Colleen Thurston

Media producer and film programmer Colleen Thurston specializes in non-fiction production. She works for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Smithsonian Channel, and moonlights as a freelance producer. Thurston has been producing short documentaries for the Cherokee Nation’s television show, “Osiyo, Voices of the Cherokee People” since 2016, earning two Emmy Awards. In 2015 she helped found the Tulsa American Film Festival, becoming its director of programming. Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Thurston has a Master’s of Fine Arts in Documentary Filmmaking from Montana State University and was a 2018 Big Sky Documentary Native Filmmaker Fellow. She is the director of Chasing 14,000 (Mountainfilm 2019).