Roxana Saberi—Journalist
Documentary. Roxana Saberi is an Iranian-American journalist who was arrested in Iran in January 2009 and falsely accused of espionage. She was released from Tehran's Evin Prison after 100 days. Roxana's memoir, Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran, tells of her experience and that of her fellow prisoners and of their struggles to keep their souls free. Roxana has reported for Channel News Asia, South African Broadcasting, DW Radio, ABC Radio, Radio New Zealand, PBS, NPR and Fox News. She was also a co-writer of No One Knows About Persian Cats, a documentary-film about underground music in Iran, which won a Special Jury Prize in the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
Cyrus Nowrasteh—Writer and Director
Fiction. Cyrus Nowrasteh is an American screenwriter and director of theatrical films, television shows, and made-for-TV movies. He is best known for his involvement in the controversial docudrama The Path to 9/11 and for his 2009 award-winning drama The Stoning of Soraya M..
Katherine Dieckmann—Writer and Director
Student. Writer-Director Katherine Dieckmann began her career by making music videos for such bands as R.E.M., Wilco, Aimee Mann and Everything but the Girl, and was the originating director on Nickelodeon’s groundbreaking live action children’s serial, “The Adventures of Pete & Pete,” for which she received a CableAce nomination for Best Direction of a Comedy Special. She has gone on to make three feature films, the most recent of which is Motherhood (2009), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and starred Uma Thurman, Anthony Edwards and Minnie Driver. Her other films include Diggers (2007), and A Good Baby (1999). An Assistant Professor in the Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts, where she teaches screenwriting, Dieckmann lives in New York City and Rensselaerville, NY with her husband and two children.
H. James Gilmore - Clinical Associate Professor, University of Michigan-Dearborn
Fiction. H. James Gilmore is a documentary producer/director, and is the owner of Acadia Pictures, a digital production company he founded in 1995. He began his career as a field producer for the syndicated The Christian Science Monitor Reports and later joined the staff of New Hampshire Public Television. Formerly a faculty member at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, Mr. Gilmore now resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he is a clinical associate professor in Journalism and Screen Studies at The University of Michigan-Dearborn. He is currently working on a series of documentary shorts, 1001 Voices from Detroit. Mr. Gilmore holds a BA in communication arts and political science from Kalamazoo College and a MA in broadcasting and film from the University of Iowa.
Jennifer Proctor—Assistant Professor, University of Michigan-Dearborn
Experimental. Jennifer Proctor is a filmmaker and media artist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is the former Managing Director of the Cinematexas Short Film Festival and Austin Cinemaker Co-op. Her award-winning work has shown at Aurora Picture Show, Portland Documentary & Experimental Film Fest, MadCat Film Festival, NextFrame, Basement Films, Mini-Cine, Splice This!, FLEXFest, SF Cinematheque, Cinematexas, Ms. Films, Dallas Video Fest, and others. She holds an MA in Film Studies and an MFA in Film and Video Production from the University of Iowa. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Journalism and Screen Studies at the University of Michigan - Dearborn.
Amir Parsa—Writer, Poet, Educator, Project Director at MoMA
Experimental. Amir Parsa is a writer, poet, artist, educator, and the author of thirteen books. His work has been read and exhibited in galleries and museums, in streets and on rooftops, in broad daylight and in hiding, and at various festivals and curated venues, most recently at Uncomun Festival in New York, Baroquissimo Festival in Puebla, Mexico, Dumbo Arts Festival in Brooklyn and at the 2010 Paris en Toutes Lettres festival. Since 2004, Mr. Parsa has been a Lecturer and Educator at the Museum of Modern Art, where he has created and launched innovative programs, curricula, events and models of educational interaction and where he is currently Director of the multi-award winning Alzheimer’s Project. Born in Tehran, he currently resides in New York where, in addition to his work at MoMA, he is a Visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute.
Gretchen Wallace—Founder of Global Grassroots
Documentary. Gretchen Wallace is the founder of Global Grassroots, an organization that supports underserved women through conscious social change. Gretchen is a producer of the Emmy-nominated documentary film The Devil Came on Horseback which depicts her brother's tenure as a military observer in Darfur, Sudan. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2007. She is also co-author of her brother's memoirs, The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur, published by PublicAffairs in 2007.
Amina Ahmed—Artist and Activist
Documentary. Amina Ahmed was born in Africa and is a Kutchi Turk Indian. She grew up in England and has lived in Iran and the USA. Amina is a graduate of Winchester School of Art and the Chelsea School of Art. She received her MFA from the Royal College of Art (1991), where she studied Visual Islamic and Traditional Arts and was awarded the Barakat Trust prize for excellence. A visual artist, educator, curator and activist, Amina’s projects are inspired by her interests in human rights and coalition-building. She has worked with several non-profit art institutions in the US and UK. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at the Africa Centre UK, Queens Museum NY, Lincoln Center NY, The National Building Museum DC, The Jersey City Museum NJ, The RCA UK, The 2010 Slick Art Fair, Paris and The 2011 India Art Summit. Ahmed is currently a member of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts NY. She is married, has three children, lives in NYC and sleeps in NJ.
Negar Mottahedeh—Associate Professor, Program in Literature-Duke University
Fiction. Negar Mottahedeh is a cultural critic and film theorist recognized for her interdisciplinary and feminist contributions to the fields of Middle Eastern Studies and Film Studies. She is best known for her work on Iranian Cinema, but has also published extensively on the history of reform and revolution, on Bábism, Qajar history, performance traditions in Iran, the history of technology, visual theory, as well as social media. Negar curated the "Reel Evil: Films from the Axis of Evil" film festival in 2003 and in 2010 she began Brainquake as a response to the infamous Boobquake movement.
William Huffman—Associate Director of Toronto Arts Council
Experimental. William Huffman is an arts administrator, curator, educator and writer with a history of extensive involvement on both local and international cultural fronts. William is currently the Associate Director of Toronto Arts Council and Toronto Arts Foundation. He has worked with a number of visual arts organizations in Ontario such as Blackwood Gallery, Arts Toronto and Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery.
Diana Derycz-Kessler—President of The Los Angeles Film School
Student. Diana Derycz-Kessler is the President and Chief Executive Officer of The Los Angeles Film School and The Los Angeles Recording School. The schools are private post-secondary educational institutions dedicated to teaching media arts to young adults. Diana also serves as manager and general counsel to various investment companies that are co-owned with her husband Paul Kessler, a financier. These companies invest in emerging, growing public and private companies. Diana is known as an enterprising business woman with a diverse business and law background in both the United States and Latina America. She also sits on the Board of Directors for Women in Film, Los Angeles.
Anne Slatton—Writer, Director and Producer
Student. Anne Slatton teaches courses in video production and theory (including Women in Film, Film Genres, Film History and Film Criticism) at UNC Asheville. Her professional production work in film and television has included directing, writing and producing. Anne’s documentary work includes the PBS documentary Crisis in the Keys, the National Geographic 12-part series Treasure Seekers, and The Learning Channel’s Treasure!. In 2001, her original screenplay Thyme in Forever won a Gold at WorldFest Houston. Feelin’ Good, a thirty-minute video written and directed by Anne, was awarded a Parent’s Choice Award. Currently Anne heads up UNCA’s award winning 48 hour film team, for which she won a Best Directing award in July 2010.Anne also remains active in theater. She has created original dramatic and educational materials for schools and community theaters across the United States. Her play, Prés de Lune, has been produced in Memphis and Los Angeles and garnered three and four star reviews in the internationally renowned Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Rebecca Richman Cohen—Director and Producer
Experimental. Rebecca Richman Cohen is an award-winning filmmaker and a law school graduate with experience in international human rights and criminal defense. She did investigative work at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, working on a legal defense team for Alex Tamba Brima in the AFRC-accused case. Five months after leaving the Brima defense team, she returned to Sierra Leone to begin production on WAR DON DON, a documentary film which profiles the trial of a leader of a separate warring faction. She has been adjunct faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and at American University’s Human Rights Institute.
Mohammad Ali Karimi—Afghan Film Critic
Documentary. Mohammad Ali Karimi writes film reviews for 8 Subh newspaper in Afghanistan and for the Afghan service of German radio Deutsche Welle. From 2008-2009, Ali lectured on film history at Kabul University’s Department of Film. Ali is currently obtaining a Master’s in Media Studies in the University of Ottawa, Canada.
Brigid Maher—Assistant Professor, School of Communication-American University
Documentary. Brigid Maher is a filmmaker and writer who heads the New Media concentration in SOC’s Film and Media Arts Division. Her scholarly writing focuses on the interplay between traditional film and new media theories. Her award-winning narrative and documentary films have shown in festivals in the U.S. and abroad. Her latest documentary, Veiled Voices, focuses on the phenomenon of Muslim women religious leaders in Islam.