Lily Keber
I live in New Orleans but have roots across the South. I’m originally from Watauga County, NC, went to high school in Savannah and college in Athens, GA. I’ve got family buried across MS and PA. I’m self-taught as a filmmaker but interned at Appalshop in KY.
My first feature length doc Bayou Maharajah, premiered at SXSW in 2013 and won the Oxford American Award for Best Southern Film and Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ Documentary Of The Year. I’ve produced for Beyoncé, Arcade Fire, and Preservation Hall. My films range from the federal government’s policy of immigrant family detention, prison conditions in Gaza, culture and food across the South, and lots of things music-related. My second film Buckjumping premiered in 2018. David Byrne saw that film and loved it so much that he wanted to hire me as a director. The project never came to fruition but that’s still pretty neat.
I am the film curator at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN.
My work has appeared on ARTE, HBO, MTV News, Time, Al-Jazeera English, Democracy Now!, Sundance DocClub, Hulu, Netflix, iTunes, Electronic Intifada and PBS. I am on the Community Advisory Board of WWOZ and am a member of Alternate ROOTS . I’m a founding member of the All-Yall Film Collective of Southern filmmakers.
