Brown served as cinematographer for
99 Threadwaxing in 1999 and director for
Ice Fishing in 2000. was
Be Here To Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt (2004) which chronicles the turbulent life of American singer-songwriter
Townes Van Zandt.
Time Out magazine listed it at number 7 on its "50 Greatest Music Films Ever". She subsequently directed the feature documentary
The Order of Myths a 2008
Sundance Film Festival selection about the segregated
Mardi Gras celebration of
Mobile, Alabama. The film was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. It won many awards including a
Peabody Award, a Cinematic Vision Award at the
Silverdocs Documentary Festival and
Truer Than Fiction Award at the
Independent Spirit Awards. In 2014, Brown directed the feature documentary
The Great Invisible which won the
SXSW Grand Jury Prize for Documentary and received an
Emmy nomination for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking and aired on
Independent Lens on
PBS in April 2015.
The Great Invisible features the
BP oil spill in the Gulf in 2010 and
Deepwater Horizon oil spill aftermath. Brown's documentary film,
Descendant, explores issues of equity and justice facing descendants of the last US slave ship
Clotilda, as well as the discovery of the sunken ship in 2019. It premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2022. The film began its distribution in 2022 by
Netflix and
Higher Ground, the film production company of former president
Barack Obama and
Michelle Obama. The film was shortlisted for the 2023 Academy Awards. Brown directed and executive produced
The Yogurt Shop Murders for
HBO, produced by
A24 and
Fruit Tree focusing on the
1991 Austin yogurt shop killings. ==Filmography==