Juanita Anderson is a Detroit born and raised producer, filmmaker, photographer, and media educator who works to amplify the authentic voices, stories, and images of people and communities who are too often unseen, dismissed, or unacknowledged. She is a 2024 Kresge Artist Fellow in film whose body of work in public and independent media spans more than four decades. She was the executive producer of the 1988 Academy Award-nominated feature film Who Killed Vincent Chin? (dir. Christine Choy & Renee Tajima) which was inducted into the National film Registry in 2021. Her most recent film, Sydney G. James: How We See Us, is included in the 2023 Firelight Media/American Masters short film series In The Making. Her still photography is included in the collections of Fayetteville State University, Southern Methodist University, and the Mott-Warsh Collection. A past president of the National Conference of Artists, the nation’s longest running African American visual arts organization, Anderson was a co-founder of Black Public Media and currently serves on the board of directors of American Documentary, Inc. She is Resident Artist in Media Arts at The Carr Center and heads the Media Arts and Studies Program at Wayne State University, where she has been a faculty member since 2003.

Indija Productions produces, manages, and curates film and digital media projects that illuminate the experiences of people of African descent, the role of the arts in society, and the responses to social issues that amplify the voices and images of those often underrepresented or misrepresented on screen. Its mission is to create, foster, and exhibit engaging and enlightening cinematic stories and digital media content that center communities and explore their experiences, issues, aspirations, movements, and resilience. Indija aims to engage broad audiences and elevate the voices, visibility, and power of independent Black, brown, and indigenous media storytellers and creatives who bring diverse vantage points to multiple screens. In 2014, the organization was awarded its first commission, creating a six-part video series for The Favorite Poem Project: Chicago. The organization has since forged collaborations to develop projects on Black food sovereignty efforts in Detroit; a biographical documentary on a seminal figure whose life and work intersect with five key twentieth century cultural movements; and a documentary feature film examining mid-20th century African American life in Detroit. In 2022, founder Juanita Anderson undertook production of the documentary short film Sydney G. James: How We See Us under the auspices of the organization. The film explores the work of the Detroit visual artist/muralist who addresses the status of Black women in society, police brutality, family, and community through bold brushstrokes and hues that evoke the complexities of Black reality, joy, pain, and resilience. It premiered at the 2023 Pan African Film Festival, was broadcast nationally by PBS, and has toured in film festivals across the US, in Canada, and in Australia, garnering eight film festival awards.