FESTIVAL NEWS
Third Annual Festival Jury
Nancy Abraham is Vice President of Original Programming - Documentaries for Home Box Office. She is responsible for the development and production of programs in the award-winning America Undercover series, as well as other documentary specials on HBO and Cinemax Reel Life series. Prior to joining the documentary division in 1995, Abraham was director of film acquisition for HBO, acquiring feature films and other programs for HBO's international channels, and spent three years in Budapest as Director of Programming for HBO Hungary. Prior to that, Abraham worked at Bravo Cable Network in both acquisition and production capacities. She holds a B.A. degree in History from Vassar College and attended Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.
Julie Anderson was named Director, Documentary Programming for Home Box Office in April 1999. She is responsible for the development and commissioning of documentaries for both HBO's "America Undercover" and Cinemax's "Reel Life" series, as well as creating marketing and publicity strategies for each film, and web outreach. One of her first developed films, "BIG MAMA" won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in 2001.
Bruni Burres has been the programmer and director for the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 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.
Laura Flanders, host of Working Assets Radio, is the author of Real Majority, Media Minority; the Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting, about which Susan Faludi wrote, "If only there were a hundred of her." Katha Pollitt called it "Funny, angry, factfilled and brilliant." Flanders was founding director of the Women's Desk at the mediawatch group, FAIR and for more than ten years she produced and hosted CounterSpin, FAIR's weekly, syndicated radio program. She's been a senior correspondent for the Pacifica radio network, and News Director of the Pacifica Network News. She's also been a correspondent for the PBS series, "Rights and Wrongs," a panelist on the Fox network's "Newswatch" and she's a regular commentator and occasional host on CBC's program "CounterSpin" (the Canadians "borrowed" the name.) In 2000, Flanders was the host of CRASHING THE PARTY, a series of independent television broadcasts from the Democratic and Republican Conventions, produced by the independent media movement and distributed by FreeSpeech TV. (You can watch online at
http://www.freespeech.org) A well-published reporter and commentator, she contributes regularly to The Nation, Ms., The Progressive and others. You can read her articles at Tompaine.com. She is currently at work on a book about the women in the Bush administration. "Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species" will be published in 2003 by Verso.
Joseph Gilmore is a 16 year old who has made a name for himself in the International Center of Photography since the age of 10. Some of his most acknowledgable work to date has been for Wildlife Conservation Society, The Point C.D.C., Fashion Week, J.M. Kapland Fund, and has been featured on the PBS special City Arts. He now pursues a degree in digital photography in Graphics Communication Arts. He is also a full fledge youth community organizer/environmental activist and majors in this field as a member of A.C.T.I.O.N (Activist Coming To Inform Our Neighborhood) through The Point C.D.C. This team continues to do research, inform and present proposals for sustainable community issues that affect residents in the city. He is now currently working on a local radio show and television show to promote environmental rights. You can find out more about him on
www.thepoint.org
Meg Hourihan is a highly regarded expert on all things weblog -- from their social implications to the development of advanced blogging systems. Her work as the co-founder and director of development of Blogger (
www.blogger.com) helped fuel the current blogging explosion. She is now director of the Lafayette Project, which seeks to mine the editorial selections and commentary on weblogs to produce an improved personalized news service. Meg is also the co-author of, "We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs," a monthly columnist for the O'Reilly Network, and a frequent speaker at technology conferences. You can keep up with her at
www.megnut.com.
Terry Scott is the Director of Producer Services & Technology for the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC.) He brings to the organization a background in journalism, television and feature film production and philanthropy. Most recently, he developed a corporate giving program for IndiePlanet.com, which provided grants for individual artists. He has over ten years experience in the independent film world encompassing activism, grantmaking, film production and social justice and has consulted for many non profit arts organizations in New York.
Marcia Smith is a writer and Executive Director of Firelight Media, a not-for-profit company that produces public television documentaries on history and contemporary social issues. Smith wrote the film The Murder of Emmett Till, which will air nationally on the PBS the flagship PBS history series American Experience on January 20, 2003, and the recent HBO special, OJ Simpson: A Study in Black and White. She co-produced the film, Running: the Campaign for City Council which aired on WNET/Channel 13 In February 2002.
William Upski Wimsatt ("Billy") is an artist, journalist, author, entrepreneur, multi-issue organizer, philanthropist, organization-builder and lecturer. Wimsatt's books, Bomb the Suburbs: Graffiti, Freight-hopping, Race, and the Search for Hip-hop's Moral Center (1994) and No More Prisons (1999) are published by Soft Skull Press, based in New York City. Wimsatt is the co-founder of The Active Element Foundation (New York) and Self Education Foundation (Philadelphia). He also serves on the board of More Than Money (Boston) and Sleepingiant: The Chicago Hip-hop Video Project. All four organizations employ creative ways to keep the world intact for future generations.
Eden Wurmfeld began her producing career in 1994 on her brother's experimental feature Fanci's Persuasion. This led to her work on Doug Liman's directorial debut Swingers, as well as a collaboration on See Jane Run. Wurmfeld went on to produce the award-winning indie feature Kissing Jessica Stein which was acquired by Fox Searchlight. Wurmfeld and producer Nicole LaLoggia authored The IFP/West Independent Filmmaker's Manual (Focal Press), a "cookbook" on indie filmmaking. Currently, Wurmfeld is developing a television show with, brother Charles, Brillstein Grey and writer Katherine Reback. She and LaLoggia are also re-teaming to produce Son of A G-MAN, which was written and will be directed by Will Geiger. Her latest documentary effort, Sunset Hall, on which she is a co-producer, will air on PBS in 2003. Wurmfeld earned her MFA from UCLA's Film School and was recently named one of Variety's "10 Producers to Watch for 2002."
Published on April 20, 2006
watch a festival
RSS Feed