Eighth Annual Festival Jury
Born and raised in the Bronx, James discovered his artistic side at age nine. Currently in his junior year at the Theater Arts Production Company School in the Bronx, James has produced more than a dozen films, ranging from documentaries to short narratives. He is currently a Youth Producer at DCTV, a curator for the 2008 Urban Visionaries Film Festival and has been part of Fresh-Films, offering his experience as a TriBeCa Film Fellow. James has a solid passion for film as his personal way of communicating to the world what he sees and feels. It's the artist within him that wants to present society with his visual perspective, and he continues to pursue his dream in hopes of becoming a successful filmmaker.
Maria is a long-time NYC educator/activist who is currently writing her dissertation on youth agency, schooling and social change. She taught for nine years at Humanities Prep, a public high school in Manhattan, and developed an award winning service-learning program that provided transformative experiences for her students through community partnerships with filmmakers, artists, and activists. Maria has organized youth delegations on human rights/social justice to Cuba, France, Mexico and Puerto Rico, and has worked with organizations like the Coalition of Essential Schools, Global Kids and ASPIRA of New York. She is active in local educational reform issues, such as high-stakes testing and restorative justice practices for and with youth. Maria has published work in academic journals and magazines like Rethinking Schools, and has presented at conferences across the country and worldwide. She is also a freelance curriculum writer for various NGO projects and supervises in-service student teachers at Barnard College.
Eliza oversees the development and implementation of P.O.V.'s national community engagement and education campaigns. She works with public television stations, educators and community-based organizations to present community screenings of P.O.V. films and to develop and distribute accompanying educational resource materials to teachers nationwide. To further develop these areas, Eliza has established a Library Board and a Teachers' Advisory Board which provide feedback on activities and help produce P.O.V.'s companion resource materials. Before joining P.O.V. in 2001, she traveled extensively in Spain and Mexico, teaching English as a foreign language. Licht is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University.
Ines currently resides in the Bronx, New York. As an alumni of the Educational Video Center's Basic Documentary Workshop and the Youth Organizers television, she co-produced two documentaries and several experimental projects. After completing seventh annual Media That Matters Jury award-winning Still Standing and another documentary about teen suicide, Ines was moved by the impact that film has on society, and decided to pursue a career in the film industry. She currently takes media classes at The City College of New York, majoring in media communications and is in the process of getting into their BFA program. She looks forward to continuing to use film as an outlet for those who do not usually have a voice in society as well as an outlet to create change. Through film, Ines hopes to provide justice and expose the truth.
Iris is a life-long activist, educator and media maker. She is the producer, writer and co-director of !Palante, Siempre Palante! The Young Lords, an award-winning documentary broadcast on POV: American Documentary television series and has screened at film festivals, school and community venues across the US and the Caribbean. Currently, Iris works with New York City grassroots arts and social justice organizations, produces short videos and multimedia projects, and conducts workshops focused on community and media activism.
Jennifer is the Program Manager of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (HRWIFF). Since 2003, Jennifer has lead the HRWIFF High School Program, an initiative to bring discussion of human rights into public schools. Jennifer also works with Adobe Youth Voices to organize Youth Producing Change and is co-founder of the NYC Grassroots Media Coalition and Conference. She got her start in media activism interning at Paper Tiger Television Collective, where she was eventually hired, and has also worked for Rooftop Films. Jennifer directed the short documentary/DIY dance video Don't Let the System Get You Down..Cheer Up - a film about the vibrant international radical cheerleading movement. She also has her own business called Doing It Herself. She graduated with a Bachelors degree in Art Video from Syracuse University in 2001. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Victoria, a Senior Program Associate with World Savvy, is an interdisciplinary artist and educator with a longstanding interest in global education and after-school programming. She has been teaching and facilitating content-driven art courses for five years in San Francisco, Oaxaca, and Philadelphia using sound, craft, murals, and mapping to address issues of community, citizenship and cultural exchange. Victoria graduated from Williams College with a dual degree in Art and Anthropology and received a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in New Genres from The San Francisco Art Institute. She joined World Savvy in 2005 and has co-created and run the Global Youth Media and Arts Program from inception. In the fall of 2007, Victoria relocated to open World Savvy's first expansion site in New York City where the Media and Arts Program launches in February 2008. Victoria is a member of Coro's 2008 Immigrant Civic Leadership Program.
Greg is Manager of Documentary Acquisitions, Original Programming for HBO. He's been involved in discovering new and distinctive documentary programming for the Cinemax Reel Life, as well as (what was formerly known as) HBO's award-winning America Undercover banner. Some of his acquisition finds have been: the Oscar-winning Born Into Brothels, Murder on a Sunday Morning, Thoth, and Breathing Lessons; Oscar-nominated Spellbound, The Collector of Bedford Street; the critically-acclaimed Watermarks and The Smashing Machine. Before joining HBO Documentaries in 1995, Greg served as an Assistant Producer of Commercials and Industrials for Morrison Media, Inc. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Coordinator, Office Operations at New Line Cinema. Currently, Greg is a candidate for Media Studies M.A. at the New School University. He holds a B.A. degree in English and Film Studies from the University of Rochester.
Nonso is a writer, producer and web conceptualist. He works as the New Media Coordinator for the National Black Programming Consortium in Harlem, NY where he oversees content and style for NBPC's Black Public Media website. His recent works include a documentary on black painters entitled Colored Frames, which is currently screening at festivals. His writing can be found online at separate-equal.net, where he is an Executive Editor for the online video and audio journal Blackline - a satirical news and current affairs project. Christian received his BFA in Film & Television Production at New York University.
Kathy is the Video Specialist at Global Kid's Online Leadership Program where she teaches citywide youth how to apply film production techniques to a virtual environment. She has worked extensively since 1995 for NJN's Images/Imagenes on community affairs television programming. During her time at Images, Kathy developed and became the first director of ASPIRA's children's television studio in Newark, NJ. She has been awarded a CIMA Journalism award for excellence in communications. Kathy received her B.A in Journalism/Mass Media and Puerto Rican/Caribbean Studies from Rutgers University and received her M.A. in Educational Communication and Technology from NYU, where she specialized in educational video production.
Steve Wax attended Reed College and the UCLA Film School during the 1960s and began working as a writer and producer, receiving one of the first American Institute short film grants. He is a founding member of the San Francisco film collective CineManifest as well as the Independent Feature Project and was among the first group of filmmakers chosen for the Sundance Institute film development program. He later founded the commercial production company Chelsea Pictures which has produced many award winning commercials. Steve also produced the feature film Unmade Beds which was honored at several film festivals, pre-sold to HBO, the BBC and La Sept Arte, and played theatrically in twenty-six cities. He also co-produced the 2000 Oscar-nominated short film Killing Joe and a number of documentaries and television series. He is currently partner and Chief Naratologist at Campfire, a new digital ad agency.
Posted by Austra Zubkovs
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