In conjunction with BAMPFA’s streaming presentation of Tell Them We Were Here, watch an exclusive conversation with the film’s directors, Griff and Keelan Williams; artist Nigel Poor; and BAMPFA Director Julie Rodrigues Widholm.

Griff Williams is an American painter, publisher, and gallerist. In 1993 he founded Gallery 16 and the pioneering fine art printmaking workshop Urban Digital Color in San Francisco. The exhibition and publishing program has worked with hundreds of artists, including Lynn Hershman Leeson, William Kentridge, Deborah Oropallo, bell hooks, Rex Ray, Margaret Kilgallen, Mark Grotjahn, and Paul Sietsema. Williams has also designed and published dozens of acclaimed books with the Gallery 16 Editions imprint, including The Gay Seventies: Hal Fischer and a monograph on the life and artwork of the late San Francisco artist Rex Ray. Williams’s paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums including the San Diego Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, and San Jose Museum of Art.

Filmmaker Keelan Williams was born and raised in the Bay Area and is now based in Los Angeles. He graduated from Loyola Marymount’s School of Film and Television Production. Williams has directed, produced, shot, and edited short films, documentaries, concert films, and music videos. His first short film, Everything Old Is New Again, was an Official Selection at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and was nominated for Best Documentary at Film Outside the Frame. Tell Them We Were Here is his first feature-length documentary.

In 2011, Nigel Poor’s interest in investigating the marks of existence that people leave behind led her to San Quentin, where she taught history of photography classes for the Prison University Project, an experience that changed the focus of her practice. Her award-winning work at San Quentin has been recognized by the Society for Professional Journalism and with the A Blade of Grass Fellowship. Her work has been widely exhibited nationally, and is held in collections such as the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. She is a professor of photography at California State University, Sacramento.