Introducing 2023/24 BDC Films Fellows
BDC Films is excited to introduce this year's cohort of BDC Films Fellows: Amber Alesawy, Cacau Araujo, Jordana Bermúdez, Nicholas Chiofalo, Cayla Clements, Daniel Emuna, Joshua Guerra, and Lorena Nicole Vicente!
BDC Films was created in response to the lack of support for traditionally underrepresented documentary filmmakers in the Bronx, as well as to the changes in storytelling professions that require a broader skillset for potential employment in creative industries. The program is run by the Director of BDC Films Fellowship Program, Tânia Cypriano, and Assistant Evan Solis.
Amber Alesawy is a NYC-based visual artist, with a concentration on environmental and anthropological filmmaking and photography. Her work explores the ways that people interact with their environment, and how, in turn, the environment shapes how they interact with each other, shaping unique cultural practices.
Cacau Araujo is a filmmaker from Brazil, now based in New York City. Her work revolves around places, language, memory, and identity; especially women's identities, and the events that shape and shift them. Her debut short doc, The Great Find (2022) was selected for DOC NYC, Arena Theater Short Film Festival. It was also a finalist for best student documentary NYIFA, nominated to the NBR Student Grand, and broadcast on Bronxnet TV.
Jordana Bermúdez is a documentary photographer and photo editor based in New York City. Her work focuses on identity as it relates to gender, youth, and immigration. She is particularly proud of her long-term project Girls Can’t Skate, which focuses on an all-female and queer skateboarding community in NYC. Having spent most of her life in México, where gender-based violence and machismo culture are long-standing issues, she wants to amplify women and queer voices.
Born and raised in the Bronx, Nicholas Chiofalo has been a storyteller since childhood, making home movies in Windows Movie Maker. Whether writing, filming, editing or photographing, Nicholas has a passion for entertaining and educating audiences, moving between different creative projects and researching old media.
Cayla Clements is a documentary filmmaker based in New York City. Raised in North Carolina, her passion for storytelling arose from hearing her grandmother tell stories growing up in the Jim Crow South. She believes documentaries have the ability to enact change and shift perspectives, and she hopes to make documentaries that tell authentic and multifaceted stories of the BIPOC community.
Daniel Emuna is a Caribbean-American image-maker from the Bronx. His work seeks to explore the topic of movement and place across cultural landscapes, in particular the African diaspora. He seeks to examine social understanding about concepts such as truth, love and justice.
Joshua Guerra incorporates documentary-style photography and video production into his work with grassroots community organizations in New York City. Over the last decade, his work has tended to focus on the communities that emerge around sports, most especially soccer, examining how individuals within these communities leverage the game and the passions it inspires to do good.
Lorena Nicole Vicente is a Dominican, Bronx-based photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on the Black and Caribbean experience. She is completing an undergraduate BA in Film and Television from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Through her films and photographs she seeks to tell coming-of-age stories that touch on themes of lost innocence, race, class, and cultural identity within marginalized communities, and to be a storyteller on behalf of her community