Inês Pedrosa e Melo

Inês is a documentary filmmaker, nonfiction content creator and video editor from Lisbon, Portugal, currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Coming from a background in film production and anthropology, she applies an interdisciplinary approach to her nonfiction storytelling practice. Deriving heavily from my background in ethnographic method, research and fieldwork, she strives for an ethical nonfiction media practice that is informed both by the power of storytelling and collaboration with the communities she seeks to represent and uplift. In the past, her work has focused on themes such as marginal cultural practices and counterculture symbols and institutions; the relationship between people and death; the human body, beauty and identity, and physical/psychological resilience. Her documentary shorts have been showcased in festivals in Europe, North and South America. Currently, she is developing two film projects: "The dark knot at the center", an experimental/documentary short on access to abortion and reproductive health and its ramifications and repercussions on the American landscape; and "I saw the light in a lost country", a multimedia narrative honing in on Portuguese-American immigration stories port the Portuguese Carnation Revolution. Besides her own projects, she also works as associate producer and editor for both corporate and commercial projects as well as for independent filmmakers.