DEWI sungai

Dewi (day-wee) Sungai Marquis-Houston is a mixed-race Native Bornean mother, wife, and filmmaker who was born in Indonesia, adopted as an infant by white American parents, renamed “Amy," and raised in the U.S. in white suburbia. Dewi's experiences as a transracial adoptee led her to a filmmaking career that centers Indigenous voices and challenges narratives spun from white supremacy culture and colonialist worldviews. As an Indigenous transnational adoptee, being in close community with Native people across the U.S. has helped her heal from the impact of colonization on her own life and lineage.

Dewi has directed, cast, produced, filmed, and edited for a wide range of clients, including the BBC, The Discovery Channel, Exposure Labs, ProPublica, and nonprofit organizations like Rare. She is a proud member of the Asian American Documentary Network, Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Cine Fe, Creative Nations, Film Fatales, Kin Theory, and Mountain Media Arts Collective.

Dewi's work has been supported by generous individuals, foundations, nonprofit organizations, production companies, media outlets, and brands. In addition to filmmaking, she also serves as a mentor, story consultant, workshop coach, guest instructor, festival programmer, festival juror, and panelist, with guest appearances ranging from Costa Rica to Yale.

Jason Houston

Jason Houston’s photography and filmmaking explores how we live on the planet and with each other through community, culture, and the diversity of human experience. Through his work, he is committed to art and action that seeks to deconstruct colonial worldviews and dismantle white supremacy culture.

Jason has worked in over 30 countries producing photojournalism, personal documentary, multimedia art, and short films. His work— often including various socially engaged approaches— brings to life authentic narratives that recognize agency, authorship, and sovereignty for those in front of the camera while informing truth toward social and environmental justice.

Through Jason’s travels and work, he has come to the faith that the Indigenous worldview, in comparison to the dominant anthropocentric and materialist world view, is critical to the survival of our planet and all the life it supports. This is not a romanticized notion. It is recognition of universal order and natural law. It is a call to understand and honor local place-based ways of knowing and being, and incorporate this ancestral wisdom into our contemporary lives and collective future. It is with this respect for Indigenous sovereignty that Jason, as a descendant of colonizers and the colonized, works to decolonize his mind and actions, not as appropriation but to learn and share in love and service of all creation.

Jason’s still images and short films have been recognized, published, exhibited, premiered, and presented online, in print, and at venues worldwide. For more than 8 years in the early 2000’s Jason worked as Photo Editor for Orion magazine, and he is a Senior Fellow in the International League of Conservation Photographers; a Fellow at Wake Forest University’s Sabin Center for Environment and Sustainability; and the 2022 Environmental Peacebuilding (EnPAX) Arts Fellow. Jason has also presented, curated, run workshops, served on boards, and organized conference programming on working in cause-driven media for dozens of arts and other institutions

Dewi and Jason at the opening night of MY NAME IS NOT AMY at the Denver Film Festival. ©Jason DeWitt/DFF