Melissa Beatriz
Melissa Beatriz is a documentary filmmaker, media educator, writer, and cultural producer based in Philadelphia. As an artist, she believes that visual images and film have the power to create social change in order to resist the injustices that immigrants, people of color, and marginalized groups face. Her media work focuses on advancing immigrant rights, education equality, and decarceration, as well as preserving folkloric arts and culture. Influenced by growing up in a bicultural Uruguayan-American familia, her projects are often bilingual.
Since 2010, she has been working with grassroots organizations, arts/cultural spaces, and film festivals throughout Philadelphia, while using a range of tools for community building and storytelling. Some of these collaborations include working with Scribe Video Center, BlackStarFilm Festival, PHL Latino Film Festival, Reentry Think Tank, Media Mobilizing Project (MMP), and Taller Puertorriqueño.
Melissa’s recent documentary film collaborations include Baobab Flowers (creative producer), When Life Gives You Lemons (director), and The Engine of My Life (co-director). She is currently directing a project that centers the stories of immigrant rights leaders in Philadelphia, in partnership with the #ShutDownBerks campaign. She was invited to participate in the Sundance Institute’s 2017 New Frontier Philadelphia Day Lab intensive and the Public VR Lab. Melissa is a Double Exposure Scholar (2018) and an MMP Movement Media Fellow (2014). She is a recipient of the Leeway Foundation Window of Opportunity (2017) and Art & Change (2012) grants.
Melissa, Joanna Siegel, and Kate Zambon were awarded an Art and Change Grant in 2012. Learn more about that project here.
Awarded Grants
2019
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
Related grantees
Overview
Melissa is creating The Fight Continues/La Lucha Sigue, a documentary film that centers immigrant community leaders in Philadelphia who use grassroots and cultural organizing to advocate for policy changes. The leaders that are featured fight for a world that values human beings above borders.
Partner
2019
Leeway Transformation Award (LTA)
Related grantees
Overview
Melissa Beatriz is a documentary filmmaker, media artist, and writer based in Philadelphia. She uses storytelling as a tool to collectively share counter-narratives, produce cultural work, and support organizing. Her projects focus on social justice, the arts, and deconstructing policy/power. Since 2010, she has collaborated with grassroots groups and media arts organizations, with roles in communications, development, community engagement, film programming, teaching, and production. Some of these organizations include Taller Puertorriqueño, Media Mobilizing Project (MMP), Scribe Video Center, BlackStar Film Festival, PHL Latino Film Festival, and the Reentry Think Tank. Melissa is currently directing the documentary film La Lucha Sigue/The Fight Continues, which centers the immigrant justice movement and #ShutDownBerks campaign in the region. She is a Doc Society Good Pitch Local Philadelphia grantee (2019), Leeway Foundation Art & Change (2019, 2012) and Window of Opportunity (2017) grantee, and an MMP Movement Media Fellow (2014).
2017
Window of Opportunity Grant (WOO)
Related grantees
Overview
Melissa Beatríz (ACG ’12) was invited to Austin, Texas to share her documentary film work and collaborate with organizers at the forefront of the immigrant rights movement. She conducted a hands-on DSLR camera and storytelling workshop with youth, focused on producing stories that center the perspectives of Latin American migrant families. Melissa also collected stories of leaders advocating for immigrant rights in Austin, featuring youth, families, teachers, counselors, and activists. These narratives are part of an archival project that follows the immigrant rights movement across cities in the U.S., through the use of digital storytelling as a collaborative tool for organizing.
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