Meet the team:
Dana M Osburn, Writer/Director
Dana M Osburn is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY by way of Philadelphia. They recently left their full-time job writing and producing for Nickelodeon to attend Feirstein pursuing an MFA in Cinema Directing. In April of 2021, they were an artist in residence at the Tongue River Artist Residency in Dayton, WY. They have exhibited and performed in venues across New York, Philadelphia, and The San Francisco Bay Area.
Their most recent short film, Troutman Smash, is in post production and features a cast of hand-built muppets created by the artist themself.
Clairesa Clay, Executive Producer
Clairesa Clay is an award-winning writer, producer, artist and guest lecturer. She co-founded and has served as film programmer for Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival and Lecture Series for the past eleven years. She is also a founder of the Blerd City Con.
She co-founded the microcinema Luminal Theater to showcase NYC filmmakers. Her short film, "In Remembrance," directed, written and produced, garnered a best director and best experimental film award at festivals in the United States.
Currently, she is pursuing an MFA in Cinema Producing at the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema.
Clairesa is committed and passionate about filmmaking at every level: from shorts to features.
Katrina Montgomery, Director of Photography
Katrina Montgomery is a filmmaker from New York City and considers The Bronx her home. A timid child, she buried her head in books and was glued to her mother’s television set watching shows and movies. She picked up her first camera, a Kodak FunSaver and began snapping photos any chance she got. Her love for photography steadily grew as she took photography classes in both high school and undergrad. She attended The City College of New York, where she received a BA in English Literature. With a growing interest in film production, she enrolled in several field production courses and became a certified Producer at BronxNet, a local public access network, in 2016. From 2016 to 2017, Katrina served as both Director and Director of Photography for travel show, Get Away for a Day with Allyshia Renay which aired on BRIC, Mnet and BronxNet. She is currently studying film directing at Brooklyn College's Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema. Katrina was recently a finalist for the Black TV & Film's Collective 2020 Producers' Fellowship cycle and her short, Quotidian was selected to show at the 2022 MicroMania film festival. She is currently in post-production for Saint Marks, a short that she co-wrote.
Yuki Maekawa-Ledbetter, Producer
Yuki Makekawa-Ledbetter is an award winning producer based in New York, by way of Sapporo, Japan.
She has worked with various independent filmmakers and studio executives on a wide variety of web content, music videos, and award winning narrative films. Yuki has also collaborated with notable companies including Instagram (Meta), L’Oréal Paris, Adobe Creatives, TOYOTA, Consulate General of Japan, and AMC Networks. In 2019 she worked as Associate Producer and Post Production Supervisor on the feature film, ALIEU THE DREAMER, for BET Films and Paramount Players. An experimental animated short film, THE BLACK DISQUISITION has been accepted into over 15 film festivals and has won multiple awards. In 2020 she co-founded her production company, ML-NEBULA with an intent focus on creating a safe and open environment for underrepresented filmmakers to thrive.
Sheherzad Raza Preisler, Producer
Sheherzad Raza Preisler is a native New Yorker who attended undergrad at Columbia University, where she majored in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies and followed the pre-medical track. After an identity crisis or two, Sheherzad fell in love with all things filmmaking and is now an MFA candidate at Brooklyn College’s Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema. Much of Sheherzad’s work deals with growing up Muslim in post-9/11 America.
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