Raising Aniya

A young dance artist in Houston, Texas, embarks on a journey to heal her spirit and find her voice after being displaced by a hurricane.

Aniya Wingate is a young dance artist in Houston, Texas, who embarks on a journey to heal her spirit and find her voice after being displaced by a hurricane. With guidance from her mentor, Walter Hull, Aniya investigates impacted communities on the Gulf Coast and develops a dance performance inspired by her experiences and the complex legacies of environmental injustice. Family, religion, sexuality, and mental health collide as she strives to transform dark histories into beautiful expression and movement. Through intimate observational cinematography, evocative dance sequences, and a haunting score, Aniya’s story traces the agony and the ecstasy of growing up, while revealing the power of art and community.

With Generous Support From

• SOUTHERN OREGON UNIVERSITY

• THE REDFORD CENTER

• UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SUNY

• JUSTIN WILKENFELD

• And OUR KICKSTARTER SUPPORTERS

Team

John Fiege (Producer, Director, Cinematographer) is a film director, cinematographer, photographer, and podcaster whose work explores the cultural dimensions of ecological concerns. His award-winning films have played at Hot Docs, SXSW, Big Sky, MoMA, Cannes, and many others, receiving distribution on Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, Sundance Now, and other platforms. His film awards include the Silver Heart Award at the Dallas International Film Festival, Best North American Documentary at the Global Visions Festival, Best Documentary Short at Dallas VideoFest’s DocuFest, and Best Very Short Documentary at the Angeles Doc Film Festival. He was a finalist for the Eric Moe Award for Best Short on Sustainability at the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital. He hosts the Chrysalis podcast, about our physical and spiritual relationship to the rest of life on Earth. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Study and an affiliate of the Department of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.

Anita Grabowski (Producer) is a community organizer who also produces films in collaboration with her husband, John Fiege. She previously produced Mississippi Chicken and Above All Else.

Walter J. Hull II (Producer) has been a thought leader, social artist, and youth development strategist in Houston, TX for 16 years. As an artist, his choreography has deep roots in healing and justice through the storytelling of the black experience in America. As Executive Director of Urban Souls Dance Company (USDC), Walter has collaborated with the Founder, Harrison Guy to make USDC the premier Black dance company in Houston. As an Arts Educator, he has created the URBAN Kids and URBAN Girls Initiative which centers young artist voices to be active in their community. Through a partnership with U.S. Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda, Walter has designed artists' development workshops that provided a platform for artists to develop as community leaders. Today, Walter educates his community on climate change and racial equity through filmmaking. 

Christopher Lucas (Producer) is a producer, writer, and educator. As a producer on Raising Aniya, he participated in IFP’s Project Forum: Spotlight On Documentaries at Film Week and Doc Society’s Climate Story Lab in New York City. He produced Above All Else (SXSW, 2014) and was an associate producer on Shouting Down Midnight (2022), The Sensitives (Tribeca, 2017) and Living Spring, an interactive environmental documentary about Barton Springs in Austin, Texas. In 2011, he was awarded a doctorate in media studies from the University of Texas, where he co-founded flowjournal.org, a popular site for scholarly media criticism. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator of Digital Cinema at Southern Oregon University, where he teaches courses in documentary and non-fiction cinema, screenwriting, cinematography, and film editing.

Sofia Chang (Editor) is a director and editor based in Los Angeles. Previously she edited The New Yorker short film Herselves, a personal hybrid doc examining intergenerational relationships in the Asian American diaspora. With her background in community organizing, she approaches storytelling with the hope of connecting people at different intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality. As a director she uses experimental nonfiction to explore belonging and intimacy as mediated by the digital landscape. Her latest film OT7 premiered at the 2024 San Diego Asian Film Festival. Sofia holds a BA from Carleton College. (Vimeo)

Festivals

• DC Environmental Film Festival (U.S. Premiere)

• Ashland Independent Film Festival