Revery has expanded its creative roster with the addition of director Alexander Gilbert. He has hit the ground running at his new roost, directing the first episode of Future Self, a series made in collaboration with Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) Scholarship program.
“As an independent filmmaker, I began working with Revery in 2020, and have been in and out of projects with them for the past couple of years,” shared Gilbert. “At Revery, there’s a lot of energy and love that gets put into the creative work that extends to the people creating it and it feels special to join the team that has given me some of my first opportunities.”
Gilbert is an emerging multi-ethnic filmmaker of Indian and Hispanic descent whose portfolio spans varied genres. A recent Fellow of the AICP Commercial Directors Diversity Program, Gilbert has a body of work consisting of heartfelt documentary films, cinematic branded content and elegantly crafted commercial work. He earned inclusion in SHOOT’s 2022 New Directors Showcase as well as multiple awards spanning the AICP Show, Young Director Awards, and Young Ones ADC Award competitions.
Revery founder and executive creative producer Davis Priestley said of Gilbert, “He is at that exciting moment in his career where he knows who he is, what he wants to say, and has the experience, the craft, the presence to command a project and bring it all together. He is a natural teammate at Revery–passionate, ambitious, a dreamer, but grounded and stays connected to values we all share: integrity, kindness, and a true love of storytelling.“
Gilbert’s debut project with Revery, the aforementioned Future Self, was created to raise awareness for the AWS AI and ML Scholarship program, which aims to help underserved and underrepresented youth learn foundational concepts to prepare them for careers in AI and ML. Each year, 2,500 scholarships are awarded globally to students seeking to learn and apply ML skills. Inaugural recipients included José Tapia, Vani Agarwal and Olympiah Otieno. As a director, Gilbert was pivotal in partnering closely with Tapia for the first episode while also editing most of the series content.
The series highlights the stories of these students as they overcome obstacles while navigating and defining what a career in technology might look like for them today. Gilbert saw a connection to his own story in this project. With Revery in full support, he and AWS set out to raise more awareness for this program through each episode.
“It was a great feeling to kick off production knowing how much the team at AWS believed in the vision for José’s story. This project really brought me back to my roots and the holy grail of filmmaking approach, running around with your friends and a camera,” recalled Gilbert. “We had a very tight knit crew that not only allowed us to cover a lot of ground, but enter José’s life in a less intrusive way. This stripped-down approach afforded us a lot of unique opportunities to tell a deeper story. We spent our last day on-set with the Tapia family sitting around the kitchen table looking through old family photos. Fast forward to a couple weeks after shooting, I’m editing late at night in the backroom of the Revery office with tears in my eyes. It was an honor to tell such a personal story, especially one that I see parts of my own family story in.”
Priestley added, “Future Self has been a dream project for Revery. It is a project style that fits our integrated studio model so well, and allows our teams to truly share creative ownership in projects with our clients. The scholarship at its core represents a mission that aligns deeply with Revery’s vision that stories matter because they affirm lives, create connection, and make the world better.“
The remaining episodes of the AWS Future Self series and all of its supporting campaign elements are forthcoming over the next few weeks.
