Marissa McDowell is a Wiradjuri woman, born in Cowra, NSW, Australia. She has over 15 years’ experience working in the First Nations multi-media storytelling space, and is passionate about working with the film industry to share creatively ambitious and diverse First Nations stories that have global appeal. Throughout her career, she has worked with First Nations communities to share stories with a wider audience across commissioning, producing, photography and writing. At National Indigenous Television (NITV), she has overseen the commissioning of original First Nations content, including feature documentaries Skin in the Game, Keeping Hope and the award-winning Rebel with a Cause collection, as well as documentary series Our Law and First Inventors, and children’s series Eddies Lil’ Homies. As a producer, she has also had documentaries screened on SBS/NITV. She has had poetry published through USMOB Writing, and photographs displayed at PhotoAccess and the Sydney Living Museum.

First Nations filmmaker, Dena Curtis is a producer, writer and director. Throughout her career, Dena has worked at National Indigenous Television as a Senior Editor and Promo Producer, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as the Series Producer of Message Stick then later a Commissioning Editor for Indigenous, overseeing development and production on The Darkside, Yagan, 88, Buckskin, The Redfern Story, Outside Chance and Wild Kitchen. Her directing credits include award-winning short films Hush, Jacob and Nan and a Whole Lot of Trouble. Comedy series, 8MMM Aboriginal Radio, documentary series, Shadow Trackers, Colour Theory Underground, children’s series, Thalu and two episodes of ABC’s factual series Back to Nature. Most recently Dena directed a chapter of the anthology feature We Are Still Here and feature length documentary A League of Her Own. Her producing credits include Logie-nominated children’s television series, Grace Beside Me, short films Walters Ghost and Shed and documentaries Ella, Shadow Trackers and Belonging. Dena co-produced Firebite for See-Saw Films/AMC Network and was Producer on ABC’s First Weapons, and Executive Producer for Rebel with a Cause – a 4x1hr documentary series for NITV.

Violet is an Emmy-winning independent documentarian and an adjunct professor at the Journalism School of Columbia University. Violet directed and produced the Oscar-shortlisted documentary Hidden Letters which premiered in competition at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival before screening in 10 international festivals and was broadcast in more than 15 countries. She directed the PBS/CPB special Harbor from the Holocaust with music performed by Yo-Yo Ma. She has directed, produced and executive produced 13 documentaries. Her producing credits include Dear Mother, I Meant to Write About Death (2022), Singing in the Wilderness (2021), Confucian Dream (2019), Maineland (2017), and Please Remember Me (2015). Violet started her career as a co-producer on the critically acclaimed 2007 Sundance Special Jury winner, Peabody and Emmy winner Nanking. Born in Shanghai, and based in New York, Violet holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Fudan University and received her MFA in journalism from University of California at Berkeley.

Keisha Knight is the director of IDA Funds. In this capacity, Keisha oversees a portfolio of IDA’s granting and artist support programs, including the IDA Enterprise Production Fund, Logan Elevate Grant, Nonfiction Access Initiative, and the Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund, among other granting programs. Keisha has served on numerous juries and review panels and is a  2022-2023 Warhol Curatorial Research Fellow. She is also the founder and Executive Director of Sentient.Art.Film and a doctoral candidate in Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University.

Tracey is a proud hard of hearing woman with a passion for film, advocacy and inclusion. As CEO of Bus Stop Films she is advocating for greater representation of people with disability in the screen industry, receiving an OAM in 2023 for service to the arts and to people with disability. Her 25-year career has crossed social housing, women’s domestic violence services, and the film and television industry. Her advocacy work in the screen industry has seen her lead on strategies including Screenability and She Shoots at Screen NSW, WIFT’s Raising Films Australia, and growing the work of Bus Stop Films on a global scale. Tracey is Executive Producer of Bus Stop’s slate and co-produced films including Groundhog Night and Valiant. Tracey holds a Bachelor of Arts, Welfare Studies (WSU) and a Diploma of Business, Frontline Management (UTS).

As Head of Content, Ally leads local content efforts and is responsible for the design and execution of Prime Video’s local content slate, including TV and film licensing, for the Prime Video service in Australia and New Zealand. Ally joined Amazon in September 2016 as legal counsel supporting Prime Video in the US before moving on to other roles covering international expansion of the Prime Video Channels business, including leading the content acquisition function for the launch of Prime Video Channels in Australia. Prior to Amazon, Ally spent 7 years as a lawyer with Bauer Media (now Are Media) and in private practice. She holds a Bachelor of Laws (Hons) from Monash, and currently resides in Melbourne, Australia.

Oscar Raby is a multimedia artist, co-founder and creative director at VRTOV, the Melbourne-based virtual reality studio behind the projects A Machine for Viewing, The Turning Forest, Easter Rising: Voice of a Rebel and Assent. VRTOV has been commissioned by the US, UK, and Australia. In 2013 he completed a Masters degree in animation and interactive media at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology where the subject of his research was portraiture in new media. His graduating work, the autobiographical virtual reality documentary Assent, has been part of Sundance New Frontier, IDFA DocLab and Sheffield DocFest as well as festivals in Australia, Canada, USA, Mexico, the Netherlands and the UK. Assent received the Audience Award for Cross-platform at Sheffield DocFest 2014. Oscar is currently working on a PhD at SensiLab, Monash University, that examines the underlying technical and poetic affordances of XR authoring software.