TEAM
Natalie Zimmerman
Co-Director, Co-Producer
Natalie Zimmerman is an artist and educator who uses film and photography as primary tools for exploration. Her work is often research-based, interdisciplinary and collaborative in nature. She has presented her projects in diverse contexts worldwide including: SF Camerawork, Moscow International Film Festival’s Media Forum, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Centro de la Imagen (Mexico City), Sigmund Freud Museum (Vienna). She is a former Fulbright Scholar, Headlands Center For the Arts Resident Fellow (with Wilson), and former Artist-in-Residence at the de Young Museum of Fine Art in San Francisco (with Wilson) In 2013, Zimmerman was awarded a Professional Development Grant from UC Berkeley to begin OCEANIA. She holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a Film Certificate from New York University.
Michael W. Wilson
Co-Director, Co-Producer
Michael W. Wilson is an artist and filmmaker. Wilson directed the nonfiction essay film SILHOUETTE CITY, which was featured at IFP, premiered at the Miami International Film Festival, screened at Anthology Film Archives, and has since played to audiences throughout the US and abroad. His film and media projects have been exhibited, screened, and broadcast at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions, Ars Electronica, Entermultimediale, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Cinema Politica Network (Canada), Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Mediaterra International Art and Technology Festival (Athens), Russia Today Television and the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. He has an MFA from Yale University, a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and a BA from Hendrix College.
Shahzad Ishmaily
Composer
Shahzad Ismaily was born to Pakistani immigrant parents and grew up in a wholly bicultural household. A largely self-taught composer and musician, he has mastered the electric and double bass, guitar, banjo, accordion, flute, drums, various percussion instruments and various analog synthesizers and drum machines. Ismaily has recorded or performed with an incredibly diverse assemblage of musicians, including Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Jolie Holland, Laura Veirs, Bonnie Prince Billy, Faun Fables, Secret Chiefs 3, John Zorn. He has composed regularly for dance, theater and film including; Min Tanaka, the Frankfurt Ballet and critically acclaimed movies Frozen River and Circumstance which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
Joanna Macy
Lead Advisory Scholar (North Pacific)
Environmental activist, author, scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. Her eight books include the influential texts Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory and World as Lover, World as Self.
Katerina Teaiwa
Lead Advisory Scholar (South Pacific)
Teaiwa is of Banaban, I-Kiribati and African American descent. She has a background in anthropology and Pacific Island studies and led a research project on Ocean Island in Kiribati, where the local population was relocated to Fiji after phosphate mining rendered the landscape uninhabitable.
Jordan Dozzi
Aerial Cinematography
Jordan Dozzi is a multi-disciplinary artist working in the realms of social justice, environment, and critical engagement. His photography has been exhibited internationally and his multimedia work and sculptural work have been featured at the Diego Rivera Gallery and Yerba Buena Center for The Arts. Jordan is a student of Bangladeshi language and culture and spends much of his time in the ocean and mountains. At his day job, he produces large-scale books and co-pilots aerial surveys of the American West.
