Sambal Belacan in San Francisco

Madeleine Lim is an award-winning filmmaker with over 30 years of experience as a producer, director, cinematographer and editor. Her films have screened at sold-out theaters at international film festivals around the world, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, and Amsterdam Amnesty International Film Festival. Her work has been featured at universities and museums like the de Young, and Asian Art in San Francisco, and Crocker Art in Sacramento, and broadcast to millions on PBS.

Lim’s films have received awards from the prestigious and highly competitive Paul Robeson Independent Media Fund, as well as the Frameline Film Completion Fund. She received the 1997 Award of Excellence from the San Jose Film & Video Commission’s Joey Awards and won the 1998 National Educational Media Network Bronze Apple Award. From 2000 to 2003, she was a California Arts Council Artist-in-Residence. The Featured Filmmaker at the 2006 APAture Asian American Arts Festival, Lim has four times been awarded the San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Commission for her films. She received grants from the Community Story Fund from Cal Humanities and the San Francisco Foundation Bay Area Documentary Fund for her film, The Worlds of Bernice Bing (2013), which won the Audience Award at the 2013 Queer Women of Color Film Festival. Lim's documentary, Jewelle: A Just Vision (2022) won the Golden Tanna Best Documentary Audience Award at the 2024 Freiburg Lesbian Film Festival in Germany and the Documentary Jury Special Mention at the 2023 Bologna Lesbian Film Festival in Italy. She holds a BA in Cinema from San Francisco State University, where she was awarded Outstanding Cinema Student of the Year. For 17 years, she was an Adjunct Professor in the Film/Media Studies Department at the University of San Francisco.