Andrew Beck Grace is an award winning documentary filmmaker whose films have aired on Public Television stations and at film festivals across the country. In 2014, his film “Eating Alabama” was awarded Best Documentary by the James Beard Foundation. The film was funded by ITVS, had its world premiere at SXSW and played nationally on PBS in 2013. His other films have won numerous regional Emmy Awards, including Best Historical Documentary. He received an MA in American Studies from the University of Wyoming where he made his first documentary feature about the reenactments of Custer’s Last Stand in southern Montana. After a few years in the West, making films, freelancing for magazines and working as a producer for NPR News, he moved back to his home state to tell stories about the deep South. At the University of Alabama he teaches and oversees a unique interdisciplinary social justice documentary program called Documenting Justice.

Mike is a Partner and Creative Technologist at Helios Design Labs, where he has been for the last 15 years. He oversees the interactive part of Helios' creative output. Recent storytelling projects that he has worked on in include Highrise with Kat Cizek and the NFB, Offshore with Brenda Longfellow, 17,000 Islands with Thomas Østbye and Edwin, World Online Orchestra with the Copenhagen Phil among others. The work has collectively won a number of major awards and nominations, including a Peabody for Short History of Highrise, and has been featured in such venues as IDFA, Sheffield DocFest, smartFip@, Bristol iDocs and others, including a nomination for activism (with Offshore) at 2014 SXSW Interactive awards. Mike studied visual Arts at York University in Toronto, and picked up his computer skill on the job at Helios.