TEAM
Sarah H. Nixon, Co-Director, Co-Producer
Nixon is a Raleigh, North Carolina-based independent documentary filmmaker and visual artist whose work focuses on the culture of the American South. She was awarded the Reel Digital Artist Award in 2020 and a mentorship with the PBS NC Producers Lab in 2021. During her artist residency as the Watson-Brown Foundation 2022-2023 Southern Studies Fellow, Nixon directed and produced "Lifeline," a short film about Rosetta Nesbitt, a black printmaker and visual artist from the South who overcomes discrimination, self-doubt, and adversity by relying on the survival skills she learned from all of the women in her life. Sarah is also an active member of Brown Girl Doc Mafia (BGDM), an organization that advocates for women and non-binary people of color around the world working in the documentary film industry. She is currently participating in Filmshop’s DocShop South program for the spring of 2024.
Dakota Stokes, Co-Director, Co-Producer
Dakota is a filmmaker and journalist living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. After several film and media internships abroad in Europe and Asia, she settled in her family’s home region in North Carolina in early 2020. She received mentorship for The Benson Five from the PBS NC Producers Lab in 2021. She works as an editor and co-director for Alala Productions, a commercial production company she co-founded with her work partner Todd McPhail in 2021 (https://www.youtube.com/@alalaproductions3688/videos). In 2023 she co-directed and edited a feature-length documentary about the Kraken, a local bar in Chapel Hill (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rPDC4db24Y). Dakota and Todd are currently working on a feature-length military historical biographical documentary, Quiet Professional: Clem Lemke (https://southerndocumentaryfund.org/quiet-professional-clem-lemke/). She is currently workshopping The Benson Five in Filmshop’s DocShop South program for the spring of 2024. Dakota is also a member of D-Word and the Alliance of Documentary Editors and regularly attends meetings of both.
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