Photo credit: Nikki Bramley
ARTIST STATEMENT
by Margo Guernsey
I am a documentary director/producer and impact strategist. My first feature Councilwoman (America ReFramed 2019), won multiple awards and is touring communities around the country.
I came to filmmaking over ten years ago with a broad range of experience including union organizing, a masters degree in history, and non-profit development/fundraising. I was inspired by workers on the front lines of organizing efforts, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s teachings about power and the production of history. I was moved by the power of film to engage the general public in new narratives of our history that are no longer told by those who dominate, but instead tell the stories of all of us. This continues to be my core question. Which stories have gone untold, and how can we tell them to reimagine a future where every human can reach their full potential and live a full life?
My work has necessarily evolved in many different ways. I grew up in predominantly white, rural Western Massachusetts as a white cis-gender straight woman. My partner of over 20 years is Dominican, and we are raising two children of color, one biological and the other adopted, in a multi-generational home. I am in the initial stages of beginning a new short project on naming Whiteness. It broadens my original vision as an artist, and yet feels like exactly what I need to be doing. The dominant narrative has been told by my people. As an artist I need to interrogate that narrative in order to help white people learn how to decolonize our own whiteness; which feels like the only way to build the world we want to live in.
I am fully bilingual Spanish/English. Click on films to learn more about my projects.
STANDARD BIO
Margo Guernsey is the Director and Principal of Time Travel Productions LLC, which she founded in 2012 to produce documentary films and related media. Margo began her film career in 2010 as a producer at WPBT2 (Miami), and produced and directed industrial videos in the Boston area for seven years. Prior to film, Margo worked as a union organizer, development and communications director, and Spanish/English translator. She draws on her organizing, fundraising and filmmaking experience to distribute documentary film to empower people and shift narratives. She speaks both Spanish and English; and she is a proud Mama of two young children, navigating motherhood, as an adoptive and biological mother, in a bi-cultural Dominican/American multi-generational household. She has an MFA in Film (University of Miami), MA in History (Umass/Amherst), BA in History (Brown University), and she is a Tribeca/Camden/CNNFilms Retreat Alumni.
Photo credit: Nikki Bramley.
by Margo Guernsey
I am a documentary director/producer and impact strategist. My first feature Councilwoman (America ReFramed 2019), won multiple awards and is touring communities around the country.
I came to filmmaking over ten years ago with a broad range of experience including union organizing, a masters degree in history, and non-profit development/fundraising. I was inspired by workers on the front lines of organizing efforts, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s teachings about power and the production of history. I was moved by the power of film to engage the general public in new narratives of our history that are no longer told by those who dominate, but instead tell the stories of all of us. This continues to be my core question. Which stories have gone untold, and how can we tell them to reimagine a future where every human can reach their full potential and live a full life?
My work has necessarily evolved in many different ways. I grew up in predominantly white, rural Western Massachusetts as a white cis-gender straight woman. My partner of over 20 years is Dominican, and we are raising two children of color, one biological and the other adopted, in a multi-generational home. I am in the initial stages of beginning a new short project on naming Whiteness. It broadens my original vision as an artist, and yet feels like exactly what I need to be doing. The dominant narrative has been told by my people. As an artist I need to interrogate that narrative in order to help white people learn how to decolonize our own whiteness; which feels like the only way to build the world we want to live in.
I am fully bilingual Spanish/English. Click on films to learn more about my projects.
STANDARD BIO
Margo Guernsey is the Director and Principal of Time Travel Productions LLC, which she founded in 2012 to produce documentary films and related media. Margo began her film career in 2010 as a producer at WPBT2 (Miami), and produced and directed industrial videos in the Boston area for seven years. Prior to film, Margo worked as a union organizer, development and communications director, and Spanish/English translator. She draws on her organizing, fundraising and filmmaking experience to distribute documentary film to empower people and shift narratives. She speaks both Spanish and English; and she is a proud Mama of two young children, navigating motherhood, as an adoptive and biological mother, in a bi-cultural Dominican/American multi-generational household. She has an MFA in Film (University of Miami), MA in History (Umass/Amherst), BA in History (Brown University), and she is a Tribeca/Camden/CNNFilms Retreat Alumni.
Photo credit: Nikki Bramley.