Director/Producer

Ashley Melzer is a producer, writer and media-maker living in Durham, NC. Born in North Florida, she received her Bachelors in Cinematic Arts from the University of Southern California and then a Masters in Folklore from UNC-Chapel Hill. Her writing and photography has been featured in Indy Week, Paste Magazine, eMusic, and the Southern Foodways Alliance to name a few. She's worked with Hopscotch, Moogfest, Southern Cultures and more. She currently works as a catalyst for publicly engaged scholarship at UNC Chapel Hill. Ashley is the founder of Mettlesome, a creative, project based collective, for which she performs, directs, writes and teaches comedy.

ashleymelzer.com

Producer/Narrator

William Ferris was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1942. As he grew up on a working farm, Ferris began to document the artwork, music, and lives of the people on the farm and in his local community. The archive of recordings that he created and the documentary films that he had a hand in producing have served as powerful tools in institutions of higher learning for decades. Recently, his box set Voices of Mississippi won Grammy awards for best historical album and best album notes.

A former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ferris is coeditor of the award-winning Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and author of several other books, including the informal trilogy The South in Color: A Visual Journal, The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists, and Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues.

Editor

Bridgette Cyr is a video journalist, documentary filmmaker, and audio producer. Film collaborations have taken her to a Q-Anon rally in Tampa, Florida; the bedroom of a revenge porn victim; the recording studio of feminist hip hop artists in Havana, Cuba; and to the hideout of a North Carolina woman as she sought refuge in sanctuary, fearful of deportation. As of late, her work has a focus on access to education, healthcare, and LGBTQIA+ rights in the rapidly evolving American South. She graduated with a Master’s in Visual Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she was a Roy H. Park Fellow. Before returning to school she was the Artist Services Coordinator at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

bridgettecyr.com

Animator

Rodgers Dameron is a freelance Artist, Animator, and Musician. He has ten years experience as a lead animator creating motion design, logos, animation, and visual effects for Emmy award winning series and award winning ad campaigns. Before first trying his hand at animation in 2005, Rodgers studied painting and drawing at the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn. When not animating, he makes custom artwork, mainly portraits, using traditional drawing and watercolor techniques.

rodgersdameron.com

Music

Singer, guitarist, and folksong interpreter Jake Xerxes Fussell (yes, that’s his real middle name, after Georgia potter D.X. Gordy) has distinguished himself as one of his generation’s preeminent interpreters of traditional (and not so traditional) “folk” songs, a practice which he approaches with a refreshingly unfussy lack of nostalgia and preciousness. By recontextualizing ancient vernacular songs and sources of the American South, he allows them to breathe and speak for themselves and for himself; he alternately inhabits them and allows them to inhabit him. In all his work, Fussell humanizes his material with his own profound curatorial and interpretive gifts, unmooring stories and melodies from their specific eras and origins and setting them adrift in our own waterways.

jakexerxesfussell.com

kidSweater Design Group, Ltd.
Sound Mixer

Michael Betts is a Sound & Experience Designer based in Durham, North Carolina. He graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a degree in Media Production wnd has worked in the industry as a freelancer for almost a decade before pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University.

Michael has taught every age group from kindergarten to adults. He believes in ensuring those who hear, have the tools and know-how to make. He is currently an Assistant Professor of film Studies in Sound Design at UNC - Wilmington.

michaelbettsii.com