The Stranger Genius Awards are less than a month away! Every year, Seattle local paper the Stranger selects three nominees for five different categories in the arts: visual art, literature, performance, film, and music. This year, the three film nominees are all people who have worked with Washington Filmworks!

We featured nominee Sandy Cioffi back in June: read all about her here. Next up to the plate is filmmaker Tracy Rector!

Tracy Rector is an award-winning filmmaker, indigenous activist, and youth mentor living in Seattle. She is the director and founder of Longhouse Media and youth program Native Lens, organizations that teach indigenous people and communities to use media as a tool for self-expression, cultural preservation, and social change.

She was a participant in the 2013 Filmworks Innovation Lab with the non-fiction feature film and media project Clearwater: People of the Salish Sea, a story that explores the inherent relationship between the Coast Salish people and the waters of the Pacific Northwest through the Tribal Canoe Journey. The following year she served on the jury for our Innovation Lab as well.

To read the production diaries for Clearwater on the Washington Filmworks blog click here.

Her newest feature, Maiden of Deception Pass: Guardian of Her Samish People premiered in 2015 (produced by Clearwater films and Longhouse Media) and tells the story of a maiden named Ko-kwahl-alwoot, who risked her life to save the Samish people from starvation.

Most recently, she collaborated with VR company Mechanical Dreams to create Ch’aak’ S’aagi (Eagle Bone), a cinematic 360-degree experience that takes the viewer on a journey across indigenous land through spoken word and lush, Pacific Northwest scenery. Ch’aak’ S’aagi (Eagle Bone), premiered at SIFFX just a few months ago, and was just selected to screen at Pop VR, part of the Toronto International Film Festival in September!

To read more about Tracy’s nomination, check out the Stranger piece about her here.