Lana returns to Double Exposure as senior programmer for 2025, after having directed and curated the Hayti Heritage Film Festival from 2017-2023. She was a program director for the Southern Documentary Fund, and is the principal of her company, Insibah Media, which makes documentary films and marketing videos.
Lana’s creative practice centers on cultural memory restoration, particularly in the lives of African American women. Working between narrative and documentary film forms, she tells stories with complex characters that have been forgotten over time. She’s been commissioned to make films for multimedia live performances such as Blues Women, which presents the female progenitors of blues music. She executive produced the recent investigative documentary, The Holly (dir. by Julian Rubinestein), about the nexus between police and gangs in a gentrifying neighborhood of Denver. Currently, she is finishing her documentary on the impact of African American washerwomen on the labor movement in America.
Lana has served as a member of the North Carolina Governor’s Advisory Council on Film, Television, and Digital Streaming and has worked as a Fulbright Specialist at Makerere University in Uganda.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Lana began her career in on-air promotions, working as a writer/producer for HBO. There, she honed her skills by creating entertainment news segments, interviewing the likes of Meryl Streep, Hillary Clinton, Denzel Washington, Condoleezza Rice and many more. As the Senior Creative Director at BET, she won awards creating and executing the visual and thematic style of campaigns, shows, and the network.
While working in cable television, Lana also worked several independent projects. She shot her narrative silent film Rapture, which won a Finalist Award at Worldfest Houston, and her screenplay Soon Come was a finalist for IFP’s Gordon Park’s Award. But it was moving to Denmark from 2004 to 2011 that proved pivotal in her filmmaking journey. During this time Lana wrote a screenplay adaptation of the book, The Pagoda, for novelist Walter Moseley’s production company, and she worked at TV2 Denmark, writing and directing commercials. Lana studied European film aesthetic at the Danish Film School, worked as a consultant on Danish director Lars von Trier’s film, Manderlay, and volunteered at CPH:DOX International Film Festival. These experiences led her to make her short film, AfterLife starring Tamara Tunie.
Her work consists of content created for HBO, BET, PBS, and ESPN in America, and TV2 in Denmark. In documentary, Lana has worked on films such as Bowling For Columbine as an archivist, HBO’s Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives as an associate
