Alystyre Julian
Alystyre Julian is a writer, photographer, and the director of Outrider, a feature-length documentary film on Anne Waldman. She was previously the stills photographer on award-winning films Diane (2018) directed by Kent Jones, and Monsters and Men (2018) directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green. Julian has also written original screenplays and adaptations, co-directed short films, and worked on a variety of documentary projects. She previously taught writing for the screen at New York Long Island University, Montclair State University, and NYU Video Lab. She has also worked as a longtime yoga teacher and she lives in New York City.
Sarah Riggs
Sarah Riggs is a poet, filmmaker, and producer of Outrider. Past films include: Six Lives: A Cinepoem (2016) and The Tangier 8 (2009), which screened at the Cinémathèque de Tanger (Morocco), the Berlinale, and the Tate Modern. She is the author of seven books of poetry in English, most recently The Nerve Epistle (Roof Books, 2021). She has translated and co-translated seven books of contemporary French poetry into English, including Etel Adnan's TIME (Nightboat, 2019), recipient of the Griffin International Poetry Prize and the 2020 Best Translated Book Award.
Safaa Fathy
Safaa Fathy was born in Egypt. A poet, essay writer, filmmaker, and advisor for Outrider, she is best known for her feature films D’ailleurs Derrida [Derrida's Elsewhere] (1999) and Mohammad Saved from the Waters (2012). Fathy is the author of Where Not to Be Born (Litmus Press, 2024) Al Haschische (Pamenar Press, 2023), and Revolution Goes Through the Walls (Split Level Texts, 2018). Her plays Terror and Ordeal (Lansman, 2004) were prefaced by Jacques Derrida. She continues to experiment with the visual texture of poems in filmic forms.
Ruy García
Award winning sound designer, composer, and music producer based in New York, Ruy García has provided sound design and re-recording mixing for feature films like Y Tu Mamá También, First Reformed, Midsommar, Marcel The Shell with Shoes On, and for scripted television like Boardwalk Empire, The Night Of, The Get Down, and The Staircase. He has been nominated for six Prime Time Emmy Awards, winning twice. He has also received a Golden Reel and three Ariel Award Nominations from the Mexican Film Academy.
Anne Waldman
Internationally acclaimed poet Anne Waldman is the author of more than sixty books, including Fast Speaking Woman: Chants and Essays (1996), The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment (2011), and Bard, Kinetic (2023). She is a founder and former director of the The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, and along with contemporaries Allen Ginsberg and Diane DiPrima, founded the ‘Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics’ at Naropa University. Her poetry belongs to the lineages of the Beat, New York School, and Black Mountain Movements of New American Poetry. As a feminist, social activist, and powerful performer, she has read in the streets and literary institutions worldwide and continues to teach poetics all over the world.
Sean Gullette
Sean Gullette is a filmmaker, actor, and consulting producer of Outrider. His career began when he cowrote and played the lead role in Pi (1998) directed by Darren Aronofsky. His debut as a writer-director, Traitors (2023), about the lead singer of an all-girl teen punk band in Tangier, Morocco, who finds herself in hot water with drug smugglers—premiered at the Venice Film Festival. He recently developed and executive produced the documentary series Black Gold (2022) about the denial and lies that have led to the climate crisis. He is now in development on Upland, a near-future thriller adapted from the novel by Novel prizewinner Kenzaburo Oe, and Strong Girls, about Ukrainian teen rock band The Sixsters.
Melissa Huffsmith-Roth
Melissa Huffsmith-Roth is an accomplished film editor and multi-disciplinary artist who lives and works in New York City. Her film collaborations have screened at festivals and museums all over the world. Recent collaborators include Julie Dash, Alison Klayman, and Alystyre Julian.
Frédéric Tcheng
Frédéric Tcheng is a French-born film director and advisor for Outrider based in Brooklyn. His films have premiered in Venice, Toronto, Sundance, Telluride, CPH:DOX, and Tribeca. His most recent film Invisible Beauty (2023), co-directed with trailblazer activist Bethann Hardison, was released by Magnolia Pictures and won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary. In 2019, he directed the documentary Halston, (2018), a CNN Films Production and Amazon Original. His award-winning directorial debut, Dior and I was released in 2015 by The Orchard. Previously, Tcheng had co-directed the 2011 acclaimed documentary Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel, which the NYT called “dizzily enjoyable.” He also co-produced and co-edited Valentino: The Last Emperor, the 2009 hit documentary short-listed for the Best Documentary Oscar. Tcheng has served as a filmmaking mentor for Queer Art. He holds an engineering degree from France and an MFA in filmmaking from Columbia University.