Advisory Council
Dr. Steven Channing
SDF Creative Advisor and Co-Founder
Dr. Steven Channing is an award-winning filmmaker, president of Video Dialog, Inc and an educator. He served as Professor of American History at the University of Kentucky, Visiting Professor at Stanford University, Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University, and Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Genoa, Italy. His published books include the Allen Nevins Prize-winning study, Crisis of Fear (1970), Kentucky: A Bicentennial History (1977), and The Confederate Ordeal (1984) for Time-Life Books Civil War Series. His initial television productions were broadcast regionally and nationally on public television, including his series, This Other Eden, featuring Patricia Neal, and We Remember America's 400th Anniversary, narrated by Andy Griffith.
Dr. Channing has received scriptwriting and production awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Ohio State University, CASE, and Parents Magazine, as well as an Emmy and a Telly for the historical dramatic film, Alamance. His company, Video Dialog, Inc produced February One: The Story of the Greensboro Four. This documentary about the 1960 Greensboro sit-ins was selected to open the 2003 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and also aired on PBS on February 1, 2005.
Currently, Dr. Channing is producing films on the 1960's war on poverty (The North Carolina Fund: Inventing a War on Poverty), race and class (Durham: A Self-Portrait); and on the work of the pioneering family therapist Virginia Satir (The Power of Change).
Cynthia Hill
SDF Creative Advisor and Co-Founder
Cynthia Hill is a North Carolina-based filmmaker whose works include the feature-length documentary, Tobacco Money Feeds My Family, The Guestworker: Bienvenidos a Carolina del Norte, as well as various works centered on documenting southern life and culture. A native of Pink Hill, NC, Cynthia began her production career working on health education media and spent four years as an editor at GLC Productions, a New York City post-production facility whose clients included MTV, PBS, Lifetime, Nickelodeon, and many others.