2015 Storytellers' Institute Fellows
Institute fellows are practicing documentarians in any of the documentary arts—audio, video, still photography, multimedia, spoken or written word. We are looking for creative and collaborative souls who will invest time and energy into bringing their own visions to fruition in a lively summer context, and who are committed to sharing their passions in documentary with the next generation of practitioners.
Institute Fellows
Yvonne Welbon
Senior Fellow Yvonne Welbon has produced and distributed more than 20 films, including
, winner of 10 best documentary awards, and , a documentary on the history of black women feature film directors. Her films have
screened on PBS, Starz/Encore, TV-ONE, IFC, Bravo, the Sundance Channel, BET, HBO
and in more than 100 film festivals around the world. Her current projects include
, an award-winning documentary directed by Yoruba Richen that captures the complex
intersection between faith, racial justice and LGBT rights, and Sisters in the Life, a trans-media project exploring the history of out African-American lesbian media-making.
Welbon received a B.A. from Vassar College, an M.F.A from the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. She is also a graduate of the
American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women.
Carolyn Macartney works in photography and film and hybrids thereof. She made her
first film with a Double 8mm film camera that she found in her granny's attic to accompany
her original electronic music composition. She included in this film B&W still photographs
that she printed out (by hand in the darkroom) and then animated. The raw, provocative,
fallible side of humanity is what interests her most. Macartney's films have won awards
at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Onion City Film Festival, Houston Worldfest and other
juried screenings and have enjoyed success in screenings and festivals around the
world. She has 14 years of professional experience as a director of photography, having
shot four feature-length narrative films as well as numerous music videos, commercials,
short films and documentaries. Macartney's award-winning still photography has been
published and exhibited in the U.S. and Europe. Among other honors, Macartney has
received an award for music composition, a DAAD scholarship to study painting at the
Hochscule der Künste in Berlin, Germany, and a Kodak Faculty Scholars Award. Macartney
has lived in five different countries and in as many states within America. She received
her B.A. in art from Smith College and her M.F.A. in filmmaking from the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago.
Jonna McKone is a radio producer, documentarian and artist. As a journalist, she has
worked on stories ranging from efforts in eastern Kentucky to put former coal mines
to economic use to the intersection of youth graffiti culture and galleries in Washington,
D.C. Her work has been funded by the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the Journalism Center
on Children and Families and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Her art
practice examines concepts of distance—geographic, economic, and temporal—approached
through ethnography, archival research, walking, installation, and nonfiction filmmaking.
She seeks to unravel the nature of memory, labor, gesture and the icons of everyday
life. She is currently at work on a personal film that explores the relationships
between memory, artifact, and her own familial history. McKone is a graduate of Bowdoin
College and recently received her M.F.A. from Duke University.
Roberts is a filmmaker and educator based in Austin, Texas. He received his M.F.A. in film production from the University of Texas in Austin in 2014 and is the writer/director of award-winning short films (33 Teeth, Yeah, Kowalski!) that have screened internationally. His short documentary Arvind was the recipient of an Austin Film Society grant. Roberts is the founder of , an oral history production company, and facilitates screenwriting workshops on adapting life stories into fiction films.