Keely Kernan

photographer, filmmaker

Boulder, US

environment documentary camera
About

Keely Kernan is an award-winning freelance photographer and filmmaker who grew up in the Appalachian mountains. She has traveled extensively both nationally and internationally to produce work for a variety of media outlets and non-­profits. Her work focuses on topics such as the environment, the natural resources that we use daily, globalization, identity, and community. She is a Flaherty Seminar Fellow, the recipient of the Princess Grace Award in film and a recipient of the LEF Moving Image Fund grant for the preproduction of her latest feature length documentary, UNDER THE VALLEY. The film focuses on the depleting Rio Grand aquifer in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado.

Kernan has also produced work for publications such as the Guardian and The Huffington Post. Her short films, long format work, and photography has screened and exhibited globally. These venues include the DC Environmental Film Festival, Carnegie Institution for Science, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Bright Lights Film Series partnering with MIT’s Women Take the Reel Film Festival, Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival, Rio WebFest, New Media Festival, American Conservation Film Festival, Environmental Film Festival at Yale, Environmental Film Festival Australia, Oaxaca FilmFest, The Natural Resources Defense Council, and The Gordon Parks Museum, among others.

Her interactive documentary entitled THE MISSISSIPPI, which takes users on a journey from the headwaters of the river to the Gulf of Mexico, was selected to screen at the 2022 SlamDance Film Festival.

Films

Of the Basin

DIRECTOR

The Mississippi

DIRECTOR