Director/Producer

Tracy Heather Strain

Tracy Heather Strain, a two-time Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated filmmaker and a 2022 Chicken & Egg Award winner, explores stories about the different ways people have experienced life in the United States. In 2019, she won an NAACP Image Award for Motion Picture Directing for “Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart” and Peabody and American Historical Association honors shared with Randall MacLowry, which premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. Her directing debut, “Bright Like a Sun” and “The Dream Keepers,” in Blackside’s Peabody and Erik Barnouw Award-winning series I’LL MAKE ME A WORLD: A CENTURY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTS, “leaps off the screen” noted The New York Times, and The Hollywood Reporter praised her first film for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, “Building the Alaska Highway,” as “dynamic” and “truly great storytelling.” Other producing and directing credits include UNNATURAL CAUSES: IS INEQUALITY MAKING US SICK?, RACE: THE POWER OF AN ILLUSION and “American Oz” for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE which she made with MacLowry during the pandemic. Most recently, Strain directed, wrote and produced “Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space” for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. At Wesleyan University, Strain is the Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies and co-directs WesDocs.

Producer

Robin Hessman

Robin Hessman is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and creative producer. She most recently produced ARREST THE MIDWIFE (SXSW 2025, PBS/POV 2026-2027) and is currently producing SISTER SENATORS and SURVIVAL FLOATING. She produced SIMPLE AS WATER (Tribeca, HBOMax) which was shortlisted for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature and nominated for Peabody, Emmy, IDA and Producer Guild Awards in 2022. Previously Robin directed and produced the critically-acclaimed MY PERESTROIKA (Sundance, PBS/POV) which won a Peabody, and was a NY Times Critics Pick, released in over 30 countries. She co-produced several PBS films including the Peabody Award-winning TUPPERWARE! and the American Masters biography of Julia Child. During a decade living in Russia, she produced ULITSA SEZAM, the Russian co-production of SESAME STREET and was the Documentary Director of AMFEST MOSCOW. In 2024 she founded Global Neighborhood to produce films by women filmmakers telling important global and local stories of our times. Robin is a member of AMPAS, the Council on Foreign Relations, the PGA, the DPA, and is VP and a founder of the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship. Robin graduated from Brown and received an MFA in film directing from VGIK in Moscow, Russia.

Producer

Randall MacLowry

Randall MacLowry brings experience as a film and video editor to benefit each phase of his award-winning documentary work. A director, writer, producer and editor with over 35 years of experience, MacLowry’s credits include numerous films for the PBS series AMERICAN EXPERIENCE—most recently “Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space,” “American Oz” and “The Feud,” NOVA, AMERICAN MASTERS, UNNATURAL CAUSES: IS INEQUALITY MAKING US SICK? and RACE: THE POWER OF AN ILLUSION. For his story development and writing work, MacLowry has received two Writers Guild awards, and two AMERICAN EXPERIENCE films won the Organization for American Historians’ Erik Barnouw Award. MacLowry produced and edited SIGHTED EYES/FEELING HEART about writer Lorraine Hansberry, which had its world premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival and television premiere on AMERICAN MASTERS in 2018. The film won him, and producer/director/writer Tracy Heather Strain, a John E. O’Connor Film Award from the American Historical Association and a Peabody Award. The two-time Emmy-nominated MacLowry is a University Professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan University and co-directs WesDocs. A principal at The Film Posse, MacLowry also recently-edited a documentary about Dominican American writer and poet Julia Alvarez that premiered on AMERICAN MASTERS in 2024.