Co-founder, Co-director
Filmmaker in Residence
Based at the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, Our Storied Health is an integrated media experience that illuminates the importance of our collective health and what can be done to enhance it. Through film screenings, campus conversations, and how-to workshops, it showcases the power of storytelling as a public health intervention. Our Storied Health is co-founded and co-directed by Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, Director of the Pandemic Center of the Brown School of Public Health, and public health and environmental scientist and filmmaker Dr. Jennifer Galvin. Our Storied Health is supported by Brown Arts Institute’s IGNITE, a series of interdisciplinary, collaborative, impactful projects centered around the possibilities of art as a vehicle for societal change and creative activations, interventions, and investigations produced by communities across Brown, Providence, the Rhode Island region, and beyond.
PRESS
Documentary on vaccine hesitancy to kick off new public health initiative
Our Storied Health series examines public health communications
David and Goliath in “Mossville: When Great Trees Fall”
Our Storied Health Spotlights the Overdose Epidemic
Director of ‘Power of the Dream’ discusses collective action amid upcoming elections
Producer, Executive Producer
Malcolm Wright, grandson of author Richard Wright, has a strange dream about whales that upends his life. Whale Like Me is a feature documentary following Malcolm’s improbable 10-year adventure across cultures and continents—a quest for answers about whales that leads him back to Natchez, Mississippi, to the slave plantation where his grandfather was born.
Status: Post-production
Producer
An environmental scientist forced to seek shelter during a winter storm winds up trapped in a remote cabin with a wounded animal, and an unhinged man.
Screenplay by Caitlin Fitzgerald
Status: In development
Producer
Eight years after suffering a career-ending injury, a former polo champion from Mumbai embarks on an odyssey in the American West.
Screenplay by Caitlin Fitzgerald
Status: In development
Story Consultant
A feature documentary by Shane Anderson and Swiftwater Films, The Lost Salmon chronicles the plight and potential recovery of the iconic spring-run Chinook salmon of the Pacific Northwest. Faced with extinction in many river systems of the West, a new genetic discovery could aid in their recovery. Once teeming in the millions and a sacrament for the oldest civilizations in the Americas, time is running out for this genetically distinct wild salmon.
Watch on PBS
Selected to Jackson Wild’s World Wildlife Day Film Showcase
Producer
Tuskegee Legacy Stories is a docu-style public service campaign created by Ad Council, Joy Collective, and Coffee Bluff Pictures in collaboration with Voices For Our Fathers Legacy Foundation and Black Coalition Against COVID-19.
As COVID-19 put a spotlight on public health, descendants of the USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee work to build back trust in medicine and talk about vaccines.
Watch all six campaign spots
Read one of the articles that inspired this campaign
Producer
In consideration, 2021 Oscars Best Documentary
Made in response to the times we are living in, THE ANTIDOTE is a feature documentary that weaves together stories of kindness, decency, and the power of community in America. It's about people who make the intentional choice to lift others up, despite the fundamentally unkind ways of our society.
Directed by Academy Award-nominee, Kahane Cooperman, and six-time Emmy winner, John Hoffman, THE ANTIDOTE aims to drive a national conversation about the roles that kindness, decency, compassion, and respect play in a civilized, democratic society. While it's easy to court despair in the face of monumental, structural problems, THE ANTIDOTE tells stories of compassionate people intentionally leveraging the resources within themselves and their communities to give others a chance at a better life.
THE ANTIDOTE isn't about an idea or a policy; it is about how we treat each other. It is about who we are and, maybe, it’s about who we can be.
Watch the TRAILER
Visit the WEBSITE
Studio: Radical Media
Producer
Nurse Maria is a companion short film to The Antidote, a feature documentary that weaves together stories of kindness, decency, and the power of community in America.
This is the inspiring story of nurse Maria Cody, who works with first-time mothers and changes lives across generations in Cleveland, Ohio. Beginning during pregnancy, and until a child is two, nurse Maria makes house calls to educate women on parenting, share resources, and perform health checks. Maria is one of over 2,300 Nurse-Family Partnership nurses serving first-time moms and the most vulnerable babies born into poverty in 40 states across the United States.
Watch the short film Nurse Maria
More about The Antidote
Studio: Radical Media
Producer
The River is a companion short film to The Antidote, a feature documentary that weaves together stories of kindness, decency, and the power of community in America.
Johnson City, Tennessee, is home to The River, a safe place for women led by the inexhaustible Stacy Larsen. The River provides "radical hospitality” like laundry, showers, free haircuts, and much, much more to all women who enter their blessed doors.
Watch the short film The River
More about The Antidote
Studio: Radical Media
Director, Producer, Writer, Executive Producer
In consideration Best Music Video, Grammy Awards
Winner Best Music Video, Philadelphia Independent Film Festival
Winner Best Body Category, London Music Video Festival
Winner Best Experimental Film, ARFF International Award
Winner Best Sound Design, Bitesize Film Festival
Winner Award of Excellence, One-Reeler Short Film Competition
Official Selection Hip Hop Film Festival
Official Selection Harlem International Film Festival
Official Selection Video Art & Experimental Film Festival
Official Selection LA Music Video Awards
Finalist jellyFEST Film Festival
World Premiere with AFROPUNK
Global Vibrations Livestream Screening for Soul In The Horn with DJ Natasha Diggs + DProsper
With the questions of life on his mind, a saxophonist reunites on Bronx streets with his musician friends seeking solidarity while an ethereal being dances among them, taunting notions of love and summoning ancient wisdom.
ON MY MIND is an abstract, Afro-cosmic film, aesthetically and symbolically grounded in African culture and New York history. Based on vanguard saxophonist and Blue Note recording artist Marcus Strickland’s latest track "On My Mind remix," urbanscapes and spiritual objects bring artists into a rare, contemporary dialogue, reflecting the song’s timeless contemplation and resounding with mystical reverberation.
Featuring Marcus Strickland, Bilal, Pharoahe Monch, Greg Tate, Ben Williams, EJ Strickland and Storyboard P.
More at OnMyMindFilm.com
Read about the premiere with AFROPUNK
More press on Soul Bounce & ByteFM
Watch ON MY MIND
Director, Producer, Cinematographer, Writer, Executive Producer
A 2016 Panda Award nominee, The Memory of Fish is a documentary portrait of one man, the wild salmon he loves, and his fight to free a river.
Funding provided by:
The Heinz Endowments
Patagonia
Theodore Gordon Flyfishers
NY Community Trust
Sunlight Time Fund
Producer, Writer
A feature film and a TV series are in development.
Inspired by Nella Larsen’s acclaimed novel.
Two childhood friends reconnect during the Harlem Renaissance with new adult identities and play a deadly game of passing for white women in high society New York.
VIEW FILM WEBSITE
VIEW SERIES WEBSITE
Producer
A Haitian girl boards a boat to reunite with her mother in Miami, but her life is chartered for a different course.
Heading North’s production plan is an innovative venture with at least 75% of shooting planned on location in Haiti and with the goal of helping to establish The Haiti Film Commission.
Screenplay by Gustavius Smith
Status: In development
VIEW WEBSITE
Story Editor
Inspired by her late friend’s passion for Bushcraft, a filmmaker heads back to the land and back to the people who knew him to discover how learning wilderness living skills can transform us.
A film by Brianne Nettelfield
Status: Post-production
Associate Producer
Unfinished Sentences is a moving story from Trinidad & Tobago about family, race, love and loss.
A film by Mariel Brown
Ocean Editor, Content Curator
This was the very first time Origin Magazine, or any magazine like it, dedicated a large platform to promote ocean issues and initiatives.
Origin Magazine brings together artists, organizations, actors, and musicians to promote humanitarianism, endangered species, sustainability, and social good initiatives.
Origin Magazine
Jan/Feb 2014 Edition
Writer, Producer, Cinematographer
A multimedia ad campaign for Alternative Insurance Company, Haiti's first insurance company based in Port-au-Prince. Included TV, radio, web, print, and billboard spots.
Production plan was structured to support AIC as a Haitian entrepreneurial initiative and to hire Cine Institute students, Haiti’s only film school.
Directed and written by Gustavius Smith
More about AIC: Forbes.com
Writer, Producer
Every Shooting Is A Mass Shooting public service, poster and web campaign was designed to raise awareness about the unaddressed trauma associated with gun violence.
One bullet shatters more lives than you think. Following massacres like Sandy Hook, groups of social workers and psychologists descended to help residents cope with their grief. Yet thousands of Americans live with the scarring effects of everyday gun violence and lack access to similar support.
Created during Re3 Story Hack for Persuasive, Justice-Based Storytelling with Team Gun Violence in support of The Fortune Society.
Writer, Assistant Director, Producer
A multimedia ad campaign for Alternative Insurance Company, Haiti's first insurance company based in Port-au-Prince. Included TV, radio, web, print, and billboard spots.
Production plan was structured to support AIC as a Haitian entrepreneurial initiative and to hire Cine Institute students, Haiti’s only film school.
Directed and written by Gustavius Smith
Original music by Beken
More about AIC: Forbes.com
Cameraperson
Tribes on the Edge travels with Celine Cousteau deep into the Vale do Javari to uncover the public health crisis in the Brazilian Amazon.
A documentary by Celine Cousteau
VIEW WEBSITE
Producer, Executive Producer
On a remote and isolated farm, a man (Tim Wersan) passes his days with only his animals for company. His idyllic life quickly takes a turn for the unexpected when he realizes that he is not alone.
A film by Terence Bernardo
Cameraperson
Early Recruit profiles the top lacrosse coaches and female student-athletes who have "committed" to one of the most accelerated early recruiting processes in college sports today. Enabled by loopholes in the NCAA rules, prospective student-athletes can verbally commit at any age to a college coach, but with no guarantee of future admissions.
A documentary by Leigh Ernst Friestedt
Status: In production
Featured Photographer
A benefit exhibition in New York featuring the work of seven international media makers whose work shows visual awareness about the human condition.
Supervising Producer
During an opening reception at an art gallery in New York City, curator Lydia (Maria Deasy) has a one-night stand with janitor Prince (Hisham Tawfiq). Even though they are coworkers, Lydia doesn't recognize Prince until the following morning at work.
A film by Gustavius Smith
Director, Writer, Producer, Executive Producer, Cinematographer
Eating The Ocean, narrated by Celine Cousteau, is a journey to the heart of Oceania where an international research team studies the rapidly changing diet of French Polynesians.
Through the scientists' investigation and by spending time with families, fishermen, and school children we discover that the pressures of the tourism industry, the importation of fast food, and the overfishing and pollution of the Polynesians' backyard lagoons have created a public health crisis. In only two generations we see the cultural shift caused by globalization and environmental degradation. Above and below the water we learn how essential fishing practices are threatened, leaving all viewers with the question: how in the future will we be able to eat from the ocean?
Funding provided by:
Laval University, Lepercq Foundation, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Quebec (CHUQ), Institut Louis Malarde (ILM), Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD), Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR), and Ministere de la Sante Charge de la Prevention.
Co-producer, Cinematographer
La Transition was an adaptation of Eating The Ocean for educational outreach to community members, science communicators, academics, and medical practitioners in France, Canada, and French Polynesia.
Directed by Blaise Carrier-Chouinard + Vincent Boulet
Funding by:
Eric Dewaily, Lepercq Foundation
Director, Writer, Producer, Executive Producer, Cinematographer
Free Swim is a documentary about the paradox of islanders not knowing how to swim.
Taking place on Eleuthera in The Bahamas, we follow a group of local kids as they overcome their fears, gain confidence, and reconnect with their environment by learning to swim in open waters.
With fresh memories of a friend drowning and the conflicts of growing tourism, for these kids it’s not just about floating, but gaining new skills for their future.
VIEW WEBSITE
BUY THE DVD
HOST A SCREENING
Producer, Editor
We, Sea: Photographs and Words from the Children of South Eleuthera captures Eleuthera, an island of the Bahamas, through the eyes of the children who call it home.
This book is an exploration of the ocean's impact on their lives, as illustrated by their own photographs and illuminated by their own words. We, Sea is a companion project to the documentary Free Swim.
Co-director, Co-producer, Cinematographer
Caguayo was made for Dr. Luis Diaz, curator of herpetology at the Cuban National Museum of Natural History. From the forests of Soroa to the streets of Havana, this short video explores the great diversity of lizards in Cuba.
While discovering the range of habitats, behaviors and colors of lizards, the film brings a message about people being connected to nature.
Caguayo was made during the Pan Caribbean Project for Environmental Film and Wildlife Documentaries residency held at Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV).
Scientific Advisor
Once Upon A Tide is a 10-minute film that reconnects its audience to the importance of the marine environment for all life on Earth, including human life.
Unlike conventional natural history documentaries, Once Upon A Tide, narrated by Linda Hunt, is a fictional narrative that blends the moral and visual elements of a fairy tale to inspire us to recognize the importance of ocean conservation.
Produced by the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, in collaboration with the media team at Sea Studios and the animation studio LAIKA/house. Official Selection in 40 film festivals.
Co-director, Co-writer, Photographer
All life on Earth, including our own, depends on the ocean. Narrated by Meryl Streep, Healthy Ocean, Healthy Humans explores three themes: The Ocean Heals, Nourishes and Protects.
The first of its kind, this educational video brings a new approach for how people view the ocean to bolster conservation choices and public health awareness.
This video was originally envisioned as a promotional trailer for a traveling exhibit. However, with its beautiful images and compelling message, Healthy Ocean, Healthy Humans gained recognition worldwide, screening at international film festivals and educational conferences, winning awards, and even being selected to show in Patagonia retail stores.
With the video's success, Healthy Ocean, Healthy Humans grew to become an integral program at the Center for Health and the Global Environment (CHGE) at Harvard Medical School.
