Team
Lori Waselchuk, Director & Producer
Lori Waselchuk is a photographer, filmmaker, curator, and socially engaged artist. Lori’s work is rooted in community, and her lens is one of possibility. Her stories demonstrate that when people act together, they can create a more caring world. Past collaborative projects include Grace Before Dying, about a hospice program in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where both the caregivers and the patients are serving long-term prison sentences. Lori is also a curator and coordinator of numerous exhibition projects, including the Women’s Mobile Museum, co-created with Zanele Muholi, and produced by TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image. Her work has received numerous awards, including Leeway Foundation’s Transformation Award, Velocity Fund Grant, Pew Fellowship for the Arts, Aaron Siskind Foundation’s Individual Photographer, and the Southern African Gender and Media Award.
Wren Rene, Director of Photography
Wren Rene is an Emmy award-winning filmmaker, photographer, and second-generation storyteller dedicated to the spirit of true collaboration. Working across documentary, fiction, commercial, and experimental projects, he seeks to unearth a deeper understanding of what it means to be human in an ever-individualistic world. He is particularly drawn to strong visual narratives that raise questions of identity, belonging, connection, and resistance. His work is nurtured by deep relationships with the communities he works for and alongside, as well as an unrelenting curiosity and desire to stoke the flames of hope and joy.
Taj Rauch, Editor
Taj Rauch is an immersive storyteller, game designer, theater maker, and filmmaker. His multidisciplinary practice centers the audience as the protagonist, merging interactive design, narrative systems, and performance to create participatory worlds. Taj’s stories push the envelope of immersive world-building to ask: in a myriad of worlds, would you still find yourself to be you? His work has been featured in Fringe Festival, and shown at PAFA Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, IceBox Project Space, Vox Populi Gallery, and VGTVG Conference, among others.
Emily Abendroth, Project Advisor
Emily Abendroth (she/they) is a writer, water-lover, activist, and bicycle enthusiast living in Philadelphia, PA. In her writing/artistic practice, she often utilizes documentary poetic strategies to investigate state regimes of power, as well as individual and collective resistance strategies. Her books include Sousveillance Pageant (2021), The Instead (2016), the poetry collection ]Exclosures[ (2012). She was a founding member of the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration, Decarcerate PA, and LifeLines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty Project. For ten years, she co-directed Address This! – an education and empowerment project that provides innovative, social justice correspondence courses to individuals incarcerated in Pennsylvania. She is a core collective member of Holobiont Laboratory — a working class, collaborative laboratory created in response to climate change and its many impacts on our communities.
Crew
director
Lori Waselchuk
producers
Lori Waselchuk, Gabriela Watson-Burkett
director of photography
Wren Rene
additional videography
Zahli Bhayroo, Natasha Cohen-Carroll, Mathys Vaillant
sound
Avantika Nimbalker
music
Jordan McCree, Scott Ziegler, Jon Persson
editor
Taj Rauch
animation
Lily Xie, Sophie Hamel
archive researcher
Caitlin Riggsbee
project advisor
Emily Abendroth