FESTIVAL NEWS
Fifth Annual Festival Jury
Habibah Ahmed, Youth Producer
Habibah is an 18 year old African American Muslim, who goes to Humanities High School.
She has been involved in Youth Channel for over a year as a producer of D.A.M.N. (Defense Against Media Non-Sense) YC News. She is currently a senior producer of YC’s Youth M.I.C.(Media Impacting Communities) Program and serves as a member of Urban Visionaries Film Festival’s Youth Committee.
Mahen Bonetti, Founder and Executive Director, African Film Festival
After leaving Sierra Leone in West Africa, Bonetti received her BA in Administrative Studies at Bradford College and pursued graduate studies in Media Communication at New York University. She was selected for a prestigious marketing training program at Young and Rubicam and followed that with production work at Newsweek's editorial and advertising division. Bonetti founded the African Film Festival in 1990 to realize her goals of celebrating Africa’s cultural contributions.
Bruni Burres, Festival Director, Human Rights Watch International Film Festival
Bruni Burres has been the programmer and director for the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (HRWIFF) for over a decade. The festival began in New York city in 1988 and now tours to over 30 cities throughout the U.S. as well as London and Geneva with special co-presentations with festivals in Bologna, Prague, Moscow and Warsaw. She recently completed a masters degree at NYU in their Interactive Telecommunications Program. In 2004, P.O.V. and the HRWIFF High School Program joined forces to create Youth Views-a joint project of designed to support youth (21 and under), educators and youth-serving community based organizations in the use of contemporary social issue documentary by providing them with resources and training in facilitation and media literacy that will enhance their leadership skills, programs and curricula.
Duana Butler, Independent Producer
Duana C. Butler is a Harlem-based producer/director currently at work on her first documentary feature. She has worked on several independent productions including THE WATERMELON WOMAN, A QUESTION OF COLOR and JUST ANOTHER GIRL ON THE I.R.T Ms. Butler serves as production/curatorial advisor for the 2005 season of WNET's REEL NY series and was recently Director of Marketing for Film/Video Arts, a nonprofit media arts center in NYC.
Christen Cofer, Youth Producer
Christen is a 17 year old African American, who goes to Rice High School. He has been involved in Youth Channel for 1.5 year as a producer of D.A.M.N. (Defense Against Media Non-Sense) YC News. He is currently a senior producer of YC’s Youth M.I.C.(Media Impacting Communities) Program and serves as a member of Urban Visionaries Film Festival’s Youth Committee.
Leslie Fields-Cruz, Programmer, National Black Programming Consortium
Leslie Fields-Cruz is currently the Grants Manager at the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC). She has worked at the Creative Capital Foundation, the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF), the NYU Television Center, Media Alliance, and City Lights Youth Theater. She is a member of Association for a Media Literate America(AMLA). She is also on the board of Women Make Movies. Leslie holds an MA in Cinema Studies from New York University and is the proud mother of two beautiful girls, Cierra and Sumara.
Lawrence Konner, Filmmaker
Lawrence Konner has had a long and distinguished career as a screenwriter and documentary filmmaker. With his partner, Mark Rosenthal, Konner has written the feature films The Jewel of the Nile, The Legend of Billie Jean, Desperate Hours, Mighty Joe Young, Mercury Rising, and Planet of the Apes. Their latest film, Mona Lisa Smile, starring Julia Roberts, was released in December, 2003. In television, Konner was the head writer on the series Little House on the Prairie and Family. In 2001 Konner received an Emmy Award nomination for his work on the HBO series The Sopranos. In 2003 Konner founded The Documentary Campaign and produced Persons of Interest, a feature-length documentary about the illegal detentions of thousands of Muslims in the aftermath of September 11th. He is executive producer of two other Campaign films, Getting Through to the President and Zizek.
Tia Lessin, Filmmaker
Tia Lessin has produced social issue documentary films for 15 years. She has worked on three of Michael Moore's films, as supervising producer of both Fahrenheit 9/11, the winner of the Cannes Palme D'Or , and the Academy Award winning Bowling for Columbine. She was coordinating producer of "The Big One." Tia won the Sidney Hillman Prize for producing and directing Behind the Labels, a documentary about sweatshop labor, that was a collaboration with the human rights group WITNESS. She has been twice nominated for Emmy Awards for her work on the critically acclaimed series "The Awful Truth." Tia was associate producer of the Academy Award-nominated "Shadows of Hate," produced for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance curriculum. She is currently working on Martin Scorcese's documentary The Early Years about Bob Dylan.
Hye Jung Park, Director of Youth Channel, Manhattan Neighborhood Network
Hye-Jung Park is the director of Youth Channel at Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Previously, she was Director of Programs at the Downtown Community TV Center (DCTV). As a media/community activist, she has curated many community and national screenings showing social and political films. She has extensive experience as a board member for organizations such as the National Coalition of Independent Public Broadcasters, Rainbow Korean Women’s Center, the North Star Fund, National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC), Videazimut (an international coalition of community media), and Alliance for Community Media. As an independent producer, she has produced several documentaries, which were aired on local and national PBS. An adjunct lecturer, she has designed and taught courses on Asian-African/American Media at New York colleges.
Loretta Ramos, Publicist, The Museum of Television and Radio
Loretta Ramos is the manager of public relations at The Museum of Television & Radio, where she works with a variety of individuals and organizations in the media industries, and helps oversee publicity for the Museum’s programs, including the annual Television Documentary Festival and various screening and seminar series. Before joining the Museum, Loretta was at an entertainment publicity agency, working on clients ranging from Sony Home Video to the AFI Annual Achievement Awards. She holds a B.A. in History from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Martin Rowe, Director of Publishing, Lantern Books
Martin Rowe is Director of Publishing and Vice-President of Booklight Inc. and Lantern Books. He is the author of Nicaea: A Book of Correspondences and editor of The Way of Compassion. He is the co-founder of the monthly magazine Satya.
Morgan Spurlock, Filmmaker
Morgan Spurlock is an award-winning writer, producer and director. Originally from West Virginia, he graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1993. Spurlock's first TV series, I Bet You Will, premiered on MTV in March 2002 and after producing 53 episodes of the reality game show, he took his profits and poured them into his first feature film, Super Size Me. In 2004, Super Size Me became the third highest grossing documentary of all time. Spurlock won the Best Director prizes at the Sundance and Edinburgh Film Festivals. Spurlock’s first book, “Don’t Eat This Book”, hits stores in May 2005 and picks up where his film left off. His second TV series, 30 Days, is set to premiere on the F/X Network in June and this fall, he’ll deliver the irreverent and topical social comedy Public Nuisance to the masses on Comedy Central. Spurlock currently lives in the East Village in New York City with his Vegan fiancé Alexandra Jamieson and their manly cat Sue.
Jessamyn West, Librarian, www.librarian.net
Jessamyn West is an outreach librarian at a rural public library in Vermont. She has worked in public, special and college librarians and done stints of on-the-fly reference at Burning Man and the Democratic National Convention. She has maintained librarian.net, a weblog for radical librarians and other interested parties, since 1999. Her latest book— which she co-edited with Katia Roberto— is Revolting Librarians Redux, an anthology of writings by radical library workers. She is interested in the intersection of technology, the public sphere and politics.
Sean Wilsey, Writer/Editor, McSweeney's
Sean Wilsey's writing has appeared in The London Review of Books, The Los Angeles Times, and McSweeney's quarterly, where he is the Editor at Large. Oh the Glory of it All, his memoir about growing up in San Francisco, and failing his way through five high schools—two of them reform schools—will be published by the Penguin Press in May.
Published on April 20, 2006
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