Arts Division
Graduate Studies Division
MFA Student & Teaching Assistant
Graduate
Film and Digital Media
Alexandra Lenore Ashworth aka Dzana/xana is a U.S.-born Filipinx, Jewish filmmaker and writer. Zir work explores collective memory, trauma, and healing in the face of colonization and globalization. Their MFA focuses primarily on kinship, adoption, and family separation, and on community care practices in the filmmaking process.
Dzana previously worked in entertainment and political news at HuffPost, and is a 2022 Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling Fellow. Ze has directed and produced for PBS, Art21, the MET, MOMA, and Brooklyn Museum. Their poetry appears in You Are Holding This, an abolitionist zine for and by adopted, fostered, and trafficked people. They were Co-Impact and Associate Producer for feature documentary Fire Through Dry Grass (2023) and Associate Producer for What The Pier Gave Us (in-production).
Dzana is a NatGeo Explorer, and a proud member of Writers Guild of America (East), Brown Girls Doc Mafia, and the Asian American Documentary Network. She studied Spanish, screenwriting, and magical realism at Sarah Lawrence College. They get excited about building with radical queer, disabled, and marginalized communities. Ze also enjoys swimming, fishing, and scifi and fantasy fiction.
Learn more about Dzana at www.dzanaashworth.com
Headshot by Jacques Morel Jr.
(IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Black and white photo of Alexandra, a brown Filipinx femme person with dark hair. Wearing geometric glasses, a dark shirt with light leaf-like patterns, and a spiked choker, they gaze toward us gently.)
