About Shelby.

Shelby Zoe Coley is a Black queer filmmaker & content creator based in New York City working across nonfiction and documentary forms. As an artist, Shelby strives to uncover the inherent mythology in 1st person storytelling and lived experience, tackling topics that range from grassroots advocacy to mental health in the global African diaspora.

Her credits include features and collaborations with Afropunk, Slay TV, Curve Magazine, Red Bull Amaphiko, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress.

Her work has screened internationally at festivals in Provincetown, Toronto, and Wales; and has received support from the Puffin Foundation, the Camden International Film Festival, and the Jacob Burns Film Center.

LATEST WORKS

CINEMA-Q

Cinema-Q is an anthology of cinematic portraits that combines the grandeur of contemporary cinema, the dark whimsicality of fantasy, and the candor of dailiness & process to highlight artists and creative entrepreneurs who are active in their communities & in creating community.

By investigating the quotidian of process and elevating it to visual lore, we celebrate our own communities and create real-time mythos around the values most important to us.

SEEN, the docuseries

SEEN is a digital docuseries that uses first-person storytelling and visual myth-making to unpack mysteries from the dark night of the soul. The guests range from healers and musicians to the filmmaker herself—all sharing personal philosophies on mental health, spirituality, and wellness practices.

Although anchored by long-form interviews, every episode simultaneously uses heightened cinematic motifs to envision the storyteller as a character from a fable.

SEEN is a space that requests honesty and vulnerability from the storyteller and the viewer. It is a process that underlines the power of personal narrative and myth-making in real time to balance the need to bear witness, with the need to be seen.