SPEED MENTORS
Dan Brawley
Dan Brawley is the Chief Instigating Officer of the Cucalorus Festival, an international celebration of filmmaking, performance and technology in Wilmington, North Carolina founded in 1994 by Twinkle Doon. Cucalorus screens more than 300 films with a range of multi-disciplinary programs focusing on dance, social justice, cocktails, entrepreneurship, and performance. Cucalorus was one of the “25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World, 2017” – MovieMaker Magazine. Brawley is President of the Film Festival Alliance, an independent non-profit that develops collaboration among mission-driven film festivals around the world. Brawley graduated cum laude from Duke University and is an active performing artist and community organizer.
@Cucalorus cucalorus.org
Joe Brewster
Joe Brewster is a Harvard graduate who uses his psychiatrist training to inform the social issues he tackles as a filmmaker. Brewster has created stories using a variety of mediums that have garnered support from critics and audiences internationally. He has received support from Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, and MacArthur Foundation. Brewster is a Spirit Award and three-time Emmy Award nominee. His recent documentary, AMERICAN PROMISE won the Jury Prize at Sundance. Brewster’s outreach accomplishments include a NAACP Image Award for his book Promise’s Kept, and a BritDoc Prize for developing one of the most innovative outreach campaigns.
@2joedigital radafilm.com
Michael Ehrenzweig
Michael Ehrenzweig is a Supervising Producer at ITVS and joined the organization in 2015, after spending many years producing international co-productions and award-winning non-fiction films. Michael now oversees a slate of documentary projects that are released on Public Television, in theaters, and on a variety of digital platforms.
@ITVSindies ITVS.org
Wendy Ettinger
Wendy Ettinger co-founded Chicken & Egg Pictures in 2005 which has awarded $6.2 million in grants and thousands of hours of mentorship to over 285 women nonfiction filmmakers over the past 13 years.
In 2013 Wendy co-founded Gamechanger Films, the first equity fund dedicated to financing feature films directed by women. With Gamechanger she was Executive Producer of such films as Land Ho, directed by Aaran Katz and Martha Stephens (Sony Pictures) and The Tale with Laura Dern, which premiered on HBO this past weekend to great acclaim. Wendy began her career producing Eye of God and The War Room, the Academy Award-nominated documentary directed by Chris Hegedus and D.A.Pennebaker.
@chickeneggpics chickeneggpics.org
Christopher Everett
Christopher Everett is a film director and producer who is currently residing in Durham, North Carolina. In 2015, Christopher started Speller Street Films in which he directed and produced the award-winning documentary “Wilmington on Fire”. Speller Street Films recently acquired the distribution rights to the 2002 cult classic “As an Act of Protest” in which they are currently remastering with plans on an official release in September 2018. Christopher is also currently filming his next documentary “Grandmaster”, which follows a former karate champion trying to preserve the martial art that has defined his life.
@ceverett82 wilmingtononfire.com
Patricia Finneran
Patricia is a nonprofit arts leader with more than two decades of experience in documentary media. She currently heads up Doc Society’s Good Pitch Local team in the US and supports the program globally. Good Pitch connects media makers with funders, organizations, media platforms and other partners to advance social good, and support the growth of a vibrant ecosystem of high impact public media. She previously held senior positions at Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, AFI’s SILVERDOCS Festival, and IFP New York. In 2012, she founded Story Matters, which created content, campaigns and events including the Alliance 2016 conference, campaigns for films like “Bully” and “How To Survive A Plague; clients included Britdoc, Hot Docs, Kering, and Results for America. She is also producing “Cumari” a TV series about Latin American chefs partnering with indigenous peoples to create sustainable markets for Amazonian food.
@TriciaFinn goodpitch.org
Seth Gadsden
Seth Gadsden is an artist, and current director of Indie Grits Labs in Columbia, SC. Focusing on public art, documentary filmmaking, and media installations, Seth has exhibited his personal work across the US and has completed murals and outdoor sculptures in places like Mexico, North Dakota, and Boston. Through Indie Grits Labs, Seth has curated a range of projects and produced works including documentary films and new media projects over the past five years. Seth is a founding member of the artist collective, Transit Antenna, with which he spent two years traveling across North America developing community-based art projects. Seth is also a founding member of the Redux Contemporary Art Center (Charleston, SC) and the Boston Young Contemporaries at Boston University.
@IndieGrits indiegrits.org
Peter Gilbert
Peter Gilbert has won national and international honors for his groundbreaking work as a producer, director and cinematographer (Hoop Dreams, At The Death House Door, Vietnam: A Long Time Coming and more).
In addition to Academy Award nominations and Emmy wins, Gilbert’s work has appeared on major broadcast networks and in countless film festivals. Gilbert also co-manages two film funds that provide assistance to young filmmakers making narrative and documentary films. Peter currently serves on the faculty in the Documentary Film Program at Wake Forest University.
Erica Ginsberg
Erica Ginsberg is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Docs In Progress, a nonprofit incubator for documentary filmmakers headquartered near Washington DC (the organization which facilitated Peer Pitch at the Convening). In addition to her work with Docs In Progress, she is a co-host of The D-Word, an online documentary filmmaker community with more than 15,000 members from around the world. She has more than 25 years of experience in program administration in the nonprofit and government sectors, working in the areas of arts and culture, nonprofit management, and international professional exchanges. At Docs In Progress, she teaches workshops on documentary pre-production and marketing, and facilitates work-in-progress screenings, Peer Pitches, and Fellowship cohort meetings. Erica has also spoken on various topics at panels, workshops, and university classrooms across the country. She is also a documentary producer/director whose works include Creative Feds (about federal workers who moonlight as musicians), Crucible of War (about post-war life in former Yugoslavia), and her current work-in-progress California Dreaming (about the what the American Dream means today for people living across the country in towns named California).
@cinecitizen docsinprogress.org
Eugene Haynes
Eugene Haynes builds bridges that connect the gaps between craft, creative voice and commerce. He is currently a film and media arts Professor at Temple University, and works closely with undergraduate and graduate filmmakers to develop film analysis skills on issues of race, class and gender. Prior to coming to Temple, Eugene was the Director of Production and Acquisitions at USA Films (now known as Focus Features) and has also served as the Festival Artistic Director of the International Jamerican Film and Music Festival in Montego Bay, Jamaica WI with actress/activist Sheryl Lee Ralph. His most recent film project “The Adventures of Teddy P. Brains” is an award winning 3D animated feature film for children that has been featured on television and showcased at film festivals worldwide. He also currently serves as Program Manager of the BlackStar Film Festival held annually, and taking place this August 2-5, in Philadelphia, PA. The BlackStar Film Festival is a celebration of cinema focused on work by and about people of African descent in a global context.
@eugenehaynes blackstarfest.org
Cynthia Hill
Cynthia Hill crafts documentaries that take a complex approach to critical contemporary issues, creating story- driven and visually-rich films. Private Violence is Hill’s fourth feature documentary. The subjects of her work range from tobacco farming, to Latino migrant labor and Southern foodways, and challenge dominant narratives about the rural South. Hill allows unexpected stories to unfold, laying bare the assumptions behind the systems that drive people’s everyday lives. Each of Hill’s documentaries open up space for vigorous community engagement, with viewers from wide-ranging political and ideological beliefs. Producer/director credits include Tobacco Money Feeds My Family, The Guestworker, February One, and A Chef’s Life. Hill’s work has appeared nationally on PBS and the Sundance Channel and featured in festivals around the globe. She has lectured at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and is the co-founder of the Southern Documentary Fund, a nonprofit organization established to support place-based storytelling. Hill is from Pink Hill, NC and currently resides in Durham, NC.
@docusouth Markaymedia.com
Julie Keck
Julie Keck is a Chicago-based writer and producer and the Head of Education and Outreach at Seed&Spark. Since 2000, Julie has made two features, several shorts, and over 20 web series. Her most recent series F*ck Yes, an adult sex ed series focused on consent. Prior to joining Seed&Spark, Julie ran or consulted on crowdfunding campaigns that raised over $300k for a variety of film projects. Julie is co-author of Social Media Charm School.
@kingisafink seedandspark.com
Anna Lee
Anna Lee serves as the co-director of Working Films. Since joining Working Films in 2005, Anna has developed and coordinated audience engagement campaigns for numerous high profile films, consulted with hundreds of filmmakers, and presented trainings to nonprofits leaders, increasing their capacity to use film as a tool to movie the dial on critical issues. In her current role Anna leads the operations and financial management of Working Films and raises funds, while continuing to manage a small number of film campaigns. Anna brings previous experience as an educator to Working Films, using her background in curriculum design to enhance Working Films’ trainings for filmmakers and nonprofits. She directed the development and outreach of Working Films’ multi-media curriculum project, New Faces: Latinos in North Carolina. Prior to joining Working Films, Anna was the Program Director at Amigos Internacional, a Latino advocacy and education center in Wilmington, NC. Anna. She taught first grade in a bilingual program in Phoenix, AZ for two years and spent a year living in Latin America, where she studied Spanish and taught English as a foreign language. Anna earned a Master of Education from Arizona State University and a B.A. in Sociology from Wake Forest University.
@workingfilms workingfilms.org
Anjanette Levert
Anjanette Levert is a journalist, producer and documentary filmmaker. She has worked in print, broadcast and online at The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, CNN, BET, CBS and BlackandBrownNews.com. Anjanette served as the Producer and Executive Producer of projects such as the Atlanta 48 Hour Film Project and Kreyol Fest – the Brooklyn music festival celebrating Haitian culture. She was Associate Director for the Documentary Forum at City College of New York and founded the Atlanta Documentary Meetup. As a filmmaker she has made two short films, “Shake It Up and Shake It Down” and “The Wedding Proposal”. The latter not only earned her a Masters of Fine Arts in Documentary Film from the City College of New York, but also won awards. Out of her need to find a place to get writing done, she created “The Stonehouse Residency” for filmmakers, writers and artists. Last fall she joined the faculty at Spelman College as a professor in the newly minted major in Documentary Film.
@talevert anjanettelevert.com
Carrie Lozano
Carrie Lozano is an award winning documentary filmmaker and journalist. She is currently director of the IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund, which supports journalistic documentary films, and is on the Advisory Board of U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism where she is also a lecturer. She was previously executive producer for documentaries at AlJazeera America, and senior producer of the AJ investigative series Fault Lines. Her films include The Ballad of Fred Hersch (2016), Reporter Zero (2006) and The Weather Underground (2003).
@carrielozano ida.org
Penelope Maunsell
Penelope Maunsell (Producer, Director and Editor) has her own film and video company where she works producing, writing, directing and editing award winning films and videos for colleges and universities all over the country including Stanford, Duke, the College of William and Mary, Princeton and New York University. Her documentaries Bending Space: Georges Rousse and the Durham Project and Bending Sticks: the Sculpture of Patrick Dougherty both have been seen at film festivals and public screenings around the world. Penelope loves all aspects of production, edits her own and other projects and is comfortable directing shoots of all sizes. She has a knack for making people comfortable in front of the camera – be they second graders, college students, professors, college deans or presidents, CEOs or Supreme Court justices. For two years Penelope worked as writer/director for the Learning Channel’s highest rated series, The Operation.
penelopman.com
Darcy McKinnon
Darcy McKinnon is a documentary filmmaker and Executive Director of NOVAC, the New Orleans Video Access Center, which has been supporting community-based media in Southeast Louisiana since 1972. She is a co-founder of ALL Y’ALL, with Elaine McMillion Sheldon. McKinnon’s work in documentary includes the film “Maquilapolis” and “Live, Nude, Girls, UNITE!”. She produces documentary work with Southern filmmakers, and is currently in post-production on “Animals” a short documentary about New Orleans’ love affair with a shoe, in production on “Neutral Ground” with CJ Hunt, a documentary about New Orleans’ struggle to remove Confederate monuments, in development on “Commuted” with Nailah Jefferson, which explores the impact of Louisiana’s criminal justice dysfunctions through the portrait of the life of one woman, which just received development funding from Chicken & Egg.
@NOVACvideo novacvideo.org
Molly Murphy
Molly Murphy co-directs Working Films, a nonprofit that uses documentary film to advance social justice and environmental protection. In her eighteen year tenure, she has planned and directed national media engagement campaigns, facilitated partnerships and coordinated coalitions centered on the use of documentaries to enhance communication, reach beyond the choir, and make an impact on the issues of our time. Molly has designed and led dozens of trainings for filmmakers, grassroots organizations, and NGOs focused on using film and online media to effect change. She is part of the team that directs Working Films’ film-driven organizing campaigns and leads the Docs In Action initiative, which provides finishing funds to short films and campaign strategy development at no cost to underrepresented documentary makers.
@workingfilms workingfilms.org
Tracy Nguyen-Chung
Tracy is a Partner and Creative Director at After Bruce, and brings to her work a multi-faceted background in marketing, social justice, and content production. After Bruce’s strategic work includes campaigns with: International Documentary Association, Slamdance Film Festival, MAJORITY, The Last Animals, Twinsters, and The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. Previously, Tracy was a lead publicist on the Oscar campaign for The Square (2013). She also produced the short documentaries Supply Chain Reaction (for the We The Economy series) and Ballad of the Global Patriot (for Sundance Take5), both directed by Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker Jehane Noujaim. Tracy is a graduate of Lewis & Clark College and received a Master’s Degree in Conflict Resolution from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
@afterbruce afterbruce.com
Lauren Pabst
Lauren Pabst is a Senior Program Officer in the Journalism and Media program at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which supports Professional Nonprofit Reporting, Nonfiction Multimedia storytelling, and Participatory Civic Media to inform, engage, and activate people in the United States. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2012, Lauren worked in development and production of documentary films, including with Public Policy Productions and the Rada Film Group.
@contextmessage Macfound.org
Katina Parker
Katina Parker is a filmmaker, photographer, journalist, and writer living in Durham, North Carolina, who creates films and shoots photographs for Samsung, NBC Digital, Al Jazeera, People, the Wall Street Journal, and Huffington Post. Parker is a 2016–17 recipient of the North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship and a former instructor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. She has twice received the Durham Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant and in 2015 was acknowledged by PBS as a leading civil rights photographer. Parker’s current projects include A Love Supreme: Black, Queer and Christian in The South; The Official Black Lives Matter Doc (working title); Truth. Be. Told., a doc series about Queer Black Visionaries; #DefendDurham, a doc about North Carolina’s pushback against White supremacist organizing; and The Baba Chuck Tribute. Parker is also curating We Have a Duty to Fight for our Freedom, a traveling exhibition about the Black Lives Matter movement. Parker co-produced and filmed FERGUSON: A REPORT FROM OCCUPIED TERRITORY (Fusion – ABC/Disney) and contributed to the Oscar-buzz film Whose Streets?, documenting Ferguson activists during the year just after Mike Brown Jr. was killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. Parker received her MFA in Film Production from the University of Southern California and her MA in Speech Communications from Wake Forest University.
@katinaparker vimeo.com/katinaparker
Rachel Raney
Rachel Raney is a veteran non-fiction filmmaker and public TV/radio producer with deep experience producing content, as well as collaborating with and supporting independent producers. Determined to work on documentaries after college, she landed at the highly regarded Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco, working on programs for the PBS series Frontline. After producing on multiple projects for CIR and other production companies, Raney’s directorial debut, the feature documentary Livermore, aired on PBS’ Independent Lens. Raney went on to create and produce the award-winning documentary series Truly CA for KQED-TV, currently in its 12th season. After returning to the American South, Raney worked at North Carolina Public Radio, producing for the nationally distributed program The Story with Dick Gordon. Raney later served as the first Executive Director of the Southern Documentary Fund, and has now joined UNC-TV as Director of National Productions and Executive Producer of Reel South.
@RachelRaney Reelsouth.org
Saleem Reshamwala
Saleem Reshamwala writes, directs, shoots, and/or produces music videos, documentary series and short films, often under the ‘KidEthnic’ name. Recent awards include an Emmy-nomination for his work on implicit bias while at the New York Times, and Best Music Video at the Hip Hop Film Festival in Harlem (for G Yamazawa’s “North Cack”). Outside of the US, he’s documented hip hop and shot music videos in Croatia, Morocco, Senegal, Ethiopia, Fiji, Panama and the Democratic Republic of Congo and has studied, worked or hung out in 50 countries. He loves strange things and hopes we can all be friends.
@kidethnic kidethnic.com
Deborah Riley Draper
Deborah Riley Draper is a compelling and award-winning filmmaker and advertising agency executive. Draper is 2016 Film Independent Lab Fellow and Variety Magazine’s “2016 Top 10 Documakers to Watch”. Her documentary, Olympic Pride, American Prejudice, tells the untold story of 18 African Americans who defied Hitler and Jim Crow to compete in the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympic Games. The film enjoyed a sold-out world premiere at the LA Film Festival and opened in theatres and on XFINITY® Streampix® during the 2016 Summer Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies. The film is a 2017 NAACP Image Awards Nominee for Outstanding Documentary Film. In 2016, Olympic Pride inspired an historic invitation to the White House from President Obama to recognize the families of the African American members of the 1936 USA team after an 80-year snub. For its ability to create conversations about inclusion, tolerance and sports as a platform, the film is one of only 3 nominees for the 2017 Peace and Sport Award in Monaco, presented by HRH Prince Albert.
@Atladgirl 1936olympicsmovie.com
Anne Wells
Anne Wells is the Audiovisual Archivist at the Wilson Special Collections @ UNC. She formerly worked as Collections Manager at the Chicago Film Archive. She holds a Masters in Library and Information Science with a certificate in special collections from the University of Illinois.
