Te Shima Brennen

they/them
Te Shima Brennen is a Black Trans person with brown skin in front of a brick wall. They have curly brown hair pulled up into an updo. They are smiling wearing diamond earrings and a gray suit jacket with silver necklaces shown from the shoulders up.

Te Shima Brennen is a Black Trans person with brown skin in front of a brick wall. They have curly brown hair pulled up into an updo. They are smiling wearing diamond earrings and a gray suit jacket with silver necklaces shown from the shoulders up.

Job title
documentary filmmaker   director   editor  
Identity categories
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trans   queer   Black  
Places of practice

Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States of America

Alternate names

Te Shima Anusha Brennen

Images
A portrait from the shoulders up of someone smiling with a brick wall background. They have brown skin, curly dark-brown hair in a top bun, and are wearing a gray blazer with silver necklaces on.
Te Shima Brennen is a Black Trans person with brown skin in front of a brick wall. They have curly brown hair pulled up into an updo. They are smiling wearing diamond earrings and a gray suit jacket with silver necklaces shown from the shoulders up.
Metadata
Biography

Te Shima Brennen (they/them) is a visual storyteller and journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. Their work focuses on covering race, gender, and sexuality. As an emerging documentary filmmaker, they aim to tell nuanced stories about BIPOC, queer and trans people as they navigate institutions and systems not built to support them. Currently, Te Shima is co-directing a documentary that follows an ailing Black trans matriarch who is struggling to inculcate the values of education and survival in her community before she runs out of time.

Te Shima became the 2022-23 recipient of a Magic Grant from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation for their pilot project titled, "TRANSforming Journalism," which aims to curate an immersive exhibition with audio/visual reporting about trans communities of color by trans journalists of colour.

Te Shima completed their Masters of Science in Journalism, with a documentary specialisation, at the Columbia Journalism School in 2022. Their work was featured in numerous festivals both domestically and abroad, including NewFest, the Pan African Film Festival, and the Inside Out Film Festival.

Reuters Institute. “Te Shima Brennen,” n.d. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/people/te-shima-brennen.

Te Shima Brennen (they/them) is a Black, queer, trans filmmaker living in Brooklyn. They produce work on race, gender, and sexuality. As an emerging documentary filmmaker, they aim to tell nuanced stories about BIPOC, queer and trans people as they navigate institutions and systems not built to support them. Te Shima became the 2022-23 recipient of a Magic Grant from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation and is a 2022 Fellow at the Reuters Institute of the Study or Journalism at Oxford University.

100 Reporters New Journalism For A New Age. “Te Shima Brennen,” n.d. https://dxfest.com/speakers/te-shima-brennen/.
Filmography