Frances Grace Mortel
Frances Grace Mortel is a photographer and filmmaker, born and raised in Manila, Philippines. She moved to Spokane, Washington in 2016 and completed Digital Media Production program at Spokane Falls Community College (SFCC) in 2019. She graduated with BA Film degree at Eastern Washington University (EWU) in 2021, receiving Magna Cum Laude honors, Dean's Student Excellence Award, Social Justice Advocate of the Year Award, and Achievements in Screenwriting and Criticism.
Frances currently works as Audio Video Assistant for Spokane Regional Health District while juggling freelance projects. A member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Filipino American Artist Directory, Spokane Film Project, and serves as part of Advisory Committee for Asian Pacific Islander Coalition of Spokane — she has participated in art exhibitions such as Terrain, FemFest Art Festival, Spokane Arts’ Saturate, Pagdiriwang’s Larawan in Seattle Center, and other group shows with local galleries/collectives such as La Resistance and Shades of Me. She participated in 2020 Santa Barbara International Film Festival - Film Studies Program, has been accepted into Telluride Film Festival - Student Symposium (moved to 2021) and is currently part of the pilot batch of WA Filmworks Media Mentorship Program.
The challenges of being a mother, immigrant, and queer artist of color fuel her desire to tell empowering visual stories that expose human truths and stand for social justice. Frances is currently capturing conceptual portraits with focus on women and QTBIPOCs (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color), exploring street reportages highlighting the working class, writing and producing fiction & non-fiction films about migration, and experimenting on other alternative processes to create empathic, visible, and intersectional representation of marginalized cultures and communities.