catalyze meaningful change, confronting timely social issues from bullying to online harassment to nuclear proliferation. Most recently, she is the director and producer of ‘Battleground,’ an urgently timely window into the intersection of abortion and politics in America, premiering at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. Cynthia is also the director and producer of ‘Netizens,’ a feature documentary distributed by HBO Max about women and online harassment. “Bristling with rightful fury,” says Teen Vogue of the film, ‘Netizens’ follows three women – Carrie Goldberg, Tina Reine and Anita Sarkeesian – as they confront digital abuse and strive for justice online. The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and has screened at top film festivals around the world, including the Bergen International Film Festival, the Cork Film Festival, the Athena Film Festival, the Denver Film Festival, Hot Docs, the Milwaukee Film Festival and the Zurich Film Festival among many other festivals and exhibitions. ‘Netizens’ was part of the prestigious U.S. State Department‘s Film Diplomacy Program, where it has screened at U.S. Embassies in Albania, Lebanon, Moscow and Turkey with associated cultural programming and lectures. Since 2014, Cynthia has served as Visiting Assistant Professor in Colorado College’s esteemed Film and Media Studies program, where she teaches core film production classes that focus on narrative and non-fiction film production, as well as upper-level screenwriting and documentary film production courses. Cynthia received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and her BA from Colorado College and has been a member of the Producers Guild of America since 2014.

Sushma Khadepaun joined Barnard in the fall of 2023 to teach a semester long writing course on crafting a global short film from idea to screenplay. With a focus on studying contemporary international cinema.

An Indian-born writer and director based in New York, Sushma’s stories often meet at the intersection of immigration and feminism, exploring ideas of home and identity. Her work has been featured on NPR, BOMB Magazine, Focus Features Digital and Canal Plus among others. Sushma was listed as one of Filmmaker Magazine‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film (2021), is a recipient of SFFilm's Westridge Grant and has been a fellow at Film Independent's Fast Track, Gotham Week and Torino Next Lab. She is currently developing her first feature based on her short film Anita. The short premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2020 and went on to screen at over fifty international festivals, winning several awards including the NBR Student Grant Award, Best International Short at Dublin, and a Special Mention at Atlanta. Sushma is an alumna of the Film MFA Program at Columbia University where she is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor.

Victoria Sendra joined Barnard in the fall of 2023 to teach a mini-course workshop on camera and movement. This production class focused on exploring camera angles, framing, movement, storyboarding, blocking (choreography), shoot prep and editing.

A NYC-based cinematographer and camera operator, Victoria is best known for her onstage work in Network on Broadway (dir. Ivo van Hove, feat. Bryan Cranston). Her dance films have screened at Cinedans (Mother Melancholia, dir. Samantha Shay, co-commissioned by Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch – Audience Award 2022 for Best Dance Short), Nowness, Dance Camera West, San Francisco Dance Film Festival, Film at Lincoln Center, and several of her photographs have printed in the New York Times. Commercial clients include Vogue, Versace, Uniqlo, and the New York Philharmonic. She is currently a producer, cinematographer, and editor with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and worked previously as a bilingual producer at the Latin American production company Red Creek, for clients including Pepsi, Discovery, and Netflix. Sendra was selected to participate in the AFI Cinematography Intensive for Women (‘23) and holds a BFA in Film/Video (‘12) from the California Institute of the Arts.

Dafina Roberts (she/ze/they) joined in spring 2024 to teach a section of Writing for Television: Short Form. This course focused on the primary pillar of television production: the teleplay. Dafina is a non-binary writer/director/producer. Her subversive and messy dramedies explore themes of power, perception, and identity in the postmodern world. Dafina has been a Ryan Murphy Half Initiative Directing Fellow, Blackhouse Producer Lab Fellow  and a Kickstarter Creator-In-Residence. Previously, she created the digital series Giving Me Life (In The Land Of The Deadass), which was released via Comcast’s Xfinity. Giving Me Life also won the AT&T Audience Award for Best Episodic at the Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival. Dafina worked as a Director of Development & Production at Nickelodeon, where she coordinated creative development and current series including the Emmy-nominated Degrassi. She also co-produced the feature film, Punching At The Sun (Sundance Film Festival; Sundance Institute's Humanitas Prize nominee; Tribeca Film Festival), which has been featured in the Criterion Collection. Dafina began her career as the Assistant Artistic Director and Master Choreographer of the Oscar-nominated IMPACT Repertory Theater, a hip-hop youth theater group.

Yaël Bitton joined in Spring 2024 to teach a short course in film production: The Art and Craft of Editing using Found Footage as Source Material. Yaël is a documentary film editor, writer, story consultant, and director. She has been making films for over 25 years and pursues collaborations with filmmakers around the world. Additionally to her editor's endeavors, she works as mentor, editing and story consultant independently, as well as for Rough Cut Service, Media talents lab, Dok Incubator, Doc Montevideo, Circle, Visions du Réel, Ex Oriente, Doc Aviv, and Doc Point. She has been working as an editing tutor at the HEAD/Cinema du Réel in Geneva since 2008. Yaël is a member of The Oscars Academy in the documentary branch. She won the Sima editing award for Radio Silence by Juliana Fanjul in 2020, and the Best editing at Israel documentary forum for Advocate by Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaiche in 2019.

Mridu Chandra joined in Spring 2024 to teach a short course in filmmaking: Archival Filmmaking. This course was a series of masterclasses that explored archival storytelling and demystified the archival research process. Mridu is a BAFTA and Emmy-nominated producer of impactful documentaries and fiction films that have premiered at Sundance, Telluride, and SXSW; aired on PBS, Disney+, HBO, and Netflix; and screened for members of the U.S. Congress and the United Nations. Recent films include producing BECOMING COUSTEAU (Disney+) directed by two-time Oscar nominee Liz Garbus and co-producing CURED (PBS) directed by Bennett Singer and Patrick Sammon. Her expertise as an archival media researcher and clearance specialist has additionally served numerous other documentaries (WHOSE STREETS?), fiction films (STEVE JOBS directed by Danny Boyle) and Broadway productions (BETRAYAL  directed by Mike Nichols). She is currently in development to direct a documentary about our first Asian Congressman in U.S. history—Dalip Singh Saund.

Adriana Banta (BC '15) returned to Barnard in the fall of 2024 to teach a one-point minicourse, entitled Nonfiction Independent Feature-Length & Series Executive Producing. The focus behind the four-part mini-course was to provide an overview of the documentary filmmaking process from the perspective of an Executive Producer (EP). What is an Executive Producer? With the responsibilities of this role often being broadly defined, students looked at various approaches to sourcing story, organizing financing, overseeing production & post, and executing the sales strategy of documentary films and series, all in support of an EP’s collaborating filmmakers and producers. As a Senior Executive at A24 and a Vice President at 30WEST, Adriana has executive produced and sold films including: The Deepest Breath, Occupied City, Architecton, Open Wide, My Mercury, and Wildcat. Additionally, she has participated in the sale of three-time Academy Award nominee FLEE, Last Flight Home, Some Kind of Heaven, Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened, and Tiger King, among others. Adriana graduated from Barnard College where she studied film and economics.

Writer/director Courtney Stephens taught a semester long course, entitled The Archival Imagination: Found Footage Filmmaking. Students explored multiple techniques for working with archival material, through a combination of screenings, readings, and making. Exploring techniques that include autobiography, détournement, reflexive critique, collage, live narration, and speculation, this class challenged students to surface their own cinematic voice using materials created by others; to draw out the unconscious properties latent in the media itself. In the largest sense, this class was about time and knowledge: how do residues from the past carry meaning, and how can we both honor and question those meanings? Courtney Stephens is a writer/director. The American Sector, her documentary (co-directed with Pacho Velez) about fragments of the Berlin Wall transplanted to the U.S., was named one of the best films of 2021 in The New Yorker. Her essay film, Terra Femme, comprised of amateur travel footage shot by women in the early 20th century, was a New York Times critic's pick and premiered at the Museum of Modern Art. It has toured widely as a live performance. Her films have been exhibited at The National Gallery of Art, The Barbican, BOZAR, BAMPFA, Eye Filmmuseum, Royal Geographical Society, Walker Art Center, the Thailand Biennale, and in film festivals including the Berlinale, Viennale, IDFA, Hong Kong, SXSW, and the New York Film Festival. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Wexner Center, and grants from California Humanities, the Sloan Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art.

Dafina Roberts (she/ze/they) returned in spring 2025 to teach a section of Writing for Television: Short Form. This course focused on the primary pillar of television production: the teleplay. Dafina is a non-binary writer/director/producer. Her subversive and messy dramedies explore themes of power, perception, and identity in the postmodern world. Dafina has been a Ryan Murphy Half Initiative Directing Fellow, Blackhouse Producer Lab Fellow  and a Kickstarter Creator-In-Residence. Previously, she created the digital series Giving Me Life (In The Land Of The Deadass), which was released via Comcast’s Xfinity. Giving Me Life also won the AT&T Audience Award for Best Episodic at the Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival. Dafina worked as a Director of Development & Production at Nickelodeon, where she coordinated creative development and current series including the Emmy-nominated Degrassi. She also co-produced the feature film, Punching At The Sun (Sundance Film Festival; Sundance Institute's Humanitas Prize nominee; Tribeca Film Festival), which has been featured in the Criterion Collection. Dafina began her career as the Assistant Artistic Director and Master Choreographer of the Oscar-nominated IMPACT Repertory Theater, a hip-hop youth theater group.

Dan Sullivan joined us in the spring to lead a one-point minicourse entitled Calm on the Surface: An Introduction to Assistant Directing. This course introduced students to what it means to be an assistant director including the day-to-day duties and responsibilities ADs execute. Dan Sullivan is a member of the Directors Guild of America who works as a freelance Assistant Director and Associate Director on Films & TV shows around New York City.

Yael Bridge is an Emmy-nominated documentary producer and director. She taught the semester-long course Documentary Filmmaking: Labor and Social Change. Her directorial feature debut, THE BIG SCARY "S" WORD premiered at Hot Docs and and is now streaming on Hulu. Previously, she produced LEFT ON PURPOSE, winner of the Audience Award at DOC NYC as well as the Emmy-nominated Netflix Original film, SAVING CAPITALISM, starring former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. She served as Head of Production at Inequality Media, where her viral videos tackling complex political issues have gained over 500 million views. Yael was included in DocNYC’s 40 Under 40 list of 2021 and was a 2022 resident at the Jewish Film Institute. She was President of the Documentary Producers Alliance and proudly serves as chair of their Labor Committee. She holds an MFA in documentary film and video from Stanford University and an MA in media studies from the New School.

Naz Riahi is a writer and director of indie short films. They taught the 1-point minicourse Directing Non-Actors. They were named on Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film list and their short film "Sincerely, Erik" received a Vimeo Staff Pick and won a Vimeo Best of the Year award, as well as a NoBudge Film of the year award. Their work has been written up in The New York Times, Fast Company and supported by Brooklyn Academy of Music, Center for Fiction, NYFA City Artist Corp grant and fellowship at Yaddo. They've made several music videos, three narrative shorts and a documentary short co-directed with Silas Howard. The films have screened at Outfest, Woodstock Film Festival, Argo, Samantha (Korea and Japan), Queens Museum, Barcelona Dance Film Festivals, Boooooom.tv, Girls in Film and NoBudge.