James Christenson tells personal stories about the human landscape of the Midwest during the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In 2013, the New York Times commissioned his headline short documentary “Running on Fumes in North Dakota,” leading to a feature documentary about his birth state’s boom and bust history, The Bakken. As DP and editor, his 2017 documentary about mobile phone location tracking, Harvest, screened at Hot Docs, BAMcinemafest, and more before an online release with The Atlantic. Recently, he collaborated with Somali-Minnesotan youth to produce Rumee, a short documentary anthology, which screened for one year at the Minnesota History Center.

Brennan Vance is a Minneapolis-based filmmaker, Emmy-winning cinematographer and McKnight Media Arts Fellow. He is the writer and director of the fiction feature The Missing Sun [KINOSCOPE] and has served as cinematographer for numerous documentaries including Memories of a Penitent Heart [PBS POV], Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg [STARZ], and the forthcoming films Magic & Monsters, directed by Norah Shapiro, and You Were My First Boyfriend, directed by Cecilia Aldarondo. Most recently, he and fellow filmmaker James Christenson were awarded the Tribeca Film Institute’s IF/Then grant to complete their short film To Be Reconciled, about one Minnesota man’s relentless fight against deportation.