FESTIVAL NEWS
Sixth Annual Festival Jury
Antonio Abreu
Antonio Abreu is a graduate of the Schomburg Satellite Academy High School and an alumni of the Educational Video Center's Basic Documentary Workshop and Youth Organizers Television Program where he co-produced the documentaries The Quest To Express, Not Me, Not Mine, and All That I Can Be, which won the fifth annual Media That Matters Film Festival Economic Justice Award. In the summer of 2003, Antonio assisted in building homes with a Habitat for Humanity project in Melbourne, Australia. The following summer, he attended the In-Sight Photography Exposure Program on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Antonio is currently a student at LaGuardia Community College and works on marketing, distribution and outreach projects as a staff person at EVC.
Sara Bernstein
Sara Bernstein is Director of Documentary Programming for Home Box Office. She is involved with the development, production and promotion of documentary programming for HBO's award-winning America Undercover and Cinemax Reel Life series and for HBO/Cinemax Documentary Films. Recent documentaries include the Academy Award nominated The Children of Leningradsky, Emmy nominated Born Rich, The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt, Bus 174, and Three Sisters: Searching for a Cure. Before joining HBO's documentary division in 1999, Sara was part of HBO's limited series division, which produced the Emmy award-winning series, The Corner. Prior to that she worked in independent feature film development and has worked on various film productions in New York.
Adrienne Maree Brown
Adrienne Maree Brown is a writer, pleasure activist, trainer/facilitator, traveler and singer/songwriter living in Brooklyn, NY. As Program Director of the League of Young Voters, she runs a national training program focusing on voter organizing and is developing the organization's communication plan for 2006. In addition to co-editing How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office, her political writing has been published in anthologies including Stop the Next War Now and Resilience and Resistance: Women of Color Respond to Violence, and online at Grist Magazine, Africana.com, and WireTap. She's active with Up4Democracy, Breakdown FM, and the Climate Crisis Coalition. Adrienne studied Political Science, African American Studies, and Vocal Performance at Columbia University.
Bruni Burres
Bruni Burres is the director and programmer of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (HRWIFF), which takes place annually in London and New York. These two flagship festivals showcase between twenty-five to thirty new films and videos annually. She has also developed the HRWIFF traveling showcase, the HRWIFF High School Program, and collaborated with the Media That Matters Film Festival. Recently, Bruni completed her master's degree at New York University in the Tisch School of the Arts' Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Athol Dempster
Athol Dempster is a tenth grade student at the School for Human Rights, a public school in Brooklyn, NY. Athol moved to Brooklyn from Jamaica with his mother when he was 12 years old to build a safer and better life. He likes to play basketball and football and to hang out with his friends. Last year, Athol participated in the Media that Matters Film Festival "Media In Action Coalition Building Workshop."
Christie George
Christie George is the Theatrical and International Broadcast Sales Manager at Women Make Movies (WMM), a nonprofit media arts organization and the world's leading distributor of women's films and videos. Joining WMM in 2001, she curated and launched "The Girls Project", an acclaimed collection of films about young women's lives around the world, and she is now responsible for theatrical bookings and international broadcast sales and marketing. Prior to WMM, she was a consultant for NOW Legal Defense Fund and worked for Mediacom Ventures, LLC, a venture capital firm invested in online businesses. Chris received her BA from Yale University.
Helena Huang
Helena Huang is a Senior Program Manager at the JEHT Foundation, a national foundation founded in 2001 to strengthen the voice of systemic criminal justice reform in the U.S. Helena joined JEHT in 2002 and today manages the Foundation's portfolio on Alternatives to Incarceration. From 1997-2002, Helena was at the Open Society Institute (OSI), first as Associate Director for OSI's Center on Crime, Communities & Culture and later as the Director of the Community Advocacy Project. Prior to working at OSI, Helena worked with homeless women and children and managed a community based aftercare program in the South Bronx. She holds a BS in Social Policy form Cornell University and a MPA from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.
Steven Johnson
Steven Johnson is the best-selling author of four books. His latest work, the national bestseller Everything Bad Is Good For You, was one of the most talked about books of 2005. In addition to his books, Steven is a contributing editor for Wired magazine and a monthly columnist for Discover magazine. He is a Distinguished Writer In Residence at the New York University Department of Journalism. He lectures widely on technological, scientific and cultural issues, both to corporate and education institutions. He was the cofounder and editor-in-chief of Feed, the revolutionary web magazine blending technology, science and culture with a truly innovative interface. Newsweek named him one of the "Fifty People Who Matter Most on the Internet." In addition to his columns, he's published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation and many other periodicals.
Justin Krebs
Justin Krebs is a New York City based political campaigner and issue advocate. He is a founder and director of Cosmopolity, which promotes political action through social interaction, and of Drinking Liberally, a national progressive social network. Since its founding in 2003, he has served as one of the Artistic Directors of The Tank, a home for emerging artists and activists in Manhattan. Over the past five years, he has authored a history of New York City's playgrounds entitled Grounds for Play, produced an award-winning documentary on youth civic engagement, and worked in the office of U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Justin is a resident of Hell's Kitchen.
Doug Kreeger
Doug Kreeger has had a long career as an entrepreneur. At 26, he founded Kreeger & Sons in New York City, a pioneering chain in outdoor urban wear and outdoor gear. Over the years he has been involved in a variety of startups including New York's popular eating establishment, The City Bakery, which will open in the fall of 2005 in Los Angeles. He's been involved in politics and education on the local level and spent four years teaching high school in New York City. He has been the president of a local school board and is currently a member of the President's Advisory Council at Teacher's College. He graduated from NYU, School of Business and has a Masters Degree in Education from Teacher's College at Columbia University. Doug is one of the original investors in Air America Radio and was acting CEO during the transition to the current entity. Doug is married to Wendy and they have 3 children, 3 grandchildren and more to come.
Frances Moore Lappé
Frances Moore Lappé is the author of fifteen books, including the 1971 bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet. Her most recent work, Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life, completes a trilogy which began in 2002 with the 30th anniversary sequel to Diet, Hope's Edge, written with her daughter, Anna Lappé. Currently Lappé and her daughter lead the Small Planet Institute based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1975 she co-launched the California-based Food First, and in 1990 she co-founded the Center for Living Democracy, a ten-year initiative to accelerate the spread of democratic innovation through citizen engagement. From 1995-2000 Lappé served as founding editor of the Center's American News Service, which placed stories of citizen problem solving in nearly half the nation's largest newspapers. She has received seventeen honorary doctorates from distinguished institutions. In 1987 in Sweden, Lappé became the fourth American to receive the Right Livelihood Award, and in 2003 she received the Rachel Carson Award from the National Nutritional Foods Association.
Joseph Lawler
Joseph Lawler is a graduate of City-As-School High School in New York City and all three of the Educational Video Center's documentary video programs through which he co-produced the films Education to Occupation, Fighting to Learn and All That I Can Be, which won the fifth annual Media That Matters Film Festival Economic Justice Award. Joe is currently working at EVC as their resident A/V Tech Assistant. He also teaches youth about bicycle maintenance and environmental activism as a staff person at Recycle A Bicycle in Dumbo, Brooklyn, where he will soon be teaching a video workshop.
Todd Lester
Todd Lester is the New York Communications Officer for Reporters Without Borders, and he recently served as Katrina Relief Project Manager for FilmAid International. Before that, Todd was Information & Advocacy Manager for the International Rescue Committee in Sudan and Festival Coordinator for the 2005 Rwanda Film Festival. From 2002-04, he served as project manager for Conflict Prevention and Effective Communication in the Southern Caucasus and conducted research for the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. He holds a Masters of Public Administration from Rutgers University and is candidate for Doctorate of Public & Urban Policy at the New School for Social Research from which he recently received a Film Production Diploma. Todd is a Project Leader for programs on Africa at the World Policy Institute, and he is currently working with a group of social entrepreneurs to launch the nonprofit freeDimensional with the purpose of maximizing corporate, government and civil society surplus resources for use in the field of social justice.
Cressida Leyshon
Cressida Leyshon is the deputy fiction editor of The New Yorker. She joined the magazine in 1995. She was the editorial assistant at Granta magazine in London, from 1992 to 1995.
Shola Lynch
Shola made her directorial debut with Chisholm '72 - Unbought & Unbossed, which premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, screened all over the world, aired on PBS's P.O.V, and is now available on DVD through Twentieth Century Fox. Prior to Chisholm, she worked with Ken Burns and Florentine Films on the Peabody Award-winning Frank Lloyd Wright and the ten-part Jazz series. She has also worked on the Emmy Award winning HBO Sports documentary Do You Believe in Miracles? The Story of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team. At Orlando Bagwell's Roja Productions, she co-produced a documentary short about the 2000 Census and racial identity that was included in Matters of Race, which aired on PBS in 2003. Lynch grew up in New York City where she currently lives and is working on her next feature length documentary.
Yana Rafailova
Yana Rafailova is a senior at James Madison High School in Brooklyn. She is a graduate of the Educational Video Center's Youth Organizers Television Program and a co-producer of the film All That I Can Be, which won the fifth annual Media That Matters Film Festival Economic Justice Award. Yana completed a community service internship with EVC's Teacher Development Program where she assisted in editing a reel of student-produced PSAs for EVC's Media Literacy and Violence Prevention Project.
Josh Silver
Josh Silver is Executive Director of Free Press, which he founded with Robert McChesney and John Nichols in 2002 to engage public involvement in media policy debates in America. Prior to that, he was the campaign manager of the successful ballot initiative for clean elections in Arizona, director of development for the cultural arm of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and director of an international youth exchange program. He has published extensively on media policy, campaign finance and other public policy issues.
Valerie Steiker
A senior editor at Vogue, Valerie Steiker's writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, ARTnews, The Forward and The New York Times Book Review. She is the author the The Leopard Hat: A Daughter's Story and lives in Manhattan.
Jessamyn Waldman
Jessamyn Waldman has worked for Human Rights Education Associates (HREA), Lead Partner
at the School for Human Rights (SHR) since March 2005. Prior to SHR, Jessamyn taught at a bilingual (Spanish and English) elementary school in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. She received a Masters in Public Administration at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in 2004. Prior to her studies at Columbia, Jessamyn worked as a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme in Costa Rica. Jessamyn also spent a year working for the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs as the Youth Landmine Ambassador. She grew up in Toronto and currently lives in Brooklyn.
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