
Adam Mazo

Adam Mazo
Affiliations
Links to Work
Bio
Adam Mazo (he/his) is the copresident andcreative director for Upstander Project and an Emmy® Award-winning social issue documentarian. He is the northeast region lead for DPA. Adam has (co)directed and/or produced all of Upstander Project’s films, including Dawnland, which won an Emmy® Award in 2018. His films have been broadcast on domestic and international television (Independent Lens), programmed at film festivals (Sundance, Hot Docs, Camden) and international conferences, and screened at universities and K-12 schools, where they are also often used in curricula. He is Ashkenazi Jewish and lives with his family in the territory of the People of the Blue Hills — the Massachusett Tribe.
Projects
We Sing Nonetheless
Together, acclaimed musicians Doni Zasloff and Eric Lindberg face the competing challenges of parenthood, marriage, fame, and life on the road with a baby - equipped only with love, humor, and a banjo on their back. In the feature film, We Sing Nonetheless, the musical boundary-pushing band, Nefesh Mountain, navigates what it is to be American and Jewish today.

Dawnland
For decades, child welfare authorities have been removing Native American children from their homes to “save them from being Indian.” In Maine, the first official Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States begins a historic investigation. Dawnland goes behind-the-scenes as this historic body grapples with difficult truths, redefines reconciliation, and charts a new course for state and tribal relations.
Dawnland aired on Independent Lens on PBS in November 2018 and 2021, reaching more than two million viewers. The film won a national Emmy® Award for Outstanding Research in 2019 and made the American Library Association’s list of 2020 Notable Videos for Adults.

Reciprocity Project
Facing a climate crisis, the Reciprocity Project embraces Indigenous value systems that have bolstered communities since the beginning of time. To heal, we must recognize that we are in relationship with Earth, a place that was in balance for millennia. This short film series and multimedia platform, made in partnership with Indigenous storytellers and their communities worldwide, invites learning from time-honored and current Indigenous ways of being.

Bounty
Bounty, part of our Dawnland film series, reveals the hidden story of the Phips Proclamation, one of many scalp-bounty proclamations used to exterminate Native people in order to take their land in what is now New England. In the film, Penobscot parents and children resist erasure and commemorate survival by reading and reacting to the government-issued Phips Proclamation’s call for colonial settlers to hunt, scalp, and murder Penobscot people.
