Your Story:
Suree Towfighnia (Director) is as an independent filmmaker based in Chicago. She shoots and directs documentaries, teaches master classes on media making and documentary, and works as a teaching artist. Suree is part of the Silent Nation Project, a group of artists, activists, musicians and filmmakers who organize events to promote positive social change. She is co-founder of Prairie Dust Films, which made Standing Silent Nation, a feature that chronicles a Native American family's struggle for economic empowerment by growing industrial hemp on their sovereign lands on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Broadcast nationally on POV, it won many awards in domestic and international competitions and festivals. Her documentary short, Tampico, explores a Chicago street performer who is the last person left to perform her family’s music. It won the Studs Terkel Award for Community Media. Suree began the Lakota Media Project (LMP) in 2003 to provide mentorship and training to Lakota girls and women dedicated to documenting their way of life. Suree earned her MFA in documentary from Columbia College Chicago, where she was technical coordinator and adjunct faculty at the Michael Rabiger Center for Documentary. She received a BA in History and Latin American Studies from the University of California, at Santa Cruz.
