Although "Mardi Gras" immediately brings to mind New Orleans for most people, the first Mardi Gras in America was actually held in Mobile, Ala., over 300 years ago. Remarkably, even in 2007, the festivities remain racially segregated, with two pairs of kings and queens -- one black, one white. Filmmaker Margaret Brown takes us through the divided zones of Mobile's current Mardi Gras celebrations as numerous participants attempt to initiate an an integration between black and white revelers. With Panel Happily based in New Orleans, Zandashé Brown is a writer/director born-and-bred in and inspired by southern Louisiana. Her work raises a Black femme lens to the tradition of southern gothic horror. Brown’s directorial debut, BLOOD RUNS DOWN, was one of five projects selected for the New Orleans Tricentennial Incubator Grant in 2018. Since then, it has screened at dozens of festivals in the US, Germany, and Britain. Her narrative and documentary work has been supported by Kickstarter, Create Louisiana, the New Orleans Video Access Center, and the New Orleans Film Society, where she now serves as Artist Development Coordinator and Programming Manager. MAUREEN GOSLING has been a documentary filmmaker for more than thirty years and is best known for her twenty-year collaboration with acclaimed independent director, Les Blank (Burden of Dreams, Always for Pleasure). Gosling has also been sought after as an editor, working with such directors as Jed Riffe (Waiting to Inhale, California’s “Lost” Tribes), Tom Weidlinger (Heart of the Congo, A Dream in Hanoi), Shakti Butler (The Way Home), Ashley James (Bomba: Dancing the Drum), Amie Williams (Stripped and Teased) and Pam Rorke Levy (The Mission District: The Hidden Neighborhoods of San Francisco). Her work has often focused on themes of people and their cultural values, music as cultural expression and the changing gender roles of men and women. Her films have been seen in countless film festivals around the world, on national public and cable television, on television in Europe, Australia, and Asia, and have been distributed widely to educational institutions. Kiwi Lanier, Education/Outreach Coordinator, Interim Marketing Coordinator, Sidewalk Film Center + Cinema Kiwi is originally from Kennesaw, GA. She graduated from Birmingham-Southern College with a BA in Media and Film Studies in 2014 and received an MA in Media Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. She has been involved with Sidewalk Film Festival since 2012.