Francesca Soans

Francesca Soans is an award-winning filmmaker with over thirty years of experience in media production and teaching. Her films and videos have screened at competitive film festivals, art galleries, and conferences in North and South America., Europe, Asia, and Australia, and been broadcast on public and cable television channels. Her documentary film notes towards a history received the Directors’ Citation from the prestigious Black Maria Film and Video Festival, which recognizes cutting edge documentaries. Her fiction film Rebirth received five awards from the Iowa Motion Picture Association and was nominated for Best Iowa film by the Wild Rose International Film Festival. Her documentary Sons of Jacob Synagogue, co-directed with historian Robert Neymeyer, on the Jewish community in Waterloo, Iowa, received numerous awards, including the Loren Horton Community History award for excellence from the State Historical Society of Iowa and a Silver Remi from Worldfest-Houston International Film Festival.

Soans’ extensive media experience spans community media and international filmmaking. She worked with community groups in Philadelphia and continued this work while serving as coordinator of the Public Access television station for the city of Waterloo, Iowa, producing programming for the government and public access television channels. Her community work laid the foundation for her groundbreaking city project Waterloo: A History of Place, a series of documentaries that explore everyday memories and places, which she has been producing since 2003. Soans also has experience in international filmmaking, shooting films in Toronto, Canada, and India. She is currently developing a project to be shot in multiple locations in Japan.

She has received several major grants from the Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Association, the Iowa Arts Council, Humanities Iowa, the Guernsey Foundation, and the Broadcast Education Association. Soans’ films have challenged norms in society and media, advocating for the value of stories from under-represented communities. Since 2003, she has worked on a documentary about the North End and the history of the African American community in Waterloo, part of the series Waterloo: A History of Place. She is also working on A River Speaks, a documentary about a community radio station in the Himalayas in India.