They're Here

Daniel Claridge is a documentary filmmaker from Schenectady, NY. His feature directorial debut, The Queen’s Man (2019, codirected with Andrew Coffman) premiered at the DOC NYC film festival and won the On the Edge award at the Doc Edge Festival. Prior to that, his short film Dragstrip (2015, codirected with Pacho Velez) screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival. Among recent editorial work, Claridge wrote and edited Persuasion Machines (2020), a virtual reality experience that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was a coeditor on the Netflix documentary The Great Hack (2019), which also premiered at Sundance. Claridge studied filmmaking at Harvard University and was a fellow at the Harvard Film Study Center.

Pacho Velez is a nonfiction filmmaker born and raised in New York City. His last feature, Searchers (2021)—a portrait of the Big Apple as seen through the eyes of lovers—premiered at Sundance before going on to play at many festivals around the world. Velez also directed The American Sector (2020, codirected with Courtney Stephens and supported by the Wexner Center), which New Yorker critic Richard Brody included on his list of the best films of that year. Velez’s earlier features include The Reagan Show (2017, codirected with Sierra Pettengill) and Manakamana (2013, codirected with Stephanie Spray), which have screened around the world. Manakamana won a Golden Leopard in the Filmmakers of the Present competition at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2013. Velez received his MFA in film production from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). At present, he is an assistant professor of screen studies at The New School (NYC).