Breaktide Productions is an all women-of-color-owned film production company rooted in intersectional solidarity. Our current films address issues of environmental racism, human rights & indigenous sovereignty.
Jalena Keane-Lee
Jalena Keane-Lee is a filmmaker who explores intergenerational trauma and healing through an intersectional lens.
Named Paper Magazine’s Top 5 Asian Creators to Know, Jalena is the director of Standing Above the Clouds, which follows Native Hawaiian mother-daughter activists, and has been supported by Pacific Islanders in Communication, Nia Tero, CNN Films, and Points North Institute. Her short film by the same name screened at New Orleans Film Festival, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Allied Media Conference. Standing Above the Clouds was nominated for Best Short Documentary at the NFFTY and Guam Film Festivals, and is playing on the Criterion Collection. Jalena has produced a short film for Independent Lens, as well as commercial series for Nike and Facebook. She previously hosted the national environmental television show Eco Company, and won Tribecca Through Her Lens 2020. She’s also been an AAJA, NeXt Doc and Jacob Burns Film Center Fellow. Her films have screened at the UN, HIFF, CAAMFest, and LAAPFF. She has been supported by NeXt Doc, The Jacob Burns Creative Culture Fellowship, PIC, and Nia Tero.
Alex J. Bledsoe
Alex J. Bledsoe is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is rooted in Black liberation and healing justice.
Alex is the director of OAKLEAD, which investigates Oakland’s racialized lead poisoning crisis. OAKLEAD is a fellow in the Sundance Finance and Strategy Intensive, a Redford Center grantee, a Berkeley Film Foundation grantee, and winner of the Jonathan Logan Elevate Award for investigative journalism. Previously, Alex directed Heart Race (currently in post-production), documenting one man’s attempt to obtain a heart transplant while grappling with racial inequity in Milwaukee. Alex produced the narrative feature, Residue, about gentrification in Washington, D.C., which is currently streaming on Netflix after premiering internationally at La Biennale/Venice International Film Festival. Alex also directed and executive produced four films for the Nike Equality launch.
Alex has been a guest columnist for The Washington Post, a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Fellow, and a Maynard 200 honoree. Alex earned her B.S. from Georgetown University in international politics, where she studied Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic.
Reaa Puri
Reaa Puri is a director, producer, cinematographer, and editor whose films confront issues of sexual and state violence, and seek pathways towards collective power and healing.
She is a TEDX speaker and recipient of two Cannes Lion awards, the Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prize and the SFFilm Holbrooke Female Fund. Reaa is a 2021 artist-in-residence at the San Francisco Filmhouse, 2020 UnionDocs’ Summer Documentary Lab Fellow, and recipient of the Bay Area Video Coalition’s doc-filmmaker development program. Her short films have screened at Sundance Film Festival, South by Southwest Film Festival, London Asia Film Festival, SF IndieFest and BAMPFA. Previously, Reaa was the Director of Photography and Editor for Nike’s 2019 Black History Month campaign, show-runner of a Vh1 TV show and assistant director on feature film Mary Kom, streaming on Netflix. She has formerly led video teams at Wear Your Voice Magazine, Carbonated.TV and Hearst Digital Media, and her photography has been published in Vogue Magazine.
Reaa earned her B.A. in film and media studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Her film practice is informed by her queerness, Kashmiri-Sikh heritage, and upbringing between Berkeley, Mumbai, Delhi, and Kuwait.
