Meet the filmmaker behind 'XCLD: The Story of Cancel Culture'

Ferne Pearlstein is a prize-winning director, cinematographer, and editor based in New York City. A winner of the 2004 Sundance Cinematography Prize for IMELDA, and one of the few female cinematographers featured in Kodak's “On Film” ad campaign, Ferne has made films all over the world, from Haiti to Uganda to Guyana to Burma, where she snuck her 16mm camera across the border to film in the rebel bases of the Karen Liberation Army. As a director and producer she has had four features premiere at Tribeca, including her 2003 feature documentary SUMO EAST AND WEST, whose two-year festival run culminated in a screening on Waikiki Beach for 8000 people at the Hawaii International Film Festival. Her most recent feature documentary was the critically acclaimed THE LAST LAUGH (2016), starring Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, and many others, which screened at over 100 film festivals and was released theatrically in more than 25 cities. (Both films aired on PBS/Independent Lens.) Since then, Ferne has become a recognized speaker and author on humor as it relates to crisis. Prior to XCLD: THE STORY OF CANCEL CULTURE, Ferne produced and shot COLA WARS (2019) for History, and was one of a handful of filmmakers chosen by the UN, Google, and Tribeca Studios to direct 17 PSAs about building a sustainable planet, which were featured on YouTube and shown at the UN General Assembly. She holds post-graduate degrees in documentary film and photography from Stanford and the International Center of Photography, and is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.