Drew Swedberg is a documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and educator. Through a collaborative process and poetic approach, his filmmaking orbits around the everyday dreams, relationships, and forces that shape his home in Eastern Pennsylvania.

As an artist-in-residence and teaching artist, he produces youth films through his workshops across the Lehigh Valley. Drew is the founder of Collaborative Media Expressions, a digital storytelling initiative focused on engaging, supporting, and cultivating emerging artists in Allentown, PA. He is an adjunct professor in Lafayette College’s Film and Media Studies Department and leads the independent film curation as the Film Manager for the Civic Theatre, Allentown’s local arthouse cinema. Drew currently teaches an array of film classes from elementary to college classrooms, most recently as a program facilitator for PBS39’s Production U and adjunct professor in the LVAIC Documentary Storymaking program. He is moving through his feature directorial debut with co-director Shalon Buskirk.  The documentary – in love, in memory – is currently in post-production.

Drew has been awarded grants from the Mellon Foundation, the Independence Public Media Foundation, and the Cultural Coalition of Allentown. He was a Film Independent Documentary Lab Fellow in 2022, a Visiting Fellow at Skidmore College’s MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute in 2020 and 2022, and an Artist-in-Residence for the Cultural Coalition of Allentown in 2019 and 2021. He was a Production Facilitator for Scribe Video Center’s Precious Places Program in 2019 and 2021, and was a member of their inaugural Film Scholar Program, supported by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

When he isn’t at the cinema or in the edit room, you can find him reading at the lake, coaching basketball, or making tea for friends.