Katherine Brooks

Katherine Brooks is an American lesbian filmmaker who ran away from her small Louisiana hometown at 16 to pursue film in Los Angeles, arriving with $150 to her name, and began her career directing reality television including The Osbournes (2003), The Real World (2004), and The Simple Life (2003). She is best known for her debut feature Loving Annabelle (2006), a romantic drama about the forbidden relationship between a boarding school teacher and a student, which won the Emerging Filmmaker Award at Cinequest and became a top-selling title in queer cinema on DVD; she followed it with Waking Madison (2010), starring Elisabeth Shue and Frances Conroy. In 2011, Brooks received the Power Up Award for her LGBTQ+ advocacy, joining past honorees including Gus Van Sant and Lily Tomlin. She founded her own production company, Big Easy Pictures, in 2010, and is also an animal-rights activist and practicing Buddhist.