MARIE ALARCON is a Philadelphia based media artist who's work interrogates notions of authenticity, community, and violence. She began doing community documentary work in 2000, and has since filmed and produced various short documentaries and collaborative non-fiction projects. Alarcon studied documentary production and post-colonial theory at the Evergreen State College, where she produced and directed the documentary Freedom Country. Created in conjunction with the Arab American Community Coalition (AACC) of Seattle, it was supported by a research fellowship from The University of Chicago and has been used as a teaching tool at conferences and in classrooms. In 2009 she received a Leeway Foundation, Art and Change Grant ('09) and is an upcoming resident artist at 40th Street AIR, where she's will be working on post-digital technology and radical autonomy in the context of public art. Alarcon is currently directing the documentary, The Body in Pain, a semi-autobiographical look at living with chronic pain in a society of visible evidence.

JESSICA BARDSLEY is an artist and writer whose work has been presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in conjunction with the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Dia Art Foundation, Kassel Dokfest, Antimatter Film Festival, Images Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Rooftop Films and more. Her work has also been included in multiple media journals, including The Journal of Short Film and INCITE! Journal of Experimental Media and Radical Aesthetics Issue # 2. She was awarded a 2010 Princess Grace Award in Film and completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is now working on her MA in Visual and Critical Studies. She is an instructor in the Liberal Arts Department at SAIC and the Program Assistant for the screening series Conversations at the Edge.

CHRISTOPHER J. BAUM holds a B.A. with high honors in anthropology from U.C. Berkeley, and is currently a PhD student in medical and visual anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.  His current research investigates various dimensions of the American pornographic industry, with a concentration on the lived experiences of performers and the industry’s regulation (and lack of regulation) concerning worker health and safety.  This research has been informed by his prior work in the pornographic industry, in documentary film production, and HIV prevention.  He will begin pre-dissertation fieldwork for this project in 2012, and will incorporate various film and photographic components in addition to his written work.  Christopher is also an adjunct professor and Graduate Teaching Fellow at Baruch College in the department of anthropology.

DANIELLE BEVERLY began her career at Chicago’s PBS affiliate and regularly directs for PBS and cable since 1999. Since 2002, Beverly is Field Producer for “REBIRTH”, which premiered at Sundance 2011.  “REBIRTH” is a longitudinal documentary tracking the healing of five people affected by 9/11, as well as the rebuild of The World Trade Center in 35mm time-lapse film. It will also be a permanent exhibition at the WTC Memorial Museum, and a feature film released in Fall 2011 by Oscilloscope and broadcast by Showtime.  Beverly is currently beginning post-production on her own documentary “Old South”, which examines racism and gentrification in a black community in Georgia – Beverly worked as a solo crew to shoot, direct and produce the project.

SHANE BOOK is poet and filmmaker. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. His work has appeared in numerous American, British, and Canadian magazines and anthologies. His first collection, Ceiling of Sticks (University of Nebraska Press, 2010) won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His short film Dust, based on a poem from the book, was nominated for Best Narrative at the Diamond Screen Film Festival. His honors include a New York Times Fellowship, Fellowships to the Flaherty Film Seminar and the Telluride Film Festival, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a National Magazine Award.

JOE BROWN is a filmmaker, teaching fellow, and MFA candidate at the University of North Texas. Most of his films deal with social issues. His “National Sacrifice Zone: Colorado and the Cost of Energy Independence” (2007) treated the problem of pollution caused by the natural gas industry, and his current film “University Incorporated” (2012) takes on the rising cost of higher education. Joe co-directed the Colorado Environmental Film Festival (CEFF) from 2007 to 2010, and currently serves on the board of the University Film & Video Association (UFVA) as the student representative. He holds advanced degrees in Mass Communications and Library and Information Science.

JENNIFER DAVIS, as Development Coordinator at American Documentary | POV, coordinates fundraising activities and supports the Development department. Before joining American Documentary | POV, she worked in communications, fundraising and program development for organizations in diverse international contexts, including China, Laos, Mexico, Taiwan and Turkey. She graduated from Scripps College with a dual bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Cultural Studies. She recently completed her Master of International Affairs at Columbia University.

KATE DOLLENMAYER is a filmmaker and educator with a particular interest in the mechanics of the film medium and our sensory experience of it. She began her film studies in animation and has continued to feel connected to thinking frame by frame throughout her work in live-action film, video, and installation. Her films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, MassArt Film Society, the Echo Park Film Center, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Cambridge Film Festival (UK), and the REDCAT theater in Los Angeles. Kate teaches film and video at Bennington College.

JESSE EPSTEIN received an MA in documentary film from NYU. She was selected for "25 New Faces of Independent Film" by Filmmaker Magazine. Her films WET DREAMS AND FALSE IMAGES received a Short Subject Jury Award at The Sundance Film Festival, THE GUARANTEE received Best Short Film at Newport International Film Festival, and 34x25x36 received a national PBS Broadcast on POV. All 3 films are executive produced by Chicken & Egg Pictures in association with The Fledgling Fund, and are distributed on the BODY TYPED DVD through New Day Films. Jesse is also the founder of a youth video program in Manhattan's Lower East Side, and for three years was an instructor for Reel Stories: Sundance's youth documentary lab. She is the editor of the NY Filmmaker’s Network Shooting People, Inc.

CAROLINE GIL graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Universidad del Sagrado Corazón on Visual Arts and on 2008 with a master’s degree on Cinematography from Escuela Superior de Cine y Audiovisuales de Cataluña (ESCAC) at Barcelona, Spain. She completed her master’s practice internship at “Filmoteca Cataluña’s’’ Film Archive as a restoration assistant. On 2010 she worked as a cinematographer on a sustainable agriculture documentary for Iniciativa de Nutrición Humana (INH) financed by the W.K. Kellogg foundation. Currently she works closely with the Puerto Rico Film Society and as a freelance production assistant, programmer and filmmaker.

TROY HERION (b.1982) is a composer, sound designer, and filmmaker. His work brings together interests in fields relating to visual art, drama, and improvisation. Compositions are often conceived with strong visual and atmospheric elements, whether for concert stage, opera stage, theater stage, alternative spaces, or film. Also active as an improviser and music director, he has collaborated in performances with leading musicians, artists, and dancers throughout Philadelphia and New York. His work in theater has been nominated for three Barrymore Awards, including the prestigious F. Otto Haas Emerging Artist Award, and his work was pronounced Best Sound Design in Philadelphia Weekly. Troy is the recipient of various awards and fellowships including the Perkins Prize, Roger Sessions Fellowship, American Composers Forum Subito and Community Partnership Award, and an Independence Foundation Fellowship which funded the study of gamelan music in Bali, Indonesia with the world-renowned Cudamani ensemble. Troy is currently pursuing a PhD in music composition at Princeton University.

CHRISTY LEMASTER is the  Director of The Nightingale, a microcinema located in Chicago's Noble Square neighborhood. She has curated for Chicago Filmmakers, Chicago Film Forum, and The Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival. She teaches at Columbia College in The Interactive Arts and Media Department and is a regular movie critic on the NPR Chicago affiliate, WBEZ's morning show 848. She is currently plotting a romantic comedy with her roommate, reading up on Girl Power, and punishing her friends with painfully amateur cello playing. http://nightingaletheatre.org/

SERGE LEVCHIN, born in Kiev, 1979, the younger son of the poet Rafael Levchin. Family in the US since 1991. Taught by the Karlin-Stolin in Kiev, the Brisker in Chicago. BA liberal arts from St. John's College, Annapolis. In New York since 2001. Studied Russian literature and linguistics with Boris Gasparov at Columbia for 4 years. In 2006 resigns fellowship, leaves faculty for reasons of gross impracticality. Works subsequently as cinematographer, scriptwriter, film editor, researcher, subtitler - invariably at minimal wages.

JULIE MALLOZZI’s films and installations explore the fluidity of cultural identity and historical memory. Her films Once Removed and Monkey Dance won awards at festivals around the world and screened in museums, universities, and on public television.  Her current project is IndelibleLalita, a film and two-channel installation about a resilient woman whose body has been remarkably transformed by loss of skin pigment, cancer, and other conditions. Julie received her BA from Harvard University and her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. She has taught filmmaking at Harvard University, Boston University, and MassArt’s Continuing Education Department. www.juliemallozzi.com

OSCAR MOLINA started making documentaries to resolve his crisis of having an education as a journalist and visual artist. After eight years, he moved to explore the other side of the film industry as a film curator and developing audiences. Now and in the last three years he has been facing uneasy questions about film and filmmaking in the MFA in Film he is pursuing at Temple University in Philadelphia.  

SARAH KIZZA NSIGAYE is a Uganda-based documentary film maker and cultural operator running Native Travel Festival. She has over fifteen years experience first as a Journalist then cultural practitioner and documentarty film maker, having worked in the print media in Uganda, and television stations, where she co-founded Native TV an independent production house specialising in creating a space for the local voice. In 2005, she joined Amakula Kampala Cultural Foundation as Coordinator of the East African Film Congress an annual component of the festival bringing together Film Makers in the region to discuss, share views, network but also lay strategies on developing a regional film infrastructure and common policies and the mobile cinema. She has a Bachelor of Mass Communication degree from St. Laurence University and is also a student of Democracy and Development from Uganda Martyrs University.

FIONA OTWAY has been making movies since 1997, working as a director, cinematographer, editor, producer, and media instructor. Fiona first studied filmmaking at Hampshire College as a Harold F. Johnson Scholar and is a University Fellow in the Film and Media Arts program at Temple University.  Her work is strongly influenced by a background in cultural anthropology, critical social theory, and experimental filmmaking and often explores themes related to globalization, community-based social change, and cultural identity.  Over the past fifteen years, Fiona has been involved in several projects that were featured in top-tier film festivals and television broadcasts in multiple countries. She was awarded the first-ever prize for 'Best Documentary Editing' at Sundance Film Festival. In addition, one of her most recent editing projects won the Sundance Film Festival 'Grand Jury Prize'. Two of her editing projects have been nominated for an Academy Award. As a filmmaker, Fiona remains committed to illuminating perspectives that are often under-represented in the mainstream media and to crafting nuanced, emotionally resonant stories about complex social issues.

JAMES T. PARRISH, JR. is a fundraiser, artist and leader in the Richmond, VA arts community with more than 21 years of fundraising experience in higher education and the nonprofit sector. He currently serves as the director of development for the VCU School of Nursing. James is founder of the Richmond Flicker (est. 1998), a bi-monthly screening of short Super 8 and 16mm films by local filmmakers, and co-founder of the Richmond Moving Image Co-op, (est. 1999), now the James River Film Society, a volunteer run nonprofit dedicated to the art of film and film as art. He is currently finishing a film about a Southern gospel singing convention in his hometown of Benson, NC.

MATT PRIGGE is a film critic and journalist who has written for Philadelphia Weekly since 2000. His work has also appeared in the Philadelphia editions of Metro and The A.V. Club, as well as Nerve, Nashville Scene and Phawker. He has appeared on Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane, as well as numerous podcasts. He is currently at work on a book of interviews about contemporary American independent cinema.  

KAREN ROSSI has for over 12 years worked as a documentary filmmaker, director and editor, mostly in Puerto Rico where she was born. She was co-producer, director and editor of the first documentary film sponsored by DocTV Iberoamerica in the island: Isla Chatarra (Scrap Island), which in 2008 won the Sun Coast Chapter Emmy award for best cultural documentary. Her other works include the short fiction films, Bizcocho (Cake); ¿Quién eres tú? (Who are you?), of the series 100 Minutes of Women’s Voices; the experimental video The Painter’s Subconscious and the educational documentaries Success in Seville and Algo Más (Something More). With Fiscal Sponsorship from Women Make Movies, Karen is currently editing her documentary film La Pegaron en Taiwan (Made in Taiwan), which tells the story of the first Puerto Rican artists to be commissioned for a public art project in Taiwan.

ISHITA SRIVASTAVA is the Media Production Associate at Breakthrough, an innovative global human rights organization using the power of pop culture, media and community mobilization to transform public attitudes and advance dignity, equality and justice. As a documentary filmmaker, Ishita is interested in harnessing the power of non-fiction storytelling to raise awareness about political and cultural issues. Her most recent documentary film, Desigirls, examines the intersection of gender, sexuality and immigrant culture through the experiences of two queer Indian women in New York City. Ishita grew up in New Delhi, India, and completed a BA in English Literature at St. Stephens College in Delhi. She also completed a BA in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths College (London) and a Masters degree in Cinema Studies and Culture and Media at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

MIKE STOLTZ is a filmmaker, musician, and independent curator. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts. In 2010 he received the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Merit Award in Film and Video.   

FERESHTEH TOOSI collects and recombines sounds, words, images, and actions. She grows vegetables in the empty lot behind her house, counts macroinvertebrates in the Chicago River, and volunteers as a beekeeper for the Chicago Park District. Born in Iran and raised in Virginia, Fereshteh received a BA from Oberlin College and worked in Japan for two years before completing her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Art. Fereshteh is a full-time instructor for a multidisciplinary humanities program at Columbia College Chicago and a Fellow at Archeworks, a socially-engaged design school. http://fereshteh.net

MIAO WANG is a filmmaker who splits her time between New York and her hometown of Beijing. Wang immigrated to the U.S. in 1990. Her first documentary, Yellow Ox Mountain, screened at over 20 festivals and institutions and was broadcast on WNET Thirteen. She has worked as an assistant at Maysles Films, and has edited a feature-length PBS documentary and programs for National Geographic. Beijing Taxi, Wang’s first feature, premiered and was nominated for Best Feature Documentary at SXSW 2010, took Best Feature Documentary at Sidewalk Film Festival 2010 and Best Director at Duke City Docfest 2010. It screened at over 30 international film festivals, had a theatrical release in 2010, and broadcast nation-wide on PBS in 2011. It received a grant from the Sundance Documentary Fund, the Jerome Foundation and NYSCA, with additional support from IFP, Tribeca Film Institute, and Women Make Movies.

JULIA YEZBICK is a filmmaker, artist and cultural anthropologist with an interest in media practice, space, the senses, and processes of making. Her works have been screened at international film festivals including the Mostra Internacional do Filme Etnográfico, Rio de Janeiro, the Nordic Anthropological Film Association, Stockholm, and the Montreal Ethnographic Film Festival. Julia completed an MA in VIsual Anthropology at the University of Manchester (2004) and is the founding editor of Sensate journal. She is currently a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University where she is working on a PhD in Anthropology (with Media).

WILL ZAVALA is Assistant Professor at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. He is a filmmaker specializing in documentaries.  He founded and conducts the Documentary Salon, a monthly film society, in 2006, as well as the Three Rivers Film Symposium, which has run yearly since 2008. Will is from California, where he studied film and received an MA from Stanford University.