Joe Tropea is an award winning filmmaker and Public Historian living in Baltimore City. For over a decade he has been a curator at the Maryland Center for History and Culture, where he creates exhibitions (and exhibition videos), writes and edits publications, and wears a few other hats. His director credits include the award-winning 2013 documentary, Hit & Stay: a history of faith and resistance, 2018’s Sickies Making Films, and 2021's award-winning doc short, "Fugazi's Barber." He has produced narrative and documentary shorts and features including: Lights of Baltimore (2020), Icepick to the Moon (2018), and "Spare Rooms: A Family Fiction" (2014). He also creates exhibition videos for the Maryland Center for History and Culture and Winterthur Museum. Additionally he creates commercial work for national and regional clients including: STX, Career Valet, and Eddie's of Roland Park. In 2015 he co-founded Preserve the Baltimore Uprising Archive, a digital repository that seeks to preserve and make accessible materials related to the killing of Freddie Gray and related subsequent events in Baltimore City.