Miasarah Lai

Documentary Cinematographer
Miasarah Lai

Miasarah Lai (BA Cornell University, MFA Northwestern University) is an Emmy-winning documentary cinematographer and producer based out of New York City. She was a cinematographer of VICE News Tonight’s Abuse at Christian Kanakuk Kamps, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Hard News Longform. She has worked throughout the United States and internationally in Honduras, Ghana, Myanmar, China, Nicaragua, and Romania. She prioritizes equity and social responsibility through the filmmaking process and counters damaging mainstream representations of marginalized communities. Her work has screened at Big Sky Film Festival, American Documentary Film Festival, Athens Ethnofest, Chicago Palestine Film Festival, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, and art museums. Select films she directed are Nobel Nok Dah (2015), and For My Art (2016). She has received grants and fellowships from the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Camden International Film Festival, Double Exposure Film Festival, The Propeller Fund, Kartemquin Films, and other institutions.

Outside of her cinematic work, Miasarah demonstrates a deep commitment to challenging the disenfranchising norms of the documentary field through community organizing, writing and work as an educator and facilitator. Miasarah is a cinematographer and producer at Meerkat Media Cooperative, the former Community Manager of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, a Co-Founder of Ethnocine Collective, and a member of Asian American Documentary Network. She has facilitated and organized panels & workshops at CPH:DOX, Sundance Film Festival, SSFILM’s Doc Stories, the International Documentary Association’s Getting Reel, Cannes Docs, Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival, Haverford College, and other academic institutions.