Meet the 2023 Fellows of the Justice For My Sister
Black, Indigenous, People of Color Sci-Fi Screenwriting Lab

The BIPOC Sci-Fi Screenwriting Lab was created by Justice for My Sister in 2020. Now in its fourth year, JFMS welcomes our fourth cohort of Fellows who are in the process of developing their first TV pilot in conversation with the literary traditions of Afro-futurism, Indigenous-futurism, and more. Fellows receive training in character development, story structure, media literacy, and pitching to expose and diminish the white supremacist, capitalist, heteronormative-patriarchy–reimagine other worlds that are possible. The Fellows in this cohort are a talented group of writers driven by their love for storytelling that has the potential to heal and promote social justice, redistribution of wealth, anti-colonialism, and non-violence. Read more about them below! 

  • A Mexican American filmmaker, playwright, and producer, uses her voice to showcase her community. Her upbringing by immigrant farmworker parents shaped her passion for telling multi-generational stories to drive social and environmental change. Her production company, One Giant Ovary, has produced short films such as “Juan The Brave,” a beloved film at the TranSlations Film Festival, and “Abuelo’s Ashes,” making waves in the film festival circuit. Her feature screenplay, “Hood Vengeance,” directed by Carlos Santillan, is streaming on Netflix. Jacquie produced, wrote, and directed three short documentaries about poet and scholar Francisco Bustos, bracero Clemente Beleche, and campesino Antonio Calderon. All were sold to the San Diego Media Arts Center. She just recently completed the 2023 PA Certification from Justice for My Sister. The City Council of San Diego declared September 16, 2014, as Jacqueline's Day to acknowledge her contributions as a writer, director, actress, and producer.

  • Sahrenah A. Watkins is a 24-year-old native of Los Angeles and a visual artist. Her creative journey began in the fall of 2018 discovering her artistic talents and passions while transitionin away from her parents. She is currently pursuing a film major at Santa Monica Community College. She aspires to create thought provoking, entertaining and liberating visuals that can inspire others to follow their passions as well. While unseasoned in professional experience as an artist, she has participated in many community workshops and shows that focused on creative visuals as a youth producer including Anani Cultural Healing Arts Center and LA Common Festival of Masks. She hopes to pursue a career within the realm of business in the creative industries while concurrently nurturing her development as a successful artist.

  • Anakaren is an actor, filmmaker and scientist born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, California. She earned a Bachelor of Science in environmental science and minored in theater and geography at UCLA. During her time at UCLA, she learned about the environmental injustices happening in her community. This motivated her to become involved in environmental justice movements in her community and to help increase access to nature. She has also pursued her passion for the arts by creating films, visual art, and teaching arts to children. Anakaren creates paintings, short plays, films and documentaries focused on covering environmental justice issues in Los Angeles. She has worked in local theaters like CASA 0101 and studios like Lionsgate and Univision in order to develop herself in the entertainment industry. She hopes that her art helps science become more accessible to people and helps them connect to nature and to themselves.

  • Matthew Villareal is a born and raised Los Angeles Native. Son of a Guatemalan immigrant and first generation Mexican-American, Matthew takes inspiration from his family's hard work and dedication and puts it into every project he works on. In 2022, he graduated from California State University Los Angeles with a Bachelors in Television, Film, and Media with an emphasis in Screenwriting. His passion for film leads him to look for opportunities in the industry where he can learn and gain experience.It is this passion that makes Matthew just as comfortable in a writers room as he is on set working. He has experience creating and writing his own content, alone or with a group. As well as the knowledge to work on set thanks to both working on student films and receiving a PA certification from Justice For My Sister. Matthew takes his passion for film and combines it with his pride in his culture. Connecting with his roots by creating content that explores memories from his childhood. Whether it is memories of cooking recipes his mother brought from Guatemala or the neighborhood that he grew up in and still lives in. It is his aspiration that Matthew can create content that people in his community can connect with and feel represented by.

  • Gabrielle Lawrence (they/them) is a narrative strategist experienced in shaping ideas into foundational language that communicates core information to multiple audiences. Gabrielle is passionate about qualitative approaches to big, complicated questions. Common objectives of their work have included radical re-imagination for collective liberation, weaving multigenerational perspectives, and healing harms through story. Learn more at www.gabrielle-l.com.

  • Jada Lucas is a writer whose experience as an “outcast” developed a love for storytelling. As a shy, emo kid growing up in Indiana, she found an escape by creating intricate narratives, worlds, and connecting with others who felt unseen. In 2016, she pursued stories through a Broadcast Journalism Degree at Indiana University. Initially, the stories focused on hard-hitting news to increase the visibility of marginalized voices and social issues. During a 2018 internship in Los Angeles, she directed her first narrative piece - Wade in the Water. Shortly after, Jada went on to produce No Brew Sh*T, a digital web series. After graduating, Jada moved to Los Angeles. Currently, she works in the digital marketing space for TV and Film. She is excited to expand her narrative portfolio, bringing the world and mind of those who feel ignored to life.

  • Rad Pereira (they/them) is a cultural worker of Pindorama (so called Brasil). Their creative practices spiral around social sculpture, popular theatrical and TV/film performance, mediation, participatory liberatory artmaking and healing that weave together an Afro-futurist longing for transformative justice and queer (re)Indigenization of culture. They are co-founder of You Are Here, a community-based organism for art + healing. They are building Iron Path Arts + Farm, a Haudenosaunee, Two Spirit led rematriation project focusing on food sovereignty, seed-saving, growing ancestral foods, mutual aid distribution, and community building throughout Haudenosaunee homelands (so called upstate NY). Their book Meeting the Moment is available through New Village Press.

  • Faride Perez Aucar is a Staff Attorney for the Gender, Sexuality & Reproductive Justice Program at the ACLU of Northern California, where she advocates for gender, sexuality and reproductive justice. Faride is a graduate of the University of San Francisco School of Law. Before law school, she received her B.A. in english and women’s studies at the University of California, Riverside. After college, she volunteered as a sexual assault crisis counselor and conducted theatre and empowerment workshops for youth of color. She is a first-generation college and law school graduate. As a first-year law student, Faride spent a summer in New Orleans, LA, clerking for the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana, where she provided support for death penalty cases. In her second year, she externed at the ACLU of Northern California, focusing on reproductive justice work. She has also clerked at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles where she advised clients in employment discrimination claims and criminal record expungements. More recently, she worked with the USF Law Employment Law Clinic, where she represented workers in wage and hour claims. Since graduating law school in 2018, Faride has worked with Root & Rebound (R&R), a reentry law organization. At R&R, Faride authored the Tribal Reentry Advocacy Guide to support legal practitioners and advocates in providing legal services to rural tribal communities. Her work focused on developing partnerships in rural tribal communities across the state to alleviate legal access discrepancies. Her work also focused on the creation and implementation of reentry policy initiatives for the state of California as well as holistic legal services in the area of reentry. In her spare time, Faride enjoys watching horror and sci-fi films. She also loves to spend time in the sun with her fur baby Coconut.

  • Sandra Camargo, a Bolivian-born filmmaker, was raised in Arlington, VA, a place known as 'Little Bolivia' due to its high concentration of Bolivian immigrants. After earning her degree in Urban and Regional Studies, she embarked on a career in education, eventually becoming a Spanish-Immersion teacher before shifting her focus to filmmaking. Her award-winning short film, "Mi Tierra," showcases her dedication to socially relevant themes, particularly addressing the unfair treatment of undocumented individuals. The film's recognition includes the 2019 NVCC Dean's Award for Cinematic Distinction. Sandra has also directed music videos for local Latine artists. Currently, she is deeply engaged as a co-producer in the creation of "Virginia by Bolivians," a documentary project shedding light on the Bolivian community in Virginia. Notably, this endeavor recently secured grant funding.

  • Audrey E. is a recent graduate of MSMU-LA in the Film, Media, and Social Justice BS degree program where she found a talent for producing art through creative writing. Utilizing both science fiction and supernatural genres, she aims to create distinct characters in order to explore themes of identity. Currently, she assists in film development for azUspeak Productions and works as an intern for Film Independent. In her stories, she hopes to make an impact by creating allegorical worlds and centering marginalized voices that often go unheard.

  • Vicente Garcia is a queer storyteller and creative, for the first 10 years of his career he worked in non-profit policy and organizing then transitioned to the world of digital media and storytelling working for Familia Trans Queer Liberation Movement, Prism (a BIPOC focused media outlet), and currently works as the Racial Justice Community manager for YouTube.

  • Ginger Yifan Chen (they/them) is an interdisciplinary writer, filmmaker, and artist. Their works focus on eco-centric science fiction, mythology, complex immigrant narratives, nonbinary-ness, and liminal spaces. Their projects vary from AI Ethics research and computer poetry (Twitter @theaipoet), to developing methods for accessible cellphone filmmaking (Insta @eavesdroppingfilms), and to writing microfiction on the bus and only on the bus (Substack @LiminalExpress). They hold a BA in Screenwriting from Chapman University, as well as awards from film festivals such as the Los Angeles CineFest and Oaxaca Film Festival. Currently, they work as a script reader at Slated Analytics and as a freelance director and AD in the Bay Area.

2024 BIPOC SCI-FI SCREENWRITING LAB

TABLE READ

  • I am a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner who was led to this medicine through my own experiences with loved ones who had not received the healing they hoped for when using Western Medicine alone. I sought out a medicine that was holistic in nature with the intention of sharing it widely and especially in communities that lacked access to choices in healing modalities and/or distanced from traditional healing practices. I believe that all healing practices should be equally accessible to all people in order to ensure our own good health and that of our society. This belief guides my work as Director of Community Collaborations for Freedom Community Clinic. In my day-to-day life, I enjoy nerding out over plants, the universe, speculative/science fiction, camping and writing.

  • Shanhuan is a genderqueer Chinese-American filmmaker focused on composting extractive methods of cinematic storytelling into regenerative rituals, and making the possibilities of speculative worlds real through collaborative storytelling. Confluence, their meditative documentary codirected with ETA, on the queer AAPI underground music scene in Los Angeles, has screened at festivals worldwide. They produced a followup collaboration with ETA, White Gaze, a gentrification horror short which is currently receiving festival acclaim. The have participated in several radical co-learning spaces including School of the Alternative, New Moon Mycology Summit, Emergence Magazine’s Seeds of Radical Renewal, BiFAN Fantastic Film School, and delight in hosting spontaneous gongfu tea spaces in all the spaces they are lucky enough to inhabit. They are currently developing several projects centering the more-than-human world, troubling and co-creating contemporary mythologies for navigating the crises of our times.

  • Paula Graciela Kahn (she/they) is a first-generation Mayan-Iberian-Ashkenazi Jewish community-based researcher, policy advocate, movement strategist, edu-tainer, facilitator, herbalist and healing arts practitioner. Paula's research investigates the roles of psychoactive substances in pluri-cultural contexts for processes of historical memory, accountability, reparations, reconciliation,transitional and transformative justice, demilitarization, disarmament and reintegration. Paula is co-founder of Cosmovisiones Ancestrales, which she co-founded to build movement capacity around historical memory, Indigenous rights, bioethics, racial & gender justice, consent, health equity, ecological sustainability and violence prevention in psychedelic research and entrepreneurial initiatives. Paula's MPH capstone thesis, Psychometrics and Biological Markers of Interest forPsychedelic Research on Conflict Transformation and Violence Prevention, contributes to the foundation for bio-neuropsychopharmacological and pluri-cultural therapeutic uses of psychedelics for the prevention of ideologically, racially, bias, and/or hate-motivated violence.

  • Carlos is the Artist Development CoLead for the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective. He is also the founder and CEO of FutureSelf Media, a boutique media company specializing in film and TV development and production. Previously, Carlos worked as Head of Development at 141 Entertainment. While at the company, he sourced and reviewed scripts for film and TV projects, pitched content ideas, maintained client relationships, and contributed to the creative production of projects. Company projects include: Ingrid Goes West, Marjorie Prime, and Sesame Street, Palestine. Carlos works on films, commercials, new media and music videos either as a director, producer, line producer or production manager.

  • Elaina is a freelance professional who has worked in both the corporate and non-profit industries previously as a production coordinator, and now as a cultural producer.

  • Joanna Beltrán Girón (she/they) is a PhD candidate in the Critical Social Psychology program at The CUNY Graduate Center. They received a B.A. in Psychology at UC Santa Cruz, an M.A. in Latin American Studies at UT Austin, and a MA in Social Psychology from The Graduate Center. Joanna’s activist research is concerned with the psycho-social and embodied aftermath of colonial and state violence and in the intergenerational transmission of medicine and healing practices among Salvadoran survivors of the US-backed civil war in the 1980s. Joanna’s research draws from decolonial feminisms, liberation and abolition psychology, spirituality/ancestrality, herbalism, quantum theories, cyberfeminisms, and speculative fiction. Joanna is certified in Reiki, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. She also recently received a certification in Psychedelic Liberation Training.

  • John Bao is an aspiring screenwriter, exploring settings ranging from neo-noir thrillers to the abstract in science-fiction, unpacking themes relating to self-discovery, human nature, and the mysteries of the universe. You can catch him watching films, playing video games, or exploring the city in his never-ending search for inspiration.

  • Joelle E. Mendoza (JEM) is an Indigenous (Navajo/Apache)-Chicana artist and writer based in East Los Angeles. JEM is currently an MFA student in fiction and screenwriting at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She also works with clay and adobe along with contributing to local Native gardening practices and collectives. She has taught various levels and subjects and currently teaches within LACCD. JEM is also a member of the Los Angeles puppetry guild and freelance writer for Hyperallergic and LA Times.