SCOZETTE CARROLL RUSSELL studied filmmaking at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in video, photography, and installation. She is a teaching assistant in the Visual and Environmental Studies Department at Harvard University. Her most recent film, Borderland, a collage of East German memories of the inner-German border, premiered at the London International Documentary Festival this May. A first-generation farming family in Rollinsford, New Hampshire, is the subject of her second film, currently in production. She lives with her filmmaking partner/husband in Central Falls, Rhode Island.

MELISSA DAVENPORT was born in Rangeley, Maine and received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She currently makes nonfiction films that engage issues of labor and recreation, privacy and performance, and aesthetics as they affect perception. A fellow at the Film Study Center at Harvard University in 2006-07 and 2007-08, she completed The Weigh Station, a window into the closed culture of deer hunting in the north woods, and The Town Dock, an experimental nonfiction short capturing the rhythm of summer and the residents of a small town, reflected in the microcosm of the public town dock. Davenport received a grant from the LEF Moving Image Fund in support of The Town Dock, which premiered at the London International Documentary Festival in April 2010. She is currently in pre-production on a documentary about migrant labor and traditional open land rights in Maine.

ANN S. KIM began working in television, starting with the first season of the Emmy-nominated PBS Kids show Postcards From Buster. With a keen interest in health and science, Ann has worked on a numerous health-related documentaries, including the PBS series on health disparities Unnatural Causes, Frontline’s The Age of Aids, NOVA ScienceNOW, and the independent documentary Today the Hawk Takes One Chick. She also served as Associate Producer for recent documentaries Secrecy and The Mosque In Morgantown.  She is currently in production on Match+, a documentary film about the growing movement for HIV+ marriage matchmaking in India. Ann was recognized with a national award from the Asian American Journalists Association in 2008 for her radio memoir about a family trip to North Korea for PRI’s The World. She is also co-editor of Global Values 101, a collection of interviews with activists, including Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, on how individuals can contribute to global change.

RHONDA MOSKOWITZ is the founder and principle of Shining Light Productions. She has had unprecedented access and the privilege to film incarcerated Jews inside four maximum security prisons in two separate states, including death row. She is the recipient of a Special Commendation from the Boston Society of Film Critics, for founding and organizing Connect the Docs, a monthly film salon for documentary filmmakers. Rhonda was mentored by Albert Maysles, has written for various publications about film and about Judaism and has served on panels at film festivals and Jewish scholars conferences. She lives with her husband, daughter and dog. It is her goal that the film, Return (Teshuva), will take away the shame about the subject of Jewish prisoners and it is her hope that the film, and its' profound universal themes, will expand the way people define themselves and each other.

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DANIELLA ALATORRE produced the 2009 Sundance Award winning documentary El General, a visually complex portrait of Mexico’s last 100 years of history directed by Natalia Almada. She is the producer of the Morelia International Film Festival, one of Mexico’s most promient film festivals, and serves on the documentary selection committee. Her years in production and programming at the Morelia Film Festival, Ambulante Documentary Tour, and other film festivals have given her both great experience with documentary films and invaluable relationships with the international film community. Prior to her work at the festival, Alatorre worked on numerous cultural productions after graduation from the Universidad Iberoamericana with a degree in communications in 2000. She hosted a weekly radio program dedicated to film commentary and criticism for two years. She is currently producing a feature documentary about the problematic education system in Mexico directed by acclaimed Mexican director Juan Carlos Rulfo.

ELIZABETH CABRERA is a filmmaker whose work explores history and memory through the sites, sounds and smells of her own life and family. As a media professional she has worked for several organizations including the Independent Television Service (ITVS), Scribe Video Center, National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC), and currently as an Associate Producer for Link TV. She is a co-founder of Spinema (spinema.com), bicycle powered community cinema, which combines her passion for public film screenings and her efforts to increase the portability of video while reducing its environmental impact as well. She currently serves on the advisory committee for the Cinema Department at the City College of San Francisco. She has been a Bioneer’s Reel Change Agents Media fellow and in 2008 was selected as a semi-finalist in the Free Your Story Contest sponsored by the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM). She lives and works in San Francisco.

DOUG CUNNINGHAM earned his Ph.D in Film Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009. His scholarly work has appeared in Screen,Cineaction, The Moving Image, and Critical Survey, and he has also published chapters in several books on film. He is currently editing a book on Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo for Scarecrow Press.

LEO GOLDSMITH is a freelance film critic and scholar based in Brooklyn, NY. An editor of the online film journal Not Coming to a Theater Near You(NotComing.com) since 2003, he has also contributed to Reverse Shot, Moving Image Source, indieWIRE, and The Village Voice. In the summer of 2010, he and scholar Gregory Zinman will launch BigElectricCat.com, a blog and archive devoted to interstitial digital art and criticism. Beginning in the fall of 2010, he will be a PhD candidate in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. He is also one half of the audiovisual ensemble Christian Science Minotaur.

LAWRENCE LOEWINGER is a producer/director, sound mixer, teacher and film journalist. His documentary film Kids Are People, produced in 1972, had an active festival life, won several awards upon release, was broadcast on regional public television and went into distribution. Soon after KIDS, he took a hiatus as a filmmaker and embarked on long and distinguished career as a location sound mixer for documentaries, features and episodic television. Lately he has mixed features and television shows. Recent credits include many days recording sound on Tina Fey’s award winning NBC show “30 Rock,” for which he received an Emmy. He was one of the mixers on the recently released,Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire. He has taught film making at Wesleyan University & sound recording at New York University, the School of Visual Arts/NY and at other institutions. His documentary in production, Not for the Dead, marks his return to filmmaking.

JOANNA RACZYNSKA works as assistant curator in the film department at The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. She has worked for a variety of non-profit organizations including Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. She has served as a juror for the Images Festival in Toronto and the Cleveland International Film Festival. In 2001, she earned her BA from University of Maryland where she first started making non-fiction films and videos, and her MA in Documentary from Royal Holloway College, University of London. Her work has been screened internationally and across the US, most recently at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Joanna is a producing member of the Termite TV video collective and a founding member of the Stateless Cinema programming collective. She resides in Baltimore with her family.

EVA WEBER, originally from Germany, is a London-based filmmaker working in both documentary and fiction. Her films have screened at numerous international film festivals, amongst others, at Sundance, Edinburgh, SXSW, Los Angeles, Telluride and Thessaloniki. Her work has also been shown at art galleries and museums. Most recently, Eva directed the 27-minute film The Solitary Life of Cranes, which was nominated for the International Documentary Association’s Distinguished Short Award 2009; and the short documentary Steel Homes – a poetic exploration of memory and loss, which takes the viewer inside the world of self storage (premiered at IDFA 2008, Sundance 2009). Other films include: City of Cranes and The Intimacy of Strangers. Eva is currently working on the feature-length documentary Life in Transit, which is being developed with the support of the UK Film Council.

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SAM ADAMS is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Salon and the A.V. Club, and a Contributing Editor at Philadelphia City Paper, where he edited the film section from 1999-2007. His writing has appeared in Entertainment Weekly, the Boston Globe, the Hollywood Reporter and Film Comment, and his essays Two Lane Blacktop and Greendale appear in the National Society of Film Critics anthology The B List. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and daughter, and blogs at www.breakingtheline.com.

JASON COYLE is a film and video maker who lives in Philadelphia. His work explores the edges of documentary and the borders of fiction through essayistic investigations of the quotidian. Coyle earned his MA in Cinema Studies at NYU and is currently completing his MFA in Film & Media Arts at Temple University. His thesis film, Today & Tonight, is both an observational documentary of the backstage rituals of a theater performance as well as an experimental mosaic of the ways in which performance structures everyday life. He teaches courses in video production and film history at Temple and Saint Joseph’s University.

DUSTIN MORROW is a filmmaker, photographer, writer and media artist. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he teaches courses in media production and theory. His films have won numerous awards and been shown in venues around the world. He has written about film, pop culture, and pedagogy for a host of publications, and his photographs have been featured in a number of art and culture magazines, as well as public exhibition spaces. During the summers, Morrow teaches and produces films in London and Dublin. Morrow is the director of the Greenfield Youth Film Festival, one of the nation’s largest youth media education programs. Among his recent works are the feature-length dark comedy The Working Man; the anthology of short films, Firinne: Searching for Ireland; and the documentary short Laptop. Learn more about Professor Morrow at www.dustinmorrow.com.

NATASHA NGAIZA Born in London and raised in the U.S. by Tanzanian immigrants, Natasha’s films focus on celebrating the cultural, historical, social and political experiences of Africans across the Diaspora. As an idealist, she envisions film as a tool to educate, enlighten and initiate activism. Her work also seeks to incorporate the structure of traditional African storytelling into narrative films and documentary hybrids. She is fascinated by Nollywood, Bongo Flava music videos and America’s undying obsession with “Mammy”.

JOANNA POSES works as a freelance archivist, projectionist, and programmer. She holds a BFA in Cinema Studies from New York University, an MA in Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image from the Universiteit van Amsterdam and a certificate in film preservation from the George Eastman House. As a student intern, she worked on nitrate film identification at the Nederlands Filmmuseum. More recently, she worked as a consultant film archivist at the national headquarters of the American Friends Service Committee. She has organized community screenings of silent, independent and experimental film at various venues around Philadelphia. She is co-founder of Community Screen, a small non-profit that brings specialized film programs to Philadelphia screens. The group’s most recent project was the Medical Film Symposium, a four-day program at arts and medical venues around the city. Currently, she is a partner in the Flickering Light, a neighborhood film series that presents weekly screenings of independent and international films. She is also an occasional collaborator and substitute projectionist at International House, the city’s last repertory theater.

REA TAJIRI is a New York based film and video artist. She earned her BFA and MFA degree from the California Institute of the Arts in studio art. Tajiri’s video art shorts were included in the Whitney Biennials in 1989 and 1991. One of these works, History and Memory went on to receive the Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association and a Special Jury Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival. Tajiri, co-produced Passion for Justice about Harlem human rights activist Yuri Kochiyama. Tajiri produced and directed the dramatic feature film Strawberry Fields, which received its European premiere at the Venice International Film Festival and won the Grand Prix at the Fukuoka Asian Film Festival. Tajiri’s recent short videos have played at the Rotterdam International Film Festival; The Guggenheim; the Asian American International Film Festival. She has received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, NEA Visual Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts and residencies from the MacDowell Colony and Smack Mellon. Currently, she is in development on a new dramatic fiction project entitled Venus’ Celestial Beauty and completing post-production on an experimental short entitled; River is Remembering. Tajiri is an Associate Professor at Temple University in the Film Media Arts Department.

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MAR CABRA is a Fulbright Scholar and Stabile Fellow in Investigative Reporting at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, specializing in broadcast. She's currently making a documentary on the over-prescription of psychotropic drugs in foster care. Mar has worked for the BBC, CNN+, and laSexta (Spain), where she was a news reporter. She has reported from Cuba and the West Bank and is an experienced videographer. She also co-created the award-winning multimedia initiative Objetivo Solidario (Objective: Solidarity), a collaborative project with NGOs from around the world which featured videos, text and blogs for the online site and the broadcast. Her work has appeared in The Huffington Post, the Spanish daily El Mundo and Fronterad.com. In September 2010 she'll be moving to Miami to be a bilingual multimedia intern for The Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald.

BETH CAPPER is an independent film curator from Brighton, England, and a dual Master’s candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Art History and Arts Administration. In addition to co-organizing SAIC's graduate student film series, The Eye & Ear Clinic, she has programmed film screenings for the Maysles Cinematheque in Harlem, the Roots and Culture Gallery in Chicago and she recently collaborated with the Conversations at the Edge series to bring British filmmaker Emily Wardill to Chicago's Gene Siskel Film Center. Alongside her partner Kelly Shindler, Beth co-founded Refracted Lens, a Chicago-based project committed to exhibiting underrepresented and/or new film and video. Beth is currently working on an online archive bringing together the documents of Shirley Clarke's Tee Pee Video Space Troupe workshops from the 1970s.

CHARLES FAIRBANKS is a wrestler and filmmaker. His films are not necessarily about wrestling, but are all made by grappling – in one way or another – with other people, and how they see and engage with the world. His recent work focuses on professional wrestling in Mexico, where the Fairbanks fought as the One-Eyed Cat (El Gato Tuerto) with a camera built into his mask. Fairbanks grew up in rural Nebraska until wrestling took him to Stanford, where he studied Art and the History of Science. In 2008, with support from the Javits Fellowship, he worked with Brussels-based SIC (Sound-Image-Culture) to learn experimental ethnographic film. In 2010 he received his MFA from the University of Michigan, and was selected by Werner Herzog to take part in the first Rogue Film School. He is currently preparing, and fundraising to wrestle and film his first feature.

MARYAM KASHANI is a filmmaker, and also studies anthropology and Arabic at the University of Texas in Austin. Currently, she is an instructor in the Asian American Studies department and a programmer for the Austin Asian American Film Festival. She received her MFA in Film/Video from the California Institute of the Arts. Her films and videos have screened internationally, and include the feature-length documentary Best in the West (2006) and the short films flat tire during a boxing match (1997), things lovely and dangerous still (2003), Las Callecitas y La Cañada (2009).

LINA VERCHERY is a Master of Divinity candidate in Buddhist Studies at Harvard University and a fellow at the Harvard Film Studies Center. She wrote and directed La Trappe/The Trap, a bilingual documentary short about Buddhist monks and Acadian lobster fishermen on Cape Breton island for the National Film Board of Canada, which won “Best French-Canadian Short Film” at the Festival International du Cinéma Francophone en Acadie (FICFA) in 2008. Lina also co-wrote and co-directed De Midi à Minuit, a documentary short about cab drivers in Montréal which won first prize in the Alliance Française’s Concours Senghor: a fully-financed trip to the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Her current film, undertaken with the support of the Pluralism Project and the Harvard Film Studies Center, is a docufiction featuring members of the Cambridge homeless community. Verchery is also currently preparing a chapter for a Religious Studies textbook on the study of Buddhism through film.