G. Chesler

For twenty-five years, G. (also known as Giovanna) has directed and produced documentary and narrative films addressing sexuality, the body, gender and racial justice. G is a white, disabled, queer, non-binary person living in Portland, Oregon. G.’s films have been exhibited at hundreds of film festivals, museums and galleries worldwide. G. produced and directed the feature documentary PERIOD: THE END OF MENSTRUATION, which was featured on the front page of The New York Times and became a cultural touchstone for the menstrual suppression debate. In addition to directing and producing many fiction and documentary shorts, G. produced the documentary feature OUT IN THE NIGHT that went on to win 15 awards and open the United Nations’ “Free and Equal” campaign confronting homophobia and transphobia worldwide, and co-edited and associate produced the documentary feature SPIRITS OF REBELLION: BLACK FILM AT UCLA by Zeinabu irene Davis which won the top prize in documentary at Blackstar Film Festival and Best Diaspora Documentary at the African Academy Awards in Nigeria. G.’s most recent documentary W.C. TAYLOR: A LEGACY was born out of a collaboration with elderly African American alumni who studied and helped build the first high school serving Black students during segregation in a large Virginia county. They are a professor of Film and Video Studies at George Mason University, and affiliated faculty in Women and Gender Studies, and have taught thousands of students at universities in San Diego, Washington, DC and New York City. Their published writing includes short autofiction, essays on antiracist pedagogy, sound and documentary, and an oral history with parents during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. G. serves as an Advisor in the inaugural ITVS Humanities Documentary Development Fellowship funded by the NEH. They are a 2022 Media Arts Fellow from the Washington DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.