Ohio Humanities and the Wexner Center for the Arts Announce the Ohio Humanities Film Fellow for 2025–26

In early 2023, Ohio Humanities and the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University partnered on a three-year fellowship program to support the sharing of Ohio stories through humanities-informed documentary film. The collaboration centered on projects that can help strengthen communities, bridge divides, and foster a shared sense of human experience. 

This unique collaboration concludes in 2025–26 by providing an Ohio Humanities Film Fellowship to Simone Barros, a filmmaker working on the documentary The Dead Will Show You the Way: A Fugue for Moss and Memory.

Barros will receive funding of up to $5,000 as well as support and mentorship from the Wexner Center’s Film department and the Film/Video Studio, the Wex’s in-house post-production facility, which supports filmmakers from around the world.

Rebecca Brown Asmo, executive director of Ohio Humanities, notes: “Ohio Humanities is proud to support and center artists such as Simone, who are documenting and telling the stories of Ohio. It is critically important to provide resources and funding to give these artists the space and time to generate this work that will spark dialogue and conversation across our communities.”

Barros joins the seven fellows selected in previous years: Mary Jo Bole, Zeinabu irene Davis, Eli Hiller, Kiubon Kokko, Lindsey Martin, Ruun Nuur, and Benny Zelkowicz.

"For many years, the Film/Video Studio has offered filmmakers the collaborative support needed to pursue ambitious work. This fellowship has shown the power of institutions coming together to champion bold, original filmmaking. We’re thrilled to support Simone Barros and to celebrate all the fellows whose films illuminate Ohio’s histories, landscapes, and communities,” says Jennifer Lange, director of the Film/Video Studio.

About Simone Barros

An accomplished moving image artist and educator, Barros is also a director of audiobooks, including the award-winning Harlem Shuffle (Colson Whitehead) and 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (Nikole Hannah-Jones).

Barros’s fellowship project is The Dead Will Show You the Way: A Fugue for Moss and Memory, an experimental documentary inspired in part by a lack of documentation. The film connects the science of forest moss with the history of escaped slaves who used moss to navigate the Underground Railroad in Ohio. The film creates parallels between 96-year-old Joan Southgate, an advocate preserving Ohio's role in the abolitionist movement, and Dr. Bob Klips, a bryologist cataloguing 420 moss species in Ohio. However, inconsistencies arise between memory and historical documentation, perception and scientific reclassifications, raising questions of how to know oneself when the past isn’t fully on record.

About Ohio Humanities 

Ohio Humanities is a statewide nonprofit that shares stories to spark conversations and inspire ideas by hosting programs and awarding grants that support storytellers statewide, from museums to journalists to documentary filmmakers. For more information, please visit our website at ohiohumanities.org. 

About the Wexner Center for the Arts

The Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University is devoted to commissioning new works of art, artist residencies, and the presentation of exhibitions, performing arts, film/video and learning programs. Housed in the first major public commission by architect Peter Eisenman, the Wex’s iconic building reflects the center’s ambitions to reimagine what a contemporary cultural space could be. The Wex serves regional, national, and international artists and communities and is supported by public funders, donors, sponsors, and members.