ALEX MCNAB
LOS ANGELES COUNTY 2025 - 2026
Alexander McNab is a screenwriter and director telling stories rooted in African diaspora folktales. As a USC film production MFA, he created a range of Black-folktale-inspired shorts using green screen, motion capture, Unreal Engine, generative AI, and stop motion. He has written six feature-length folktale films and organizes a weekly screenwriters’ group modeled after USC’s feature writing classes. His work has screened at the Micheaux Film Festival, the SCA Generative Imaging Film Festival, and the Los Angeles International Children’s Film Festival. His first short film was featured in Downtown Community Television Center’s Best of PRO-TV 2019. In his current practice, he draws on his background in journalism and training in narrative filmmaking to tell grounded, semi-documentary stories. His films adapt the cultural and familial tales he wishes he’d grown up with—making Blackness visible and making himself seen.
COMMUNITY PROJECT
In partnership with LA Commons, Alex McNab is directing Aisha Been Leimert Park, a 22-minute semi-documentary/children’s educational animated short that follows Aisha, an African-American second grader whose mental health and wellbeing is transformed through her encounters with the Leimert Park arts scene. Aisha’s journey is centered around conversations with three real-life community members whose personal stories teach her about how the collective medicine of Leimert Park’s cultural arts heals both residents of South Los Angeles and Black communities across the region, including those recently displaced by the 2025 wildfires.
Aisha Been Leimert Park will engage community members at every stage, beginning with one-on-one meetings and presence at neighborhood events to inform the central narrative. The oral histories collected for the film will contribute to LA Commons’ burgeoning archive of Leimert Park residents and cultural practitioners.
With Aisha Been Leimert Park, Alex aims to showcase Leimert’s cultural wealth and instill a sense of local pride. By connecting the neighborhood's history to a larger narrative of resiliency in Los Angeles, Alex hopes the film invites everyone to share in the collective healing power of the arts.
COMMUNITY PARTNER
LA Commons, a 501(c)(3) arts nonprofit organization, is on a mission to engage communities in artistic and cultural expression that tells their unique stories and serves as a basis for dialogue, interaction and a shared understanding of Los Angeles. Through community-based art programs, centered on youth leadership development, we help diverse, generally low-income neighborhoods create dynamic works of public art that build community connection and empowerment.