Isara is an independent documentary filmmaker, cinematographer and editor based in Oakland, California. Through her work she aims to highlight the effects of structural injustice on historically marginalized & ignored communities in the US. She also explores themes of art and relationship to the natural world as activism, community, healing and joy. She specializes in observational cinema verité camerawork, capturing raw human moments as they happen.

As an on-call producer for KQED Arts (San Francisco Bay Area PBS/NPR affiliate), Isara produces, shoots and edits short documentaries about local artists and activists that reach a nationwide audience. In 2022, her directorial debut Disability Arts Ensemble Takes Access & Dance to New Heights––an episode of KQED Arts’ award-winning series If Cities Could Dance––was KQED's first entirely accessible online video. It was nominated for a NorCal Regional Emmy® Award and received a Society of Professional Journalists’ 2022 NorCal Excellence in Journalism award.

Isara was the assistant editor for the critically acclaimed documentaries, CNN Films’ John Lewis: Good Trouble (dir. Dawn Porter 2020, Magnolia Pictures), and The Way I See It (dir. Dawn Porter 2020, Focus Features). She has been hired to direct, shoot and edit short documentaries for the East Bay AIDS Center; Women Organized Against Life-Threatening Disease (WORLD), a grass-roots Oakland organization helping unhoused women learn about and wean off opioid abuse; and for the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, the only public high school in the US with a World Art curriculum. Her photography, writing and video journalism have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, Content Magazine, CrossCut Seattle, EdSource and The Grotto Network.

Isara recently directed her first feature documentary The Highest Standard, which follows three Boston Public middle schoolers on either side of a life-changing decision. It premiered on opening night of GlobeDocs Film festival and is developing an impact campaign.

As a side project she recently helped launch Sweet Harmony Sessions, filming musicians in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

She holds a masters degree in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was awarded a Documentary Fellowship. Her background in journalism, psychology, social justice and visual art informs her worldview.

She grew up in a neighborhood of Boston, MA, and traces her sense of awe back to a childhood discovery of the piney, salty smells of the coast of Maine.

DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER & JOURNALIST

Email
ifkrieger[at]gmail.com

Phone
617.504.6048