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Danae Elon is an award-winning filmmaker, producer, and cinematographer based in Montreal. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she has directed, produced, and shot a body of work that explores the relationship between the personal and the political through intimate and powerful narratives. Her thesis film Never Again Forever (1996) won the Golden Spire at the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Achievement Award at the Chicago International Film Festival. Her first feature documentary, Another Road Home (2004), premiered at Tribeca and went on to screen internationally at IDFA, Hot Docs, and numerous other festivals as well as be theatrically released in the US. With Partly Private (2009), Elon won the award for Best New York Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival. P.S. Jerusalem (2015) was selected at both the Berlinale and the Toronto International Film Festival, confirming her reputation as a bold voice in personal documentaries, the film was released theatrically and the New York times awarded it a critics pick. The Patriarch’s Room (2017) won Best Research and Music award at Docaviv and first prizes at both the LA Greek Film Festival and the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. Her film A Sister’s Song (2018), for which she also served as cinematographer, was awarded Best Documentary at the Doker Film Festival and received an Iris Award for Best Cinematography, and the AIDC Innovation Award.

Most recently, her feature Rule of Stone (2024) was selected at IDFA, CPH:DOX, and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, while her short film Life of a Dog was produced with support from CBC. In addition to directing and producing, Elon has worked extensively as a cinematographer on her own films and in collaboration with other directors. The films she has produced screened as well at leading international festivals including Berlinale, Hot Docs, IDFA, Millennium and Sheffield. She is a recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in Film (2009) and has been supported numerous times by institutions such as the Sundance Institute, the Catapult Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, Quebec Arts Council, SODEC and CMF. Through her combined roles as director, producer, and cinematographer, Elon continues to develop a practice that bridges the deeply personal with the universally political.

After graduating from Queen’s University with a Major in Sociology and a Minor in Film, Daniel transitioned to a Masters program in Cultural Studies, where he wrote his thesis “Hays Gone By: The Proto-Feminism of Pre-Code Hollywood and the Films of Mae West”. As an aspiring PhD student in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies, Daniel is continuing his studies of transgression within Hollywood cinema, specifically as it relates to the Hollywood Production Code. Outside of the classroom, Daniel also makes video essays analyzing art-house cinema and popular film on YouTube under the name Eyebrow Cinema.

Darien Sánchez Nicolás, our new Postdoctoral Fellow in the VML, is working on minor archives and radical distribution practices in the Americas. He is currently working with Marilu Mallet (Unfinished Diary and much more), the Chilean-Canadian filmmaker, helping to organize and find a home for her archive in Montreal.

Darien Sánchez Nicolás holds a PhD in Film and Moving Image Studies from the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema of Concordia University. His doctoral dissertation, Cinematic Voyages: Québécois Transnational Filmmaking and Cuban Domesticity examined the relationships between international tourism, transnational film production and homemaking in the island. He is a cross-appointed instructor in the Social Sciences and the Humanities, Philosophies and Religions departments at John Abbott College, Montréal, Canada. He has worked as film pre-screener and programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival, Latinarte Festival and the South Asian International Film Festival of Montréal, amongst others. He has received scholarships from Mexico’s National Council of Sciences and Technology (CONACYT), the Foundation DeSève Fellowship, the MITACS Globalink Research Award, and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec–Société et Culture scholarship. Currently he is a postdoctoral fellow at Queen’s University’s Vulnerable Media Lab.

Darshana Chakrabarty is a doctoral candidate in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies under Prof. Ali Na. She completed her second Masters in English, specializing in Film and Media Studies, from Arizona State University in Spring 2021. Her research investigates the formation and evolution of virtual social identities, politics, and cultures, of Indian queer individuals and communities within the domains of Indian digital media and contemporary Indian Indie cinema.

I am a PhD Student in the Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies Program. I have been a practicing artist for 35 years focusing on film and video installation art, queer and feminist space making and public installations. I have spent most of my career working in artist run culture and maverick institutions such as FAG Feminist Art Gallery, The Film Farm, Vtape and now FAR Feminist Art Residency. My current research delves into the potential of vibration as access, sensibility and vocabulary. 

Denise is the Departmental Administrator for the Department of Film and Media at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts. Her duties include both financial and administrative tasks involving students, faculty and the public.

Derek was a freelance cinematographer and a lecturer in film, video and digital media production at Queen's from 1976 to 2015, teaching the Fundamentals of Production regularly and in some years Advanced Production or Video and Multimedia. He created the Film and Media Department's website in 1995 and maintained it until 2015, and served on the University's Instructional Technology Advisory Committee, Web Editorial Board, Radio Policy Board, and Campus Planning Committee. 

My Research-Creation work centres on making visible and legible obfuscated urban histories. In the interactive documentary we digitally reinscribed the Palestinians who were expelled during the 1948 war onto their neighborhoods and homes. In we look at environmental and colonial violence, but also re-naturalization, abundance and resilience in a Kingston city park that used to be a landfill. In the past ten years I have primarily worked within participatory and collaborative frameworks (in both my artistic practice and my academic writing). My focus is on interactive and augmented documentary, alongside cultural and other interventions in situ (guided walks, art installations, etc.). 

I am interested in supervising students who work on expansive manifestations of documentary cinema, post and decolonial media practices, anti-extraction culture, feminist methods, and ethics in media. I am also happy to supervise students who work on Middle Eastern cinemas and medias, and students focussed on settler accountability on Turtle Island.  

Drayden DeCosta is a filmmaker and scholar currently pursuing a PhD in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies at ���˴�Ƭ. Prior to attending Queen's, he earned his BFA (2018) and MFA (2020) in Film, Fine and Media Arts at NSCAD University.

Edem Abbeyquaye is a PhD student in the Film and Media Department. She has a BA in Communications and researched feminist documentary filmmaking in Ghana for her master’s degree. She is a journalist turned documentary filmmaker/photographer, feminist and queer activist and has almost a decade of working experience. She has worked in activist spaces providing intersectional multimedia and Communications support to activist courses and groups. Edem comes to film as an activist and is interested in ways in which marginalized populations and social justice activists in Ghana can use alternative media for (self)representation and social change. She is a cofounder of, and the Director of the African Grad Students at Queen’s Club.

Research interests: Documentary filmmaking, Alternative Media/Activist Media Making, Feminism, Queer Activism, Social Justice

Publication(s) 

Abbeyquaye, Edem. 2025. “Of Paano-Sexuals and Pansexuals: Media Representation of Queer Ghanaians and Queer Self-Representation through Alternative Media.” Feminist Media Studies 25 (6): 1342–60.  

Eman is a documentary filmmaker and film scholar. She studied at the University of Sussex in the UK, where she was awarded the prestigious Cate Haste scholarship, and where she gained her MA in Documentary Filmmaking (with Distinction). Currently, she is studying for a PhD in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies at Queen’s University. Her research focuses on Egyptian first-person documentary films. She has also an ongoing interest in interactive documentary, digital media, film curation and feminist cinema.

After graduating from ���˴�Ƭ with an Undergraduate degree in Film and Media, Emilie Surette has transitioned into the Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies MA program. Her research interests include animation, feminist film theory, and aesthetics. 

Emily Pelstring is full-time faculty in the Department of Film and Media, where her teaching areas include video, performance, sound, animation, experimental media, and music video studies.  Her courses are built around creative exploration and collaboration, and she aims to facilitate a laboratory or workshop environment for students.

Emily Sanders is a first (ish) year PhD student in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies. Her research focuses primarily on Canadian film, and investigates the abject within the genre. Other research interests include rural cinemas in Canada; affect theory; aesthetics in film; horror and the monstrous; and film-philosophy. Her (current) favourite film is Morvern Callar by Lynne Ramsay.

My research lies at the intersection of media studies and religious studies. Theoretically, my work draws heavily on critical media studies and several shades of material media analysis, including affect studies, sound culture studies, interface studies, and algorithmic and network culture.

Esther is currently a third year PhD student in the Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies (SCCS) PhD program at Queen’s University. Esther's research intersects media and film theory with feminist philosophy to investigate Technology Facilitated Rape (TFR). Esther explores the human body as a body embodied by technology that engages in sexual behaviour and procreates by extending its genitals through a medium connected to networks. Esther has an MFA in Documentary Media (Toronto Metropolitan University) and BA in Political Science (UWO).

I'm only really curious about why we live: what kinds of faith subtends the mechanics of our day-to-day survival; the manner & the style through which we express our vitality. In the language of the University, I translate this curiosity into such terms as "experiential performance-based research": for my PhD I want to gather a collective of multimodal artists who are interested in spirituality and mystical experience to work at the limits of their practices, and to dissolve their limits into the mutation-structure of the group. Call it a cult but with no centre, no dogma, no direction.

A PhD student in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies, Faten considers herself an activist artist who seeks to contribute to the appreciation of various cultures and acceptance of the others in her own community and around the world. She works with various mediums ranging from handicrafts to digital photography and video to create her sight specific installations.

Frances Leeming is a media artist and animator. Her performance and film projects explore the relationship between gender, technology and consumerism. Her work has been presented and exhibited across Canada, the U.S., Britain and Poland.

Francesca C. DiBona is an MA student in the Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies program. She holds a BAH in Critical Media Studies and Urban Education from Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. Working in both textual and essayistic media forms, her work concerns topics of transgression theory, Orientalism, food, and fugitivity, among others.