Alameda, CA, USA
$500 - $1000 / Day
Kelly Whalen is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and multimedia storyteller with more than 20 years of experience producing for national PBS, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, and the Guardian. She is currently the Senior Producer of Arts and Culture at KQED, where she covers creative communities through a lens of equity and justice. She is the creator of the award-winning national series If Cities Could Dance, featuring movement artists across the country who represent their cities' identity and cultural traditions through dance. She has extensive international reporting experience, including working in Central and Eastern European countries working with Roma journalists and University of Miami students to produce documentary videos to increase the visibility of discrimination and other problems that Europe’s Roma communities face and to promote their social inclusion. (This work was part of her appointment as Visiting Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at UM.) For many years, Kelly was a producer at Not In Our Town, a national PBS documentary series and grassroots organizing project to help communities better respond to and prevent hate crimes and acts of bigotry. Her other work has explored police abuse of powers and racial injustices in the criminal justice system.
Produced for KQED
When photo murals of everyday Navajo life began appearing on abandoned buildings, roadside stands and water towers across the Four Corners region, it was a surprise for many in the community to discover it was the work of Dr. Chip Thomas, a long-time resident of the Navajo Reservation known by many as a healer of another kind.
The origins and history of lowriding in San Diego and the borderlands are chronicled in Everything Comes from the Streets, including the creative men and women lowriders who pioneered and shaped the unique car customizing tradition among Chicano and Mexican communities.
Produced for KQED
As a hip-hop artist and educator, Karega Bailey maintained a message of peace, hope and liberation. But after he lost his brother to gun violence in 2014, his grief tested him; he felt sick with revenge and hopelessness. Bailey’s story is at the center of the Emmy-nominated documentary and Best Short Winner at the National Black Film Festival, 'When the Waters Get Deep,' which follows his journey to find his voice and purpose again. Crucial to that journey is SOL Development, an Oakland-based hip hop, jazz and soul ensemble, that Bailey is the lead MC for, but also connecting with BE-IMAGINATIVE, a collective dedicated to healing Black and brown communities through storytelling. In healing circles and musical experiences, Bailey and SOL Development channel their grief and love into tangible support for mothers whose children have been lost to gun violence.
Produced for KQED
Political Commentator Van Jones and Artist Favianna Rodriguez, in conversation, spotlight how creative people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds are helping to move the needle on global warming. I produced, shot and edited this video.
Produced for KQED
Part of the Emmy and Webby winning series, If Cities Could Dance, San Francisco’s La Mezcla dance company, founded and led by Vanessa Sanchez, uses dance and song to tell stories of Chicana history, culture and resistance. Blending tap dance and son jarocho zapateado (traditional footwork from Veracruz, Mexico,) Sanchez describes this unique dance style as “zapatap.”
Produced for University of Miami
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