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Ninth Annual Festival

4:35 min
Experimental
Director: Jackie Sawiris and Ben Mandell
Producer: Jackie Sawiris and Ben Mandell

Winner of the Diversity Award

FILMMAKER BIOS

Jackie Sawiris, Director & Producer

Jackie Sawiris is a half Jordanian, half Egyptian, filmmaker/actor/writer who has been active in the Jordanian, European, and American film and television industries since 1988. Behind the scenes she has worked on film and television productions with Warner Brothers, Disney, ABC, and HBO as well as various independent short films, music videos and documentaries. In front of the camera, Jackie has acted under the direction of Stanley Kubrick, Oliver Hirschbeigel, Spike Lee, and Stephen Norrington among others. She is currently in production on objecDEFY, a documentary about the harassment of women in the Middle East, in production/post-production on Believe, an experimental documentary that spans more than 14 countries, and in development on Falls the Shadow, a dramatic feature film set in Jordan. For more of Jackie’s work, check out www.jackiesawiris.org.

Ben Mandell, Director and Producer

Ben Mandell is a documentary filmmaker with a focus on multicultural activism. Bits and Pieces is Ben’s first short film and he is currently in post-production with his second film, Millennium Ethiopia (www.ethiopianmillenniumfilm.com), a documentary about Ethiopia’s recent millennium celebrations. Previously he worked as a field producer and cinematographer for Project Explorer, a non-profit educational travel documentary production company, and as a marketing manager for the distributor New Video. Before working in film, Ben received his MBA from Columbia University and worked as a development consultant in Nicaragua, South Africa and Ethiopia. For more on Ben visit www.vishwho.me.