Julianna Brannum is mostly known as a producer of films about Native Americans, their stories and cultures—but not so secretly, she has another passion that occupies much of her creative headspace.

“I love true crime,” the Norman native and citizen of the Comanche Nation says. “Errol Morris is my favorite filmmaker ever. His film freed a person from prison. That’s what I want to do, impact the world.”

The film in question is The Thin Blue Line, a 1988 documentary about the trial and false conviction of Randall Dale Anderson, who was sentenced to death in Texas for the murder of a police officer. His conviction was subsequently overturned, largely on the strength of information—including a confession from the actual murderer—provided by Morris in the film.

Brannum graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1996 with a journalism degree focused on film and television. “The program was more geared toward news and sports,” she says. “They didn’t have a proper documentary program.” Her Comanche family was from Lawton, but the family relocated to Norman, and she grew up in a home with parents who loved music. She inherited her father’s record player and his love for Woody Allen movies.

“I had dialogue from his movies memorized by the time I was 9,” Brannum says. “I don’t remember a lot of documentaries, though. The few that were around then were impossible to find in Oklahoma.”

When she was a senior at OU, Tim Blake Nelson came to Norman to film Eye of God, a critically praised independent film based on his stage play. Brannum landed a gig as a production assistant, and then worked her way up to wardrobe.

“I liked the process, and I discovered that I love indie film,” she says. “I moved to Los Angeles after graduation and got a job with a production company. Bradley Beesley was at OU when I was—he made Okie Noodling—and I learned many things from him.”

In 2006, she produced The Creek Runs Red, a documentary for Independent Lens about the Superfund site in Picher, Oklahoma. Along the way she had learned to make a reel to generate funding, apply for funding, write grants and all the behind-the-scenes work a producer deals with, especially in independent film.

“Some producers also direct, and I did on The Creek Runs Red, but typically I think it’s a bad idea for one person to do everything,” she says. “In general, producers work with creatives to develop stories and characters, build relationships in and out of the industry, write grants, generate funding and develop relationships with communities to get films made. The larger the budget, the larger the crew and the less a producer is tasked to do directly.”

In 2009, Brannum got what she calls her “big break.” PBS invited her to be part of creating “We Shall Remain,” a 5-part documentary series about Native American history in the U.S.

“The series was PBS’s attempt to be more inclusive, but it was only thanks to Stanley Nelson’s insistence that I get a producing credit that PBS gave me one,” she says. “There were big directors and producers on that project, so PBS wasn’t going to give it to a new, relatively unknown Native woman. But Nelson insisted, and he won.”

Nelson is a Black filmmaker known for his documentaries on Black history as well as his work for “Frontline.” He is a well-respected documentary filmmaker, and understood the importance of a Native woman getting the producing credit.

“Representation is changing now,” Brannum says, “and there has been a drastic shift in opportunities for women of color, but when I started, there were zero. I had a good friend who was trying to be a screenwriter when I was trying to produce, and she knew no female screenwriters. Writing, producing and directing was a club of older white men for the most part, but we’ve seen a shift: Black Lives Matter, MeToo, the Keystone XL pipeline—that’s all part of this zeitgeist.”

Brannum said young, Native filmmakers now have access to programs, workshops and funding that didn’t exist when she was in her 20s, 30s and 40s, and rather than be bitter, she’s happy for them. “The more Native talent out there, the more attention we garner for ourselves,” she says. “It’s gone from settling for crumbs to people calling me.”

That includes opportunities to work with Ken Burns on “The American Buffalo,” a 2023 documentary series for PBS. The team reached out to Brannum because she’s a direct descendant of Quanah Parker.

“They initially offered to bring me on as a consultant, but I told them I wanted to come on board as a producer. Ken and I hit it off, and I was impressed with the amount and quality of research he’d done, and I was able to offer a different perspective. He also had stories I’d never heard.”

It’s that sharing of perspectives that is so critical to storytelling: understanding the scope and complexity of an issue, and creating a milieu in which people develop empathy, compassion and energy to change the world.

“Stanley Nelson knew nothing about what it was like to live as a Native woman, but he lobbied for me because his angle was Civil Rights,” Brannum says. “He wanted me on board because he told me he was clueless about Native history—the Bureau of Indian Affairs, blood quantum, toxic history, boarding schools—but he knew about generational trauma, and he understood that there are differences in trauma and how it affects different people.”

Brannum said she’s lived a good part of her career being the filmmaker organizations reach out to if they want to tell a Native story, but she wants opportunities beyond that.

“I love true crime, but there was never an opportunity before, and people are becoming more aware of these issues,” she says. “They’re really seeing the true value of nuanced filmmaking, and how different voices can contribute different perspectives to the story. We’re finally realizing that these diverse ‘lenses’ provide unique insights.” •