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Suree Towfighnia
Social Practice Filmmaker and Educator
Filmmaking & Education to document
our untold stories and inspire change.
Watching from the sidelines is not an option.
For over 20 years, Suree (she/her) has been documenting untold stories that reflect contemporary issues with her independent production company Prairie Dust Films. From the very beginning, Suree has been dedicated to using film and education as a social practice and has collaborated with community partners and youth to create work that imparts action.
Her first feature, the award winning Standing Silent Nation (2007), documented a Lakota family's sovereign right to grow industrial hemp on their ancestral lands. It was broadcast nationally on PBS's POV, was in dozens of festivals and competitions, and has been used in educational efforts to decriminalize non-drug hemp. It streams on Kanopy and through Vision Maker Media. Her feature, Crying Earth Rise Up (2015), was a collaboration with Lakota elder, Debra White Plume and Owe Aku / Bring Back the Way and intimately explores the human cost of current uranium mining and its impact on sacred water in Lakota territory. The film is syndicated on Public Television & FNX, has had over 2300 broadcasts, and received major funding from Vision Maker Media and the Corporation for Public Broadcast. It formed an essential part of environmental campaigns to halt the expansion of uranium mining in the Black Hills.
Suree is in production on Pipe Organ Fever Dreams, an experimental exploration featuring a a prophetic chihuahua that warns against the cancers of the world and the documentary and animation project, Nurturing Roots (working title), which is a collaboration with Oaxacan coffee growers using their traditional lands and migration scholar Dr. Maria Isabel Morales.
Suree worked with her friend and mentor, the late great Haskell Wexler, as producer and additional camera on the documentary Four Days in Chicago (2013), where she recorded Wexler's return to his hometown Chicago for the 2012 NATO protests. The film screened in festivals worldwide, including the Woodstock, Social Justice, and Chicago International Social Change Film Festivals.
Suree consults with and mentors independent documentarians on all parts of documentary from development to funding, scripting, production, editing to distribution and outreach. Clients have included Tilting at The Sun (with Dan Cass) and If We Film It, It's the Truth (with Alex Halkin and Paco Vazquez) that examines 30 years of storytelling with the Chiapas Media Project/Promedios and southern Mexican Indigenous communities.
Suree Towfighnia
Filmmaker & Educator
As a Filmmaker + Media Professor + Educator, Suree believes in paying it forward for the next generation of storytellers and works hard to ensure that the filmmaking landscape continues to embrace diversity (in front of the camera and behind it) and equity (in labor and environmental practices).
Suree is an Assistant Professor in Journalism and Media Production at Metro State University (MSU) Denver. She has taught and mentored in masterclasses and workshops from Pine Ridge to Oaxaca. She was full time faculty at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA from 2017-2023, and was an instructor at Arizona State University, Columbia College Chicago, and internationally at the EICTV film school in Cuba. Suree works with non-profits and was an Artist-in-Residence in the Chicago Public Schools (Center for Community Arts Partnership, Project AIM) and in Chicago hospitals with Snow City Arts.
Suree received her MFA in Directing (Documentary) from Columbia College Chicago. Her thesis Tampico chronicled an iconic Chicago street performer, who, as the last member of her family, carried on their traditional song by playing all their instruments (guitar, whistle, violin, and tap). The film won the Studs Terkel Award for Community Media and screened in festivals and community events.
Since 2000 Suree has been using film as a social practice and community empowerment tool collaborating with communities and indigenous nations. In 2003, Suree worked with Owe Aku to develop the Lakota Media Project (LMP) to train Lakota girls and women dedicated to documenting their story from the inside looking out. She is part of the media and training collective the Peoples Media Project. Her projects and scholarship form part of larger mentorship and engagement strategies to promote critical thinking and inform positive shifts in ideas, policies, and practices.
Suree was born in Chicago to Persian, Mexican/Polish/German parents. Suree graduated UC Santa Cruz with a BA in History and Latin American/Latino Studies, and is a mother to two young truth seekers. Suree currently resides near Denver, Colorado.
At it's essence, documentary is a relationship with life.
As filmmakers, we have an inherent responsibility to the truth.
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