Kate Levy

Kate Levy (b. 1984, Royal Oak, Michigan) is a filmmaker and multimedia artist. Drawing on investigative and historical research and collaborations with community organizers, her films and installations interrogate power structures, and reclaim cultural narratives deployed by these systems. Her films have helped advance movements for water, housing, education, and environmental justice as well as the rights of Black and Indigenous people, immigrants, and workers.

Kate has exhibited her films, installation work at film festivals, galleries and museums internationally. In 2015, her work with the ACLU of Michigan helped expose the Flint Water Crisis. She is a 2017 Patagonia Works grant recipient and a 2018 MacDowell fellow. From 2019-2021, Kate served as the Co-Director of the Youth Documentary Workshop at Educational Video Center in New York City. In 2022, Kate’s film Detroit Will Breathe, helped protesters win a $1.3 million settlement from the city of Detroit, and was awarded Best Short Film from the Whistleblower Film Festival in Washington DC and the Shine A Light Award from the Detroit Free Press Film Festival. From 2023-2024, she was the Stuart B. and Barbara Padnos Distinguished Artist-In-Residence at Grand Valley State University. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Media and Communications Department at Drew University.