Red-End and the Seemingly Symbiotic Society (c) Morphosis
Lavinia Currier a native of The Plains, Virginia, is an active conservationist and farmer in Hawaii, Colorado, and Virginia. She is president of the Sacharuna Foundation and has had a long involvement with Tibet issues. As a filmmaker, she has traveled often with WWF to the Dzanga-Sangha region in the Central African Republic with an interest in filming the BaAka pygmies. She wrote and directed the feature film A Passion in the Desert.
Currier will be introducing Oka! Amerikee.
Karma Foley is an audiovisual archivist and freelance researcher, currently working for the Human Studies Film Archives (HSFA), Smithsonian Institution. She has processed two large moving image collections for the HSFA: the John Marshall Ju/'hoan Bushman Film and Video Collection and the Jorge Prelorán Collection. Prior to finding her calling as an archivist, Foley worked for nearly a decade in documentary film and television as an associate producer, assistant editor, and researcher. Among other projects, she assisted John Marshall in the completion of his six-hour documentary series, A Kalahari Family. Foley serves on the Board of Directors for Documentary Educational Resources. Her professional interests include documentary and ethnographic film, archives outreach, and digital repatriation of cultural materials.
Foley will be discussing Cochengo Miranda.
Abramson will be discussing CARBON FOR WATER.
Evan Abramson is an award-winning filmmaker and photographer born and based in New York City. Together with his wife Carmen Elsa Lopez, he writes, directs, shoots, edits and produces. In 2010 they formed Cows in the Field, a production house dedicated to telling the stories of people whose lives are impacted by social and environmental crises around the globe — and on finding solutions. Their 2011 documentary Carbon for Water premiered at the Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival in Toronto, winning Best International Short Film. Other awards include the Sir Edmund Hillary Award for Environmental Film at the Mountain Film Awards, Best Documentary Short at the California International Shorts Fest, Best Documentary at the Love Your Shorts Film Festival and Highly Commended at the Development and Climate Days Film Festival at COP17 in Durban. In 2010, Evan’s multimedia documentary When the Water Ends won Best Short Film at the Tutti nello stesso piatto International Food, Film & Videodiversity Festival and was also nominated for a Webby, a World Press Photo and an Online Journalism Award. A self-taught filmmaker, Evan was a photojournalist previously, and his images have been published widely, including The Atlantic, National Geographic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Guardian Weekend Magazine, FT Weekend, The Sunday Times, BBC Online and Courier Japan.
Brazilian-born Pedro Bara Neto has watched the changes that have taken place in the Amazon basin from both the perspective of the Brazilian Ministry of Planning, where he was senior officer for strategic investments, and from his current post in Washington, D.C. as Amazon policy director for the World Wildlife Fund. Among the forces he sees shaping the future of Amazonia are China’s appetite for soybeans; climate change; and energy projects that include oil and gas prospecting and a hydroelectric dam complex on Brazil’s Madeira River. Bara Neto urges alternative transportation and energy policies that emphasize conservation, efficiency and use of renewable sources, along with consensus-building based on a long-range ecological vision for the region. Any planning, he says, must involve local people and authorities, not just national government agencies. He is a civil engineer with a master’s degree in engineering management from Stanford University.
Bara-Neto will be partaking in a panel discussion following The Madeira River: Life Before the Dams.
Kaifa Anderson-Hall received her college degree in social work, but in 2005 decided to enroll in a master gardener program at the University of District of Columbia. During that time, she began volunteering as an instructor at the Washington Youth Garden. Today, she is the director for the Washington Youth Garden, a forty-year old education program at the US National Arboretum. The Washington Youth Garden is a living, breathing classroom for several of Washington’s urban children. The curricula incorporates understanding soil science, plant identification, developing edible crops from seedlings, deterring pests, and attracting pollinators, like bees or butterflies. The kids also learn food preparation and nutrition from beekeepers and health practitioners. DC celebrity chef Carla Hall is a staunch supporter of the Washington Youth Garden and gives cooking demonstrations. One of the highlights for the students is the day they prepare veggie pizzas with homemade tomato sauce – all hand-picked from their garden at the Arboretum.
Anderson-Hall will be discussing A Community of Gardeners on the 24th.
Katherine Bliss is deputy director and senior fellow with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center. She is also senior fellow with the CSIS Americas Program and directs the CSIS Project on Global Water Policy. Before joining CSIS, she was a foreign affairs officer at the U.S. Department of State, where she led work on environmental health for the Bureau of Oceans, Environment, and Science. In 2006, she received the Bureau’s Superior Honor Award for her work on environmental health, as well as avian and pandemic influenza preparedness. As a 2003–2004 Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow, Bliss served as a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, covering issues related to global health, international women’s issues, Mexico, and the Summit of the Americas. Previously, she served on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she held tenure and was associate professor. She is currently an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University and teaches courses in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Bliss is the author or coeditor of books, reviews, and articles on global water challenges, public health, gender, and development politics. She is a frequent public speaker and contributes regularly to print, radio, and television media coverage of water, global health, and Latin America issues. Bliss received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s Division of Social Sciences and was a David E. Bell fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Center for Population and Development Studies. She received her A.B. magna cum laude and her A.M. from Harvard University and studied at the Colegio de México in Mexico City.
Bliss will be partaking in a panel discussion as part of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Global Water and Population Program.
Lola Bloom has been interested in gardening for more reasons than her last name. Growing up in the Washington, D.C. area, she was able to watch and learn from her parents working in the back yard. Lola became involved with City Blossoms through CentroNia in 1999 while she worked with the youth summer program. After studying at Antioch College and Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts, she returned to the D.C. area in 2001 and joined dirt-loving forces with Rebecca Lemos. In addition to working as a full time art teacher (Congressional Schools of Virginia 2001-2005, International School of Curacao 2005-2007, Community Academy Public Charter school presently), Lola Bloom enjoys traveling around the world and baking cupcakes for well- behaved kids.
Bloom will be discussing A Community of Gardeners on the 25th.
Begun two years ago, writer and filmmaker Jon Bowermaster's most recent documentary, SoLa: Louisiana Water Stories, focused on the lives of Southern Louisianans whose lives depend on the sea. The filming concluded with the BP spill in the Gulf making it evermore relevant. The latest films from Jon and his team continue to garner praise, such as Terra Antarctica or What Would Darwin Think? Man v. Nature in the Galapagos. A six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council, his 2007-2008 Antarctic expedition was the final in his OCEANS 8 project, which over the past decade has taken him and his teams around the world by sea kayak, including expeditions to the Aleutian Islands, Vietnam, French Polynesia, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Gabon, Croatia and Tasmania. Seeing the world from the seat of a sea kayak over the past decade has given Bowermaster a one-of-a-kind look at both the health of the world's oceans and the lives of the nearly 3 billion people around the globe who depend on them. His reporting on the relationship between man and the sea continues with his blog – "Notes From Sea Level" (www.jonbowermaster.com) and at The Current (www.takepart.com/news/blog/current) - giving him a daily forum for continuing the conversation with a growing audience. Author of eleven books and producer of a dozen documentary films, when not on the sea Bowermaster lives in the Hudson Valley of New York.
Bowermaster will be introducing SoLa: Louisiana Water Stories.
In 1974, with support of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Lester Brown founded the Worldwatch Institute, the first research institute devoted to the analysis of global environmental issues. Brown has authored or coauthored 50 books. One of the world's most widely published authors, his books have appeared in some 40 languages. In May 2001, he founded the Earth Policy Institute to provide a vision and a road map for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy. He is the recipient of many prizes and awards, including 24 honorary degrees, a MacArthur Fellowship, the 1987 United Nations' Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal, and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize for his "exceptional contributions to solving global environmental problems." More recently, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Italy, the Borgström Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, and appointed an honorary professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Brown will be participating in a panel discussion following Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
Sibel Bulay is Director of the Center for Sustainable Transport Turkey (SUM-Türkiye).Prior to joining EMBARQ, Bulay worked in Product Development at Ford Motor Company. At Ford, in addition to product design and development in chassis and powertrain systems, she led sustainability initiatives, worked at the Ford Unlimited Think Tank, and was involved in integrating systems engineering into the product development process. Bulay was an instructor at the Middle East Technical University in Gaziantep, Turkey. Sibel Bulay holds master’s degrees in both business administration and mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan. She also holds a degree in communications from the State University of New York.
Bulay will be discussing Overdrive: Istanbul in the New Millennium.
Cintia Cabib is an independent producer, videographer and editor whose award-winning programs have aired on PBS affiliates and on cable television. Her videos have been screened at film festivals and have been purchased by non-profit organizations, school systems and libraries. Cintia’s programs have covered a variety of topics, including the history of an 88-year old carousel, health issues affecting African Americans, and the art of juggling. Her most recent documentary, A Community of Gardeners, explores how a common pursuit can bring a diverse group of people together to improve their lives and their communities.
Cabib will be discussing A Community of Gardeners after both showings.
As an award-winning photographer, author, lecturer, and environmental activist, Sebastian Copeland has made the fight for the protection of the environment his life’s work, in a way few have imagined. In 2009, Sebastian, a board member and tireless advocate for Global Green, traveled the Arctic with expedition partner Keith Heger on a journey to reach the North Pole, in hopes of raising awareness to climate change and its effects on the Arctic. The outcome of this voyage is the riveting documentary Into the Cold: A Journey of the Soul, that delves into the depth of the soul against the backdrop of the magnificent Great North, and exposes one poignant message: if the Great North goes, so does humanity. A graduate of UCLA Film School and the son of highly successful artists (his father is classical conductor Jean-Claude Casadesus, Director of the Lille National Philharmonic Orchestra), Sebastian—a British/French national relocated to NY and began his career directing music videos followed by commercials. Sebastian currently lives in Los Angeles.
Copeland will be discussing Into the Cold.
Conover will be discussing THE 7 SHELL PROJECT and EXPLORING BLOODY BAY WALL.
After graduating from Bowdoin College, David Conover worked as a professional seaman and spent five years designing and teaching sea courses for 14-18 year olds at the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School in Maine and Florida. This was followed by a Master's Degree in Education at Harvard, where he became a Kennedy School teaching fellow in leadership studies. In 1987, Conover directed and produced his first documentary, Outward Bound, which aired on National Geographic Explorer. David's subsequent early film experiences took him to a river in Kamchatka on a project for Channel 4/PBS. He also worked on a film about measuring Mt. Everest for PBS NOVA. He was introduced to the changing commercial fisheries, an interest he maintains to this day, through his work with PBS NOVA. His relationship with PBS programming continued with a six-show stint as a producer on the outdoor how-to series Trailside.
Maryanne Culpepper is Executive Vice President, Editorial and Business development. In this role she heads up development of NGT’s factual films and series and coordinates 360 media throughout National Geographic, utilizing Society-wide media, talent and marketing. Working closely with NGT’s editorial groups, Culpepper spearheads efforts toward long-range editorial planning and facilitating collaboration between various production units. In addition, she is responsible for developing and implementing financing strategies for film projects, taking the lead for NGT in finding new broadcast partners and funding opportunities. Prior to joining National Geographic as director of story development in 1996, Culpepper served as research director for WUFT in Gainesville, Florida analyzing ratings data and conducting audience research. She produced nonfiction films for PBS for 10 years, winning Emmy awards in documentary and children’s programming. In 1988 she established and served as executive producer for Graffiti Works, a film and video production company based in Orlando, Fla., and Washington, D.C.
Culpepper will be partaking in the panel discussion program Ok, I've watched the film, now what?
Cosima Dannoritzer is a director specialising in history, ecology and science who has made films for a range of broadcasters in the U.K., Germany and Spain. Her CV includes Rebuilding Berlin, which she directed and co-produced for the Channel 4 science slot Equinox, The Duel which she produced for Channel 4 History (nominated for a BBC Indie Award) and the BBC series Germany Inside Out. Her documentary If Rubbish Could Speak (El que la brossa ens diu, TVE Spain) presents a portrait of the city of Barcelona via its rubbish containers. What would the archaeologists be able to learn from the rubbish we discard every day? The film has won several awards and was screened widely at international environmental film festivals. Electronic Amnesia (L'amnèsia electrònica, TVE Spain) offers a reflection about our personal memories and the fact that most of them are increasingly stored in electronic form, using formats which are rapidly becoming obsolete. Will we leave any memories for future generations, or will they inherit stacks of illegible disks, tapes and documents? With The Light Bulb Conspiracy, Cosima Dannoritzer continues to explore the themes of sustainability and our relationship with modern technology.
Dannoritzer will be discussing The Light Bulb Conspiracy.
Fred de Sam Lazaro is director of the Project for Under-Told Stories at St. John's University, in Collegeville, Minnesota, a program that combines international journalism and teaching. He has served with The NewsHour since 1985 and is a regular contributor and substitute anchor for PBS' Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. He also has directed films from India and the Democratic Republic of Congo for the acclaimed documentary series, Wide Angle. Fred has reported from 35 countries: from Haiti to sub-Saharan Africa to south Asia, he has focused on stories that are under-reported in the mainstream U.S. media. In addition to regularly covering AIDS, public health concerns, development issues and social entrepreneurship, he led the first American crew to report on the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region. Fred is the recipient of an honorary doctorate, numerous journalism awards and media fellowships from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the University of Michigan. He is a trustee at the College of St Scholastica, in Duluth, MN, his alma mater. He also has served on the boards of the Asian American Journalists Association and the Children¹s Law Center of Minnesota. He will be this year's commencement speaker at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Fred was born in Bangalore, India and lives in St Paul.
de Sam Lazaro will be partaking in a panal discussion as part of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Global Water and Population program
A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1998, Sam has been working in documentary film and television ever since. With fellow filmmaker Paul Lovelace, Sam made the feature length documentary The Holy Modal Rounders... Bound To Lose, chronicling the surreal saga of the infamous bad boys of folk, The Holy Modal Rounders. Sam was also an editor for Left Of The Dial, a feature documentary about Air America Radio that aired on HBO in March and April of 2005 and is now available on DVD. He also edited a short documentary produced by the Anti-Defamation League, which won a 2005 Telly Award. In 2006 he edited and co-produced Near Life Experience, a feature documentary about Dan Asher, a volatile New York artist who struggles with autism and other psychological disorders. Sam has taught film and video editing in the Department of Radio Television Film at the University of Texas, and recently edited Along Came Kinky, a film scheduled to come out next year following musician/ writer/ raconteur Kinky Friedman and his run for governor of Texas in 2006.
Douglas will be discussing Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio.
Julie A. Dunfey began her association with Ken Burns and Florentine Films in 1986 as a co-producer of The Civil War and Thomas Hart Benton. Thomas Hart Benton, which was broadcast in 1989, received a CINE Golden Eagle and a Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival. The Civil War, for which Julie received an Emmy and a Christopher Award, premiered in 1990 and became the most highly rated series in PBS history. Through the 1990s and the first few years of this century, Julie stayed at home with her three children. She was a consultant on Mark Twain; Jazz; Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony; Horatio’s Drive; and The War, all Florentine Films productions. During this time she also served on the boards of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and the Conservation Law Foundation, and for eleven years as a trustee at Phillips Exeter Academy, the last four as vice-president. She returned to Florentine Films as a co-producer for The National Parks: America’s Best Idea in 2006, which was awarded a CINE Golden Eagle and an Emmy for Outstanding Nonfiction Series. Julie Dunfey is now producing The Dust Bowl, scheduled for national PBS broadcast in 2012. She lives in New Hampshire with her family. She is a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Dartmouth College, and received her M.A. in history from Stanford University.
Dunfey will be discussing National Parks: This is America.
Steve Dunsky has been a writer/producer/director with the U.S. Forest Service for the past 15 years. He collaborates with his wife, Ann, who works for the agency as an editor. Their productions are shown in visitor centers from Washington, D.C., to Washington state and from Alaska to Indonesia. Several of their programs have been presented on public and cable television, and the pair has won several awards for their work.
Steven and Ann Dunsky will be discussing Green Fire: The Life and Legacy of Aldo Leopold.
Kevin Finneran has been editor-in-chief of “Issues in Science and Technology” since 1991. “Issues” is the quarterly policy journal published by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and University of Texas at Dallas. Prior to that, he was Washington editor of High Technology magazine, a correspondent for the London Financial Times energy newsletters, and a consultant on science and technology policy. His clients included the National Science Foundation, the Office of Technology Assessment, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Prior to launching his career in science and technology policy he taught literature and film studies at Rutgers University. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the author of The Federal Role in Research and Development (National Academy Press, 1985) and a contributing author to Future R&D Environments: A Report to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (National Academy Press, 2002).
Finneran will be moderating two panel discussions: one following Cites on Speed: Bogotá Change, the other following Melbourne Reborn and New Orleans - The Water Line.
Called "Her Deepness" by the New Yorker and the New York Times, "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress and "Hero for the Planet" by Time, Earle is an oceanographer, explorer, author and lecturer with a deep commitment to research through personal exploration. Earle's work has been at the frontier of deep ocean exploration for four decades. Earle has led more than 50 expeditions worldwide involving more than 6,000 hours underwater. In 1979, Sylvia Earle walked untethered on the sea floor at a lower depth than any other woman before or since. In the 1980s she started the companies Deep Ocean Engineering and Deep Ocean Technologies with engineer Graham Hawkes to design and build undersea vehicles that allow scientists to work at previously inaccessible depths. In the early 1990s, Earle served as Chief Scientist of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. At present she is an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society.
Earle will be discussing Mission Blue.
Larry Engel is a producer, writer, director, and cinematographer with nearly 30 years of documentary filmmaking experience spanning all seven continents. He was an adjunct professor of film at Columbia University's film division in the School of the Arts, where he had taught since 1976. In 2003, he received a Columbia University Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. He helped establish Panasonic Kid Witness News, a world-wide outreach program that empowers disadvantaged youth to use new technology to explore their world. Larry Engel has been honored with a host of nominations and awards, including a Daytime Emmy for Best Cinematography, a AAAS-Westinghouse Science Journalism Award for excellence in science writing for television, and the Mountain Spirit award from Mountainfilm in Telluride.
Engel will be discussing The River Why and Greenlit.
Marc Francis and Nick Francis are independent documentary filmmakers. They began their careers making short documentaries concerning social, global and human rights stories before developing feature-length productions for international audiences. They previously worked together on a film titled Nuke UK (2001). Their work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, the Channel 4 British Documentary Film Foundation, the UK Film Council and the DocFactory.
Nick Francis will be discussing When China Met Africa.
Luke Gasser was born in 1966 in Lungern, Obwalden, Switzerland. From 1983-1987 he trained as a sculptor at the University in Lucerne of Applied Sciences and Arts. Since 1991 Luke Gasser has been an independent Sculptor, Painter and Musician and since 1999 he has become more and more interested in Film. At the moment, he lives in Kaegiswil, Obwalden.
Gasser will be discussing Bodmers Journey.
Peter Galison is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. His work explores the complex interaction between the three principal subcultures of physics--experimentation, instrumentation, and theory. His books include: “How Experiments End” (1987), “Image and Logic” (1997), “Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps” (2003) and, with Lorraine Daston, “Objectivity” (2007), and (among others) the co-edited “Architecture of Science”, “Picturing Science, Producing Art”, “Scientific Authorship”, “and Einstein for the 21st Century”. He has made two documentary films: Ultimate Weapon: The H-bomb Dilemma (2000), and Secrecy (about national security secrecy and democracy), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008. At present, he is completing a book, “Building Crashing Thinking” (on technologies that re-form the self) and has begun a new documentary film project on the long-term storage of nuclear waste.
Galison will be lecturing at the Wasteland and WIlderness program.
Pertula George is excited to serve as the new Executive Director of Common Good. She comes to Common Good via The Food Project in Massachusetts where she spent six years managing youth programs and working with volunteers to plant, weed and harvest sustainably grown fruits and vegetables. She holds a Masters Degree in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University’s Heller School of Social Policy and Management. She has served as a school teacher and co-founder of a youth and agriculture project in St. Lucia. Working with diverse people has reinforced her commitment to building strong communities and creating social change.
Geroge will be discussing A Community of Gardeners on the 24th.
Environmental filmmaker John Grabowska has produced films from the subarctic to the subtropics. His films have won awards at festivals around the world and have been nationally broadcast as primetime specials on PBS. He has been a guest lecturer at the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution and many universities, and has led environmental media workshops in Argentina and Panama.
Grabowska will be discussing Sky Island and Ribbon of Sand.
A Canadian film director, Gunnarsson was born in Iceland in 1951. He moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, with his parents when he was seven years old. As he grew up he became interested in filmmaking and went to the University of British Columbia where he completed undergraduate studies in English literature and graduate work in film studies. Part of the graduate program requires the production of a film. His, A Day Much Like the Others, went on to win top honors at the Canadian Student Film Festival and the European Student Film Festival. It was also screened at the Museum of Modern Art. With his formal education behind him, Sturla moved to Toronto and joined the National Film Board (NFB). His first NFB project, After the Axe, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature. He has since won a number of awards including Emmy, Genie and Gemini Awards, a Prix Italia, and the Prix Villes de Cannes. His documentary about David Suzuki, Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie, won the People’s Choice Documentary Award at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival.
Gunnarsson will be discussing Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie.
David E. Guggenheim is a marine scientist, conservation policy specialist, submarine pilot and ocean explorer. He is president of 1planet1ocean, a project of The Ocean Foundation where he is a Senior Fellow and director of its Cuba Marine and Conservation Program. He is leading the Trinational Intitiative for Marine Science & Conservation in the Gulf of Mexico & Western Caribbean, a major project to elevate collaboration in marine science and conservation among Cuba, Mexico and the U.S. to a new level. He is also leading the first-ever comprehensive research and conservation program in Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico region, a joint effort with the University of Havana. Also known as the “Ocean Doctor” and host of The Ocean Doctor radio show and the ExpeditionCasts podcast series, David Guggenheim plays a key role in public outreach and education about the oceans. He makes frequent television and radio appearances, having recently appeared on ABC's Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. Guggenheim previously served as Vice President at The Ocean Conservancy, President & CEO of The Conservancy of Southwest Florida, co-chair of the Everglades Coalition and president of the Friends of Channel Islands National Park. Guggenheim holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Public Policy from George Mason University in Virginia, a Master’s in Aquatic and Population Biology from University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Master’s in Regional Science and Bachelor’s in Environmental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
Guggenheim will be discussing Cuba: The Accidental Eden.
Les Guthman is a film director and producer with 28 feature-length expedition, adventure and environmental documentaries to his name. Guthman’s film Farther Than the Eye Can See was nominated for two Emmy Awards in 2004; it also received 18 international film festival awards and has had over 200 film festival screenings since 2002. His work on Into the Tsangpo Gorge and on Further than the Eye Can See were both honored by Men’s Journal magazine in 2005 as part of the 20 Top Adventure DVDs of All Time. Guthman’s work on his film Messner (2002) was the first documentary about Reinhold Messner, the world’s greatest mountain climber, and became an opening night selection at the Mountainfilm Telluride Festival in 2004. The Waterkeepers (2000) is Guthman’s second highly regarded environmental film done in conjunction with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., following The Hudson Riverkeepers (1998).
Guthman will be discussing The Waterkeepers, With Robert F. Kennedy Jr..
Mary Hardcastle is an award winning filmmaker of two feature length narratives Mixed Blessings and The Visit about juggling family and the natural world. Mary is also manager of Environmental Education for the Parks and People Foundation and is a guiding member of the Greater Baltimore Children & Nature Collaborative.
Hardcastle will discussing Mother Nature's Child.
Edgar B. Howard is the Founder and President of Checkerboard Films, a non-profit foundation established in 1979 to document the American arts for archival and educational purposes. He has produced and/or directed over 45 films, beginning with his first profile on painter Brice Marden in 1977. Films on Roy Lichtenstein, Harry Callahan, Philip Johnson, The Paris Review, Ellsworth Kelly, Rudy Burckhardt, Kiki Smith, John Szarkowski, Sir John Soane and Vincent Scully reflect the wide range of artistic endeavors Howard has chosen to explore - from photography and painting to architecture, music, and literature. These profiles are distributed through the Foundation’s website to a broad range of educational institutions (museums, universities and libraries), film festivals, and cable and public television in the U.S. and abroad.
Howard will be introducing and discussing Vincent Scully: An Art Historian Among Architechts.
Laura Israel grew up in New Jersey and earned a degree in film from New York University before editing music videos for such artists as Lou Reed, Keith Richards, New Order, and Sonic Youth, among others. She has also edited many films, including The Present (1996), True Story (2004), Music of Regret (2006), Africa Unite: A Celebration of Bob Marley’s 60th Birthday (2008), and Life for a Child (2008). Windfall (2010) is her directorial debut.
Israel will be discussing Windfall.
Christopher Jenks serves as director of Cooperative Research Programs for the TRB, a unit of the National Academies in Washington, DC. In this capacity, he is responsible for administering five cooperative research programs with a combined annual budget of about $67 million. Each cooperative research program provides industry-driven, problem-solving applied research to a particular segment of the transportation industry, including State departments of transportation, public transportation operators, airports, and the freight and hazardous materials transportation communities. Research programs administered include the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, Transit Cooperative Research Program, Airport Cooperative Research Program, National Cooperative Freight Research Program, and Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program. In the past, Jenks served as an associate director for business planning and development at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and chief of transit service planning and operations for the Fairfax County (VA) Department of Transportation in suburban Washington, DC. He also held positions with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission in western Massachusetts and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. He has an engineering degree from Cornell University.
Jenks will be participating in a panel discussion following Cities on Speed: Bogotá Change.
Graduating from Sussex University with a BA Honours in English and French Max Jourdan went on to study for a Master of Arts in Photography at the Royal College of Art, London. Prior to the Plastiki expedition Max has worked on many groundbreaking and thought provoking documentaries. Often travelling all over the globe Max works through his own production company, Max Jourdan Productions Ltd, and with broadcasters such as National Geographic, Discovery, BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Al Jazeera and Arte to name a few. Currently he has two other feature documentaries in production and has previously undertaken the roles of self shooting producer, director, presenter, filmmaker and photographer finding great success in each sphere.
Jourdan will be discussing Voyage of the Plastiki.
A journalist and filmmaker, Bagassi Koura is a graduate of the University of California Berkeley School of Journalism. He has worked as a correspondent in Africa, Europe and the United States, covering international news items for major global media networks. His stories have appeared on PBS Frontline/World, Agence France Presse, the Deutsche Welle, Reuters Television, Die Tageszeitung, Panos Institute West Africa, Afrikanet.info, and Afrik.com. The Stinking Ship is his most recent film.
Bagassi will be participating in a panel dicussion after Black Wave - The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez and The Stinking Ship.
Zacharia Kunuk is president of Igloolik Isuma Productions, Canada’s first Inuit-owned independent production company, co-founded in 1990 with the late Paul Apak, the late Pauloosie Qulitalik and Norman Cohn. Besides being a filmmaker, Zacharias has been active in his community work. He has served on the Boards of Igloolik's Hunters and Trappers Organization and Radio Society; was elected to several terms as Hamlet Councillor including acting as Deputy Mayor; was appointed to the Board of Nunavut Arctic College; and is currently on the Board of Nunavut Development Corporation. From 1983-1991 he worked for Inuit Broadcasting Corporation in Igloolik, as producer, then senior producer and finally station manager. Kunuk also is producer of The Fast Runner Trilogy, three ground-breaking Inuit-language feature films that have received worldwide audience acclaim: Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, for which Zunuk received the Camera d’Or from the Cannes Film Festival in 2001, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006) and Before Tomorrow (2009). Besides winning numerous film prizes during the past ten years, Zach is a winner of the National Arts Award and National Aboriginal Achievement Award; in 2005 was named an Officer of the Order of Canada; and in 2008 awarded an Honorary Doctor of Law degree from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.
Kunuk will be discussing Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change via Skype.
Over a decade ago Rebecca Lemos was asked if she would like to do a small gardening project with a group of kids in a local community center. From that point on she grew to see urban gardening as a way to combine her interests in art, community participation and everything green. Since then Rebecca has worked with children and youth of all ages. Rebecca has a BA from Fordham University, an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and was recently received an Honorable Mention for Education Award from Garden Crusaders, a national community gardening award.
Lemos will be discussing A Community of Gardeners on the 25th.
Lisa Linowes is an expert on the impacts of industrial-scale wind energy development on the natural environment, communities, and the regional grid systems. A conservation and land use advocate with over 20 years of executive business experience, Ms. Linowes has held high-profile elected and volunteer positions in community planning, land negotiation, and education outreach. Since its formation in 2006, Ms. Linowes has served as Executive Director and spokesperson for the Industrial Wind Action (IWA) Group, a national advocacy focused on the impact/benefits analysis and policy issues associated with industrial wind energy development. As publisher and editor of the IWA website, she tracks news and research pertaining to industrial wind, and facilitates information sharing on the issue.
Linowes will be discussing Windfall.
Lopez will be discussing CARBON FOR WATER.
Award-winning filmmaker Carmen Elsa Lopez was born in Lima, Peru. Her nomadic life began a few months after, when her family moved to Switzerland, Panama, Argentina, Honduras, Brazil, France, Belgium and the United States. She draws her sensibilities to characters from her experiences living amongst many different cultures and communities. In 2010 she and her husband Evan Abramson formed Cows in the Field, a production house dedicated to telling the stories of people whose lives are impacted by social and environmental crises around the globe — and on finding solutions. Their 2011 documentary Carbon for Water premiered at the Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival in Toronto, winning Best International Short Film. Other awards include the Sir Edmund Hillary Award for Environmental Film at the Mountain Film Awards, Best Documentary Short at the California International Shorts Fest, Best Documentary at the Love Your Shorts Film Festival and Highly Commended at the Development and Climate Days Film Festival at COP17 in Durban. Prior to filmmaking, Carmen worked in journalism, marketing and as an aid worker in post-earthquake Haiti. She studied film at NYU and the School of Visual Arts and holds a B.A. in Political Science from The Catholic University and a certificate in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University.
MacEachern will be participating in the panel discussion Ok, I've Watched the Film, Now What?
Diane MacEachern is an award-winning entrepreneur, in-demand public speaker and leading green expert. She is founder of Big Green Purse, the only company in the U.S. dedicated specifically to transforming women's environmental concerns into measurable improvements in our quality of life. A best-selling author, Diane's how to go green books, including “Big Green Purse,” have collectively sold almost a half-million copies. For three years, Diane wrote "Tips for Planet Earth," a weekly green living column that was nationally syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. Diane lives with her husband and two children in the energy-efficient home they helped design and build in 1985.
Anne Makepeace has been a writer, producer, and director of award-winning independent films for more than twenty years. She has twice been a writer/director fellow at the Sundance Institute’s June laboratory, and served on the Sundance 2001 Film Festival’s documentary jury. In addition to PBS, her films have been broadcast on Showtime, Bravo, HBO, NHK, the BBC, Channel 4 (UK), ABC Australia, ZDF Germany, Thames Television (UK) and many other networks around the world. In addition to many festivals, her films have been screened at the Whitney Biennial, the Smithsonian, the Musée de l’Homme, the Museum of the American Indian, and many other museums, schools, colleges, and movie theaters around the country. Her work has been funded by the Pulitzer Foundation, the Sundance Documentary Fund, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ITVS, the NEA, the NEH, the Ford Foundation, American Masters, Showtime Networks Inc., HBO, A&E, and the American Film Institute. She has twice been a writer/director fellow at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, and served on the Sundance 2001 Film Festival’s documentary jury.
Makepeace will be discussing We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân and I.M. Pei: Bulding China Modern.
Ian Mauro is a forthcoming Canada Research Chair in "human dimensions of environmental change" at Mount Allison University, in New Brunswick. He is both a researcher and filmmaker, with a PhD in environmental science, and his work focuses on hunter, farmer and fisher knowledge regarding environmental change, specifically issues related to food security and global warming. As part of his doctorate, he co-directed Seeds of Change, a highly controversial film that was banned from being released by the University of Manitoba, and created one of the largest academic freedom battles in Canada. For his post-doctorate, Mauro teamed up with Zacharias Kunuk and Igloolik Isuma Productions to develop Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, the world's first Inuktitut language film on the topic.
Mauro will be discussing Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change.
McDonald has taught at University post-graduate level at Drury College, Springfield, Missouri. He taught and supervised the Advanced Areas Studies Course for Francophone Africa at the Foreign Service Institute, Washington, DC. McDonald has guest lectured at several universities and institutions, including the National War College, Georgetown University, and Yale University, amongst others. He received is BA in French and Political Science from Southwest Missouri State University. From there, he did his graduate studies, focusing on East European History at the University of Missouri. He received his MA in African Politics in the School or Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He is currently Director of the African Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
McDonald will be discussing When China Met Africa.
Ed Merrifield is the Potomac Riverkeeeper. For six years, he has worked full-time on behalf of water quality and other environmental issues for the Sierra Club. As a forceful and effective leader at the grassroots, regional, and state levels, he has advanced an environmental agenda before governmental and non-governmental organizations. Ed also has experience with Clean Water Act enforcement, especially with the Total Maximum Daily Load and National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit issues. His love of the Potomac and his actions on its behalf make him the ideal candidate to coordinate anti-pollution efforts in our large watershed. Before entering the environmental field, Ed owned and operated a successful Chiropractic practice for twenty years, giving him the administrative and managerial know-how to run a rapidly developing organization.
Merrifield will be discussing The Waterkeepers, With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr..
For over 30 years Allen Moore has been active as an independent filmmaker - producing, directing, photographing, and editing his own 16mm documentary work. In addition to pursuing his film production career, Moore served as a full-time visiting faculty member of the Electronic Media and Film Department at Towson University during the fall of 2004 and spring of 2005. Since the fall of 2004, he has also served as an adjunct faculty member in the Video Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Moore has served as a director of photography for several of Ken Burns ward-winning historical films shown on PBS; he has received fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maryland State Arts Council. He has been the director of photography on many successful documentaries. Moore's cinematography on Wild by Law helped it earn an Academy Award Nomination in the Documentary Feature category in 1992. Moore received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Cinematography for his work on the Ken Burns' series Baseball in 1995. He received another Primetime Emmy Award nomination in August, 2000 for his cinematography work on Ric Burns' American Experience series New York. Most recently, his cinematography on the Nebraska ETV/American Experience program Monkey Trial helped it earn a George Foster Peabody Award for 2002.
Moore will be discussing Out To Pasture: The Future of Farming?
Rebecca Messner is a first time filmmaker, and an Olmsted enthusiast. As a writer, Rebecca’s work has appeared in “Johns Hopkins Magazine,” “Urbanite Magazine” and “Time Out New York.”
Messner will be discussing Olmsted and America's Urban Parks.
Marina S. Moses joined the Policy and Global Affairs Division of the National Academies as the Director for the Science and Technology for Sustainability Program in June 2009. Prior to joining the Academies, she served on the faculty of The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. At the University, Moses was the Director of the Doctoral Program and the Practicum Coordinator for the graduate program. She was the recipient of the 2005 Pfizer Scholar in Public Health Award and has worked in emergency preparedness and communication with communities on public health issues. Before joining the faculty at the George Washington University, Moses held senior scientific positions in the Environmental Management Division of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and in the Superfund Program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a Regional office. Prior to her experience at DOE, she served as the senior human health risk assessor in the New York City Office of EPA's Superfund Program where she worked on risk assessments that addressed abandoned hazardous waste sites and developed national guidance and policies in this area. Marina S. Moses received her Bachelor of Arts (Chemistry) and her Master of Science (Environmental Health Sciences) degrees from Case Western Reserve University. She received her Doctorate of Public Health (Environmental Health Sciences) from Columbia University School of Public Health.
Moses will be participating in a panel discussion following the screening of two "E2 Design: The Economics of Sustainable Living": Melbourne Reborn and New Orleans - The Water Line.
A self-taught environmentalist, Bob Nixon spent more than 15 years behind the camera producing films and television programs depicting some of the earth's most endangered ecosystems and species. In 1979, Nixon traveled to Rwanda to produce a documentary about famed zoologist Dian Fossey. Nixon asked the gorilla activist if he could make a movie about her life. Fossey said yes, provided he dedicate one year of his life to an environmental project. Nixon's film career was budding in the early 1990s when he heard about the garbage-choked Anacostia River, which runs through Washington, D.C. Nixon decided that cleaning up the river would be his environmental project in honor of Fossey. In 1992, he stepped out from behind the camera, taking the reins of the Earth Conservation Corps (ECC), a nonprofit organization that teaches disadvantaged youth job skills by putting them to work cleaning up the environment. Nixon intended to spend a year on the project, but more than a decade later, he remains the group's impassioned leader.
Nixon will be discussing Mission Blue.
Cathe Neukum has been creating, supervising and overseeing award-winning non-fiction programming for over twenty-five years, traveling the world documenting a range of stories and creating media that matters. She bring creative vision and a distinctive perspective to all her projects. Her most recent film, Nature’s Greatest Defender profiles the life and work of world-renowned conservationist Dr. George Schaller; it aired on the National Geographic Channel, December 2009 (produced with The Really Interesting Picture Co.). As the Vice President for Turner Original Productions (a division of TBS) She oversaw the Natural History Unit and Executive Produced Wild!Life Adventures, a unique series dedicated to the environment. She’s been a consulting EP for the Alternative Programming department at Court TV (now TruTV) and produced primetime programming for A&E, Discovery, MTV, the BBC and National Geographic. She recently developed and created the health and wellness initiative for Gaiam, a lifestyle media company, which included DVDs and media for web and commercial sales.
Neukum will be discussing Nature's Greatest Defender.
David Novack has been a producer, post supervisor, and associate producer for a number of documentary films and television series, including the historical documentary, Songs of Odessa, the acclaimed Showtime/United Nations series, What’s Going On and two episodes of PBS/WGBH’s Frontline. Novack has written for 4 Kids Entertainment and BNN/Camera Planet. In audio post, Novack has enjoyed a successful career as a re-recording mixer/sound designer, recently adding a major new opera by Roger Waters to his credits. He received a Bachelors of Science in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and a degree in music from Berklee College of Music. Burning the Future: Coal in America is Novack’s first film as a Director.
Novack will be discussing Burning the Future: Coal in America.
Risteard Ó Domhnaill grew up in Tipperary, Ireland and studied theoretical physics at Trinity College in Dublin. He has worked as a news cameraman for Irish national broadcasters. He served as cinematographer and director on The Pipe.
Ó Domhnaill will be discussing The Pipe.
Piedmont-Palladino is an architect and curator at the National Building Museum. Since joining the Museum in 2002, she has served as guest curator for Tools of the Imagination and consulting curator for Masonry Variations and Big & Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century. Her most recent exhibition, Green Community, was featured at the Museum from October 2008 through November 2009. She is also a professor of architecture at Virginia Tech’s Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center. Some of her research interests include: American urbanism, sustainable design, political space, and fostering a public discourse about the value of the built environment.
Piedmont-Palladino will be discussing Rick Joy: Interludes and Kieran TImberlake: Loblolly House.
Christian Poirier has over nine years of experience in the fields of international development and advocacy focusing on agrarian and social justice issues. His work in Latin America has centered on Brazil where he assisted the Landless Workers Movement and the government's Zero Hunger program. While in West Africa Christian coordinated rural development projects that included creating educational modules on small business management that are now used in several countries. He is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, and French.
Poirier will be participating in a panel discussion following The Madeira River: Life After the Dams.
Ann Johnson Prum has worked as a cinematographer for wildlife and science documentaries, shooting film and directing photography for PBS, National Geographic Explorer, Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, and TBS. Coneflower Films, the film and production company that grew out of Anne's award-winning cinematography, produces television programs that explore science, wildlife, and the environment. Since founding Coneflower in 1996, under its banner Ann has produced and directed programs for Home & Garden Television, Martha Stewart Television, The Learning Channel, PBS, and the celebrity-hosted, award-winning TBS series Wildlife Adventures.
Prum will be discussing Hummingbirds: Magic in the Air.
Jennifer Redfearn’s professional life has been largely shaped by four years of international travel and work experience. She has crewed a sailboat passage from Australia to Indonesia, worked as a film extra in Egypt and studied Hindu philosophy at the foot of the Himalayan Mountains. A love of storytelling, curiosity, and creativity led her to documentary filmmaking, and for the past six years she has worked on productions for PBS, cable networks, independent and educational distribution. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from Wellesley College and a Master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University.
Redfearn will be discussing Sun Come Up.
During his total of 23 years living in Saudi Arabia, Mr. Renfro has interacted with all levels of Saudi Arabian society. Mr. Renfro’s career began in the United States where he worked for Socal nearly a decade; he then spent 15 years with Aramco in Saudi Arabia. His responsibilities in this capacity kept him in frequent contact with the King, the Royal Court, cabinet ministers, and the Saudi Arabian military. El Salvador and Nicaragua in Central America were the next stops on Mr. Renfro’s itinerary, where he spent eight years with Compania Petrolera Chevron. In 1975 Mr. Renfro established and became Vice President and in-country head of Arabian Chevron Oil Company, a subsidiary of Chevron. His activities included Saudi Arabian operations and government relations at all levels. Mr. Renfro retired in 1983 and currently resides in Arizona. He has maintained close ties since that time with his contacts in the Saudi Arabian business and government communities, and did consulting work in Saudi Arabia in 1988 and 1990. He often lectures on his experiences relating to Saudi Arabia.
Renfro will be introducing Arabia 3D.
An environmental activist from Quebec, he has spent years campaigning for change in his hometown of Trois-Pistoles. However, while Rioux is a firm believer in grassroots action, as the world moved into the 21st Century he decided issues of sustainability and carbon reduction were of global importance and the time had come for activism on behalf of the Earth to take a worldwide perspective. Filmmaker Sylvie Van Brabant followed Rioux in his efforts to boost awareness of the international impact of climate change and waste, and the documentary Earth Keepers chronicles Rioux's mission, offers advice on what can be done to help, and gives a number of activists an opportunity to discuss the economic and political realities behind the current environmental crisis. Produced with the participation of the National Film Board of Canada, Earth Keepers was an official selection at the 2009 Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival.
Rioux will be discussing Earth Keepers: A Survival Guide for a Planet in Peril.
Jason Robey is an award-winning Senior Interactive Producer for Animal Planet and Discovery Channel. He has over 12 years of experience working in the cable industry, and 11 in the field of digital media. Jason Robey specializes in producing digital content about wild animals and wildlife issues for an entertainment audience. Websites that he's produced include the ones for the following series: LIFE and Shark Week for Discovery Channel; Whale Wars and River Monsters for Animal Planet.
Robey will be participating in the Ok, I've Watched the Film, Now What? panel discussion.
Tonje Hessen Shei is a Norwegian filmmaker with experience as a producer, director, and reporter from NRK, the Norwegian National Broadcasting Network. She recently completed her masters in film from NTNU, the University of Trondheim in Norway, and has a BA in film production from the University of Texas in Austin. She also has a degree in social anthropology from NTNU. Throughout her studies, Tonje focused on the role of independent media in social change, fight for justice and human rights. She has been interested in the US media situation for twelve years, and has been specifically concerned with the corporate ownership of the media. Tonje brings a new perspective, as her Norwegian background gives her a distinct critical take on media ownership and information control. She has been heavily immersed in the corporate war coverage for three years, and has worked within and explored the media democracy movement throughout this process. Tonje is the co-founder and a director of Anthropos Music, a non-profit organization based in Austin, Texas, which works with low-income schools, giving music lessons to at-risk youth, exposing them to cultural diversity through music while providing them a way to express themselves creatively. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon.
Schei will be discussing Play Again.
Laura Seltzer has been producing, directing and managing the production of award-winning documentaries and educational programs since 1993. She founded Seltzer Film & Video in 1995 for the purpose of producing social action videos that inspire change. Currently producing the PBS documentary The Last Boat Out, slated to air on PBS in the spring. Seltzer is the senior producer on the 26-episode Television Series Made in Spain that aired on PBS. Her company, Seltzer Film & Video produces the annual Conversations series about coping with mental illness for the American Psychiatric Foundation. She Co-Produced the multi-award winning interactive DVD Changing the Face of Medicine with MacNeil Lehrer Productions and the accompanying series Local Legends for the National Institutes of Health. Both projects profile courageous female physicians that have made an invaluable impact on the lives of people in their communities and around the world. She has produced numerous TV segment for the PBS series Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, the RLTV Channel and the NBC series Hispanics Today. Laura Seltzer is a freelance Documentary Filmmaker, Photographer and Location Scout based in Washington, DC. She began her career in New York after studying filmmaking at New York University.
Seltzer will be introducing The Last Boat Out.
Bojic will be discussing THERE ONCE WAS AN ISLAND (TE HENUA E NOHO).
Jasmina Bojic is the Founder and Executive Director of the United Nations Association Film Festival. She was born and raised in the former Yugoslavia where she attended law school and worked with a well-known radio and television reporter. In 1989, she went to Stanford University where today she teaches documentary filmmaking with a focus on human rights issues. In 1997, she created the United Nations Association Film Festival. The Festival is an all-volunteer effort by Jasmina Bojic, its founder and executive director, and the student members of the Stanford Film Society.
After serving as a marine biologist and environmental educator for the Smithsonian Institution and Discovery Channel for many years, Dottie became the Anacostia Riverkeeper and Executive Director in 2008. She is a life-long resident of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and a 15-year resident of the Anacostia Watershed. She received her Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology from the University of Maryland and a Masters of Divinity from Wesley Theological Seminary. In 2009, she was awarded the Living Legend Award by Living Classrooms for her dedication to the Anacostia River.
Yunger will be discussing The Waterkeepers, With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Marc Wolfensberger is a journalist and film director. Over the past 10 years, he’s mainly covered breaking news in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. He was posted in Central Asia, Afghanistan and the South Caucasus for a series of print and broadcast medias. A French-speaking Swiss national, fluent in English and German, he also opened and managed the Bloomberg News bureau in Tehran for almost three years. In 2006, he set up his own production company and has since worked with European TV networks such as ARTE and Swiss Television TSR/SF1. His film Oil Rocks: City Above the Sea will be awarded the annual Polly Krakora award for artistry in film during the 2011 Environmental Film Festival.
Wolfensberger will be discussing Oil Rocks: City Above the Sea.
American biologist, researcher (sociobiology, biodiversity), theorist (consilience, biophilia), naturalist (conservationist) and author, E.O. Wilson’s biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. He is known for his career as a scientist, his advocacy for environmentalism, and his secular-humanist and deist ideas pertaining to religious and ethical matters. As of 2007, he is Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism.
Wilson will be present to host a lecture and book signing.
Jonathan Wickham is based in Atlanta, Georgia. Born in Malawi, Africa, educated in the UK, he started working in television at Turner Broadcasting. Through his production company ZoëTV, he has written and produced critically acclaimed television documentaries on a variety of subjects including Renzo Piano: Designing a Village for the Arts, co-produced with Red Sky Productions. He also regularly produces programs for prominent Atlanta-based groups like CDC and the High Museum of Art. Wickham’s broadcast production credits include two episodes for NOVA, PBS’s flagship science series, Lincoln’s Secret Weapon and The Mummy Who Would Be King; for the History Channel, a one-hour special, Titanic’s Tragic Sister, an episode of the series, Tougher in Alaska, and five episodes of the series, Deep Sea Detectives; and Living on the Moon, an upcoming episode of the science series Naked Science for the National Geographic Channel.
Wickham will be participating in a panel discussion as part of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Global Water and Population program and discussing Chattahoochee: From Water Wars to Water Vision.
Through their Washington, DC production company Screenscope, Marilyn and Hal Weiner have produced, written, and directed over 225 documentaries and four public television series (Journey To Planet Earth, Women At Work, Faces Of Man and The World Of Cooking). They have also produced three feature films (Family Business, The Imagemaker, and K2). The Weiners have won Emmy Awards for The Earth Summit Pledge, commissioned by the United Nations to open the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and Streets of Sorrow, an NBC documentary about a support group formed to help people cope with the violent death of a family member. They are recipients of the National Academy of Television Arts and Science's Silver Circle Award for "outstanding contributions to the television industry." Marilyn Weiner is the winner of Women-In-Film's "Women of Vision Award" for creative excellence. In a contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Hal Weiner won first prize at the 18th annual Larry Neal Writers' Competition for his dramatic screenplay, The Jerusalem Syndrome. Mr. Weiner also won first prize in the Washington DC Screenwriting Competition for his feature film script Shadows. The Weiners have also won over 130 top international awards, including 39 CINE Golden Eagles. Their films have been shot on location in more than 30 countries on five continents, translated into numerous languages and broadcast throughout the world.
The Weiners will be discussing Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
After graduating from Brown University with a joint degree in Urban Studies and Architecture, Nelson began his career in filmmaking working on documentaries for Discovery Channel, History Channel and PBS’s NOVA. His first film, iThemba|Hope, aired on Sundance Channel in 2005. Nelson has worked as visiting instructor of filmmaking at Tibet University in Lhasa and is a contributor to the Tibetan & Himalayan Library. His most recent film, Lumo, made its television debut as part of the P.O.V. series on PBS. Nelson holds an MFA in Film Directing from Columbia University School of the Arts and is a Project Director at the Maysles Institute.
Walker will be introducing and discussing Summer Pasture.
Thomas Veltre brings more than two decades of media production experience to his role as proprietor of The Really Interesting Picture Company. Formerly in-house media producer for the Wildlife Conservation Society, Veltre writes, shoots and edits in a wide variety of formats for a broad spectrum of venues, ranging from documentaries, news and public affairs programming to interactive museum exhibits, instructional materials and new media applications. As a producer / cinematographer, he has covered stories on four different continents, and his work has been broadcast by all the major North American commercial television networks, PBS, Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, CNN, BBC, NHK (Japan) and Fuji TV (Japan). He holds an undergraduate degree in Music Education from the Crane School of Music, (SUNY Potsdam), and did his masters and doctoral work in Media Ecology at New York University under Neil Postman. Tom is also a board member of Filmmakers For Conservation, and an adjunct professor in Communications at Fordham University and the New School University Media Studies Graduate Program, where he explores the interface of mass communication and the environment.
Veltre will be discussing Nature's Greatest Defender.
Aslihan Unaldi is a writer-director-producer, born and raised in Istanbul. She received her BA in International Relations and in Photography from Yale University. She received her MFA in film from New York University’s Tisch School of Arts. Her award winning short film Razan premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2006 and went on to travel the international festival circuit. Unaldi’s first feature documentary Overdrive: Istanbul in the New Millennium explores the social and environmental consequences of uncontrolled urbanization and motorization in Istanbul.
Unaldi will be discussing Overdrive: Istanbul in the New Millennium.
Rhett Turner, President of Red Sky Productions based in Atlanta, Georgia, is a producer and director of photography who has focused on international documentaries for global television audiences since 1999. His state of the art production company has traveled to virtually every part of the world – Africa, Asia, Antarctica, Europe and South America. Turner has shot award-winning programs in high definition for the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, including Journey of a Masterpiece: Lion and Serpent, Renzo Piano: Designing a Village for the Arts and Verocchio’s David Restored. He has served as director of photography for programs that have aired on CNN and TBS, including Rwanda Gorilla, El Lobo: The Song of the Wolf and Pollinators in Peril. Turner was director of photography on the monumental PBS series narrated by Walter Cronkite, Avoiding Armageddon, and he produced as well as shot Antarctica: The Spirit of Adventure.
Turner will be participating in a panel discussion as part of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Global Water and Population program and discussing Chattahoochee: Water Wars to Water Vision on the 22nd.
Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies. She is a co-founder and co-director with John Grim of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. Together they organized a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. They are series editors for the ten volumes from the conferences distributed by Harvard University Press. She is also Research Associate at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard. A respected author, she is also a member of the Interfaith Partnership for the Environment at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). She served on the International Earth Charter Drafting Committee from 1997-2000 and is a member of the Earth Charter International Council. She has received her B.A. from Trinity College, an M.A. from SUNY Fredonia and one from Fordham University, and her PhD from Columbia University.
Tucker will be discussing Journey of the Universe.
After graduating from Brown University with a joint degree in Urban Studies and Architecture, Lynn worked on feature films and documentary programs for NBC News and PBS. As Creative Director at Magnet Media, she also produced educational films on multimedia technology before returning to concentrate on independent filmmaking. Her most recent film, Lumo, premiered on the PBS series, P.O.V. Lynn first traveled to Tibet as a documentarian for the Kham Geotourism Project, a joint initiative of the Tibetan & Himalayan Library and Machik, and it was out of this experience that she and Nelson Walker decided to launch the Kham Film Project.
True will be introducing and discussing Summer Pasture.
Mark Terry has been producing documentary films for the past 20 years. His adventurous spirit has brought him to exotic locations on all seven continents, but none more impressive to him than the Arctic. Trips to Alaska and the Arctic inspired Mark Terry to get involved with northern research programs. Working closely with the world’s scientific community in Antarctica and the Arctic earned him the recognition of the United Nations Environment Programme. His last two films – The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning and The Polar Explorer – were made in partnership with the UNEP and both premiered at the Climate Change Conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun. Today, he is one of only 166 Canadian members of The Explorers Club, a 104-year-old organization comprised of the world's greatest explorers based in New York City. Last October, he was awarded the Canadian Chapter’s highest honor – the Stefansson Medal – for his “outstanding contribution to international field science research”. As a member of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, the Canadian Council for Geographic Education, the Canadian Network for Environmental Education and Communication, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the University of Alberta's Northern Research Network and a TED Speaker, Mark teaches and speaks regularly about the environmental issues affecting the fragile eco-systems of the polar regions and, by extension, the world. Mark Terry is a graduate of York University in Toronto and the University of Alberta’s Antarctic Studies Program.
Terry will be discussing The Polar Explorer.
Brian Swimme is a professor of cosmology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon specializing in gravitational dynamics, mathematical cosmology and singularity theory. Swimme was a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington from 1978-1981. He was a member of the faculty at the Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality at Holy Names College in Oakland, California from 1983-1989. Brian Swimme's primary field of research is the nature of the evolutionary dynamics of the Universe. In 1989, Swimme founded the Center for the Story of the Universe, a production and distribution affiliate of the California Institute of Integral Studies. Swimme’s books have been translated into eight different languages. And he was featured in the television series Soul of the Universe (The BBC, 1991) and The Sacred Balance produced by David Suzuki (CBC and PBS, 2003). Swimme is the producer of a twelve-part dvd series Canticle to the Cosmos which has been distributed worldwide. Other dvd programs featuring Swimme’s ideas include The Earth’s Imagination and The Powers of the Universe. He lectures worldwide and has presented at conferences sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The World Bank, UNESCO, The United Nations Millennium Peace Summit, and the American Natural History Museum.
Swimme will be discussing Journey of the Universe.
David Takayoshi Suzuki, CC, OBC, Ph.D LLD (born March 24, 1936), is a Japanese Canadian academic, science broadcaster and environmental activist. Suzuki earned a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961 and was a professor in the genetics department of the University of British Columbia from 1963 until his retirement in 2001. Since the mid-1970s, Suzuki has been known for his series on TV and radio as well as books about nature and the environment. He is best known as host of the popular and long-running CBC Television science magazine, The Nature of Things, seen in syndication in over forty nations. He is also well known for criticizing governments for their lack of action to protect the environment. A long time activist to reverse global climate change, Suzuki co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation in 1990, to work "to find ways for society to live in balance with the natural world that sustains us." The Foundation's priorities are: oceans and sustainable fishing, climate change and clean energy, sustainability, and Suzuki's Nature Challenge. He also served as a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association from 1982-1987. He is the subject of the film Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie.
Suzuki will be discussing Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie and will be available to sign books afterwards.
Although his family has been in Bermuda for over thirty years, Andrew was born in Canada, and then spent his childhood in Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Scotland, Malaysia and Singapore. He studied postgraduate international economics in France, Canada and Norway and worked as an international economist for two Canadian banks before joining the United Nations Development Programme. He was assigned to the UNDP offices in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, remained in the country after a two year stint with the UN, obtained his pilot's license and started a safari company in the Selous Game Reserve. After five years in East Africa he returned to North America to become a financial advisor, and to upgrade his pilot's license. He has subsequently worked as a consultant in international development for the Canadian, Norwegian and Swedish governments, travelling over most of Africa and Asia. He currently lives in Bermuda with his Australian wife Annabel and two daughters, Elsa and Somers. He writes and researches whales full time. Where the Whales Sing, a 60-minute documentary, is the culmination of The Humpback Whale Film & Research Project. Andrew is now working on an illustrated book based on this on project. The book will be published by Constable and Robinson in London with co-publishers in Canada and Germany and will come out in September 2011.
Stevenson will be discussing Where the Whales SIng.
Peter Stevens has been the Executive Director of The Estate of David Smith since 1979. In that capacity, he works closely with the artist’s two daughters, bringing Smith’s work to the public in a variety of contexts. He has been involved in organizing and assisting others in the planning and mounting of numerous exhibitions, both solo and group. He has worked, nationally and internationally, with museums to structure extended loans of Smith's work that complement the collections and exhibition programs of those institutions. Stevens assists curators, art historians and critics with scholarly research and publications, as well as acting as the acknowledged expert regarding the authentication of Smith's work. He has also been involved in a wide range of scholarly issues including conservation and dating of Smith’s works. In 1998, Stevens was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Republic of France. Stevens has given numerous lectures and participated on panels on the work of David Smith.
Stevens will be participating in a panel discussion following David Smith, American Sculptor 1906-1965.
Vanessa Heimenz Serrao has been a wildlife filmmaker and nature-lover since birth. She couldn’t help it, really. Her dad is a naturalist by profession, and so she grew up with a pet bullfrog who sang along her piano lessons, and terrariums filled with snakes and spiders next to the dinner table. Her family vacations were canoe trips through The Everglades or Okefenokee Swamp. Sure, sometimes they went to the beach, but only if they were camping; not exactly a typical childhood, but definitely interesting...and fun! She always knew she wanted to do something with nature, and after trying to be a scientist and then an activist, she eventually picked up a video camera and found her calling. She got her start in documentaries working for the Discovery Networks and has produced both on-air and online content for Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Science Channel and TLC. She has also created outreach and marketing campaign videos for non-profits such as The Jane Goodall Institute. Then In 2009 she founded NatureBreak so she could be truly independent and make the kind of nature films that are interesting, exciting, and important. Plus, producing for the web lets her meet all kinds of people interested in nature like she is. She received a People’s Voice Webby for her series Deadliest Catch: The Real Dutch that was also nominated for an Emmy.
Serrao will be participating in the Ok, I've Watched the Film, Now What? panel discussion
Semiconductor make moving image works which reveal our physical world in flux; cities in motion, shifting landscapes and systems in chaos. Since 1999 UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt have worked with digital animation to transcend the constraints of time, scale and natural forces, they explore the world beyond human experience questioning our very existence. Central to these works is the role of sound, which becomes synonymous with the image, as it creates, controls and deciphers it; exploring resonance, through the natural order of things. Their work has been exhibited extensively in a wide variety and festivals and museums all over the world, including the Venice Biennale. Additionally, they have been involved in research and experimentation at several cultural and research institutes in Europe and the US. Semiconductor are based in Brighton, UK.
Semiconductor will be discussing Worlds in the Making.
Sapienza will be discussing Natural Resources/Unnatural Results: Access, Exploitation and Accountability.
Stephen Sapienza is an award-winning news and documentary producer who has covered a wide range of human security stories, including the HIV crisis in Haiti, prostitution in the Dominican Republic, child soldiers in Sierra Leone, climate refugees in Bangladesh, and landmine survivors in Cambodia. For over fifteen years he has shot and produced stories for broadcast television and internet distribution. Most recently, he earned a 2009 News & Documentary Emmy for his work on LiveHopeLove.com, a ground-breaking multimedia project focusing on the human face of HIV/AIDS in Jamaica. In 2008, he received the Ruth Adams Award for reporting on dwindling water supplies in Asia and in 2002, he produced Deadlock: Russia's Forgotten War for CNN Presents, winner of a CINE Golden Eagle. Previously, he was Co-Director of Azimuth Media and Senior Producer with the global affairs television series Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria. He is currently producing a documentary called Easy Like Water about the impact of climate change on Bangladesh.
Jon Sawyer is director of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a non-profit organization that funds independent reporting with the intent of raising the standard of media coverage of global affairs. Sawyer became the center's founding director after a 31-year career with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Jon was selected three years in a row for the National Press Club's award for best foreign reporting. His work has been honored by the Overseas Press Club, the Inter-American Press Association and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Jon's reporting on defense procurement contract abuses won the top investigative reporting prize among large newspapers from IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors). His reporting on the problems of nuclear waste disposal was honored by the Atomic Industrial Forum and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received a B.A. degree from Yale University in 1974, majoring in English literature and history, and during the 1978-79 academic year was an Alfred Sloan Fellow in Economics Journalism at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy. In the fall of 1992 he was a research fellow affiliated with the Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Jon was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He attended public schools there and is a graduate of the Phillips Exeter Academy. He and his wife, children's book author Kem Knapp Sawyer, have three daughters.
Sawyer will be moderating a discussion as part of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting presents excerpts from films on global water and population program.
Meg Merrill is the Producer of Play Again. She is a film producer and social worker. She received a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Oregon in 1990 and a Master's in Social Work from Portland State University in 1993. She produced Play Again (2010), embracing the opportunity to unite her passion for social issue film, media literacy, the importance of play and environmental stewardship.
Merrill will be discussing Play Again.
Lowan Stewart is the Executive Producer of Play Again. He is a Producer for Ground Productions, and was the Associate Producer for Independent Intervention (2006). Lowan Stewart is also a practicing Emergency Physician and currently lives in Oslo, Norway.
Stewart will be discussing Play Again.
Shelley Lee Davies is one of the directors of PLANEAT, which is her first feature film. She has a passion for telling stories that change the way we think. Previously she worked at a London production house making short films for big brands like DIAGEO, Omega and Orange, especially focusing on their social responsibility activities. Shelley studied English Lit and Lang at Oxford University.
Davies will be discussing Planeat as part of the Food Choices and Sources program on the 24th.
Andres A. Gonzalez is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, where he graduated with a BS in Marketing. Andres also completed his MBA at the University of Maryland, University College. Andres is a co-founder of the Holistic Life Foundation, Inc. where he currently serves as Chief Financial Officer. He is also co-founder and Co-CEO of For the People Entertainment. Andres has facilitated youth and adult programs for almost 10 years to a diverse population in Baltimore and the surrounding area, with a focus on yoga and environmentalism.
Gonzales will be discussing Mother Nature's Child.
Ali Smith is a native of Baltimore, Maryland and graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, receiving a BS in Environmental Science and Policy with a specialization in Biodiversity. He Co-founded the Holistic Life Foundation, where he currently serves as Executive Director. He is also Co-founder and Co-CEO of For the People Entertainment. In his environmental work at the Holistic Life Foundation he has coordinated numerous youth and community environmental programs, co-authored an urban environmental education curriculum, and an environmental children’s book, as well as received a Presidential commendation for outstanding youth and environmental stewardship work. He is also a Commissioner on the Baltimore City Commission on Sustainability, former board member for Baltimore Green Works, steering committee member for the Greater Baltimore Children & and Nature Conference, and proud father.
Smith will be discussing Mother Nature's Child.
Atman Smith is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He attended Friends School of Baltimore for twelve years, but graduated from Paul Laurence Dunbar Senior High School of Baltimore. He went on to attend and was a letter award winner for the Men’s basketball team at the University of Maryland, College Park. He graduated with a BA in Criminology and Criminal Justice. Atman is a co-founder of the Holistic Life Foundation, where he currently serves as the Director of Youth Programming. He is also co-founder and Co-CEO of For the People Entertainment.
Smith will be discussing Mother Nature's Child.
Michael English is a nine-time Emmy Award-winning producer and writer who writes and produces environmental documentaries. He came to Maryland Public Television with an extensive background in environmental issues with special emphasis on the politics and history of natural resource management. He covered environmental legislation on Capitol Hill from the House and Senate Galleries from 1981 to 1985 for national publications and news services. He joined the staff of MPT to write Farm Day, the national, daily agricultural/economics news program, from 1985 to 1987. He later produced segments for the national PBS series MotorWeek, and wrote and produced local short-subjects and non-news public affairs programs for MPT. He began producing MPT’s award-winning Outdoors Maryland in 1991. Recent documentary credits include Citizen Schaefer, Blind Spots, Chesapeake Crossroads, Weary Shoreline, Chesapeake Bay by Air, and The Runoff Dilemma. English is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, the National Press Club, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
English will be introducing The Runoff Dilemma.
Susan Behrends Frank, Ph.D., is Associate Curator for Research at The Phillips Collection, specializing in modern European and American art. Her exhibitions include East Meets West: Hiroshige at The Phillips Collection (2005); American Impressionism: Paintings from The Phillips Collection (2007); Made in USA: American Art from the Phillips Collection (Rovereto, Italy and Madrid, Spain, 2010) and David Smith Invents (2011).
Frank will be discussing David Smith, American Sculptor 1906-1965.
Rebecca Smith was born in Glens Falls, New York in 1954. She has exhibited widely since 1977 in the US and internationally. Beginning as a painter, creating performance works in the late 70’s, Smith currently makes two bodies of work, sculpture and color tape wall drawings. Her work can be found in many private and public collections, including the Albright-Knox Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Microsoft Collection and the TarraWarra Museum, Australia. She will have two large sculptures in New Wallworks curated by Michael Klein at the Maryland Art Place, opening April 21 of 2011. A solo museum show is planned for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond in 2012.
Smith will be discussing David Smith, American Sculptor 1906-1965.
A novelist and scriptwriter, Leonardo is a man of many “professions,” among them wooden-house designer, sailor, inventor, scientist, corporate image consultant. In 2007, he was privately asked by one of the advisors to the Minister of Energy and Petroleum, on how to present the Yasuni-ITT Initiative to the world. This triggered his interest in the dilemma: to leave the oil underground, or to extract it endangering whole ecosystems. And he realized that, in order for the news of the project to be spread, there had to be an independent account of it with no vested interests except to tell the story from many different viewpoints. This led him to look for no-strings-attached funding for the film, and a crew ready to be part of the project simply because of the importance of the subject matter. He speaks Spanish, English and German. With over 41 scripts produced (short films, TV spots, documentaries), this is his second feature-length documentary.
Wild will be discussing Yasuni: Two Seconds of Life.
Suzan Beraza was born in Jamaica, and raised in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. In 2000, Beraza directed the short film Sister & Brother and her film company REEL Thing Productions was born. The focus of REEL Thing Productions’ thought-provoking films is to challenge viewers to examine their choices and be aware of their impact on the rest of the world. Social and environmental issues pervade their work.
Beraza will be discussing Bag It.
Edward M. Barrows is a Professor of Biology in the Department of Biology. His research focuses on arthropod biodiversity and conservation and scientific communication. His teaching includes forest ecology and biology undergraduate and graduate research. He serves as an advisor for biology students and Environmental Studies Minors and is the Director of the Georgetown University Center for the Environment.
Barrows will be moderating a panel disucssion following The Stinking Ship.
For more than forty years, Dr. T. Colin Campbell has been at the forefront of nutrition research. His legacy, the China Project, is the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever conducted. Dr. Campbell is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University. He has more than seventy grant-years of peer-reviewed research funding and authored more than 300 research papers and coauthor of the bestselling the book, The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health.
Campbell will be part of a panel discussion following Planeat.
Davey Rogner is the Campaign Director and co-founder of Pick Up America - a grassroots non-profit organizing a roadside clean-up across the entire nation to inspire a transition to zero-waste. Before departing with Pick Up America, Rogner lived in Silver Spring and College Park, MD for his entire life. He completed his bachelor’s in Environmental Science and Policy at The University of Maryland in 2009. While at the University of Maryland Davey honed his leadership skills by founding two of the campuses most prominent environmental groups, still active today. Rogner has received awards from the City of College Park and The Maryland General Assembly for his efforts encouraging environmental conservation in Maryland. In addition to his accolades as an environmentalist, he is also a talented songwriter, musician and performer.
Rogner will be discussing Bag It.
Robert Donnelly is the Program Associate for the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Prior to coming to the Wilson Center in August 2008, Donnelly was most recently Coordinator of the Justice in Mexico Project at the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute, a position he held from 2006. As Coordinator, Donnelly organized a nine-part working group meeting series that examined criminal justice reforms at the state level in Mexico, wrote and edited a monthly news synthesis on rule-of-law-related developments in Mexico, coordinated project publications, and assisted with the planning of a five-part speaker series on legal ethics. From 1997 to 2002 Donnelly worked a freelance and staff journalist in Mexico City, writing for trade publications, wire services, and magazines. Donnelly speaks fluent Spanish.
Donnelly will be discussing The Fence.
Gidon Eshel is a physics professor at Bard College in New York. Gidon teaches and researches both basic climate physics and mechanisms as well as climate science as it pertains to food production. Eshel holds a Ph.D., M.Phil. and M.A. in geophysics from Columbia University in New York City, and a Bachelor's degree from the Technion, in Israel. Eshel is the author, with Pamela Martin, of "Diet, Energy and Global Warming" and “Geophysics and Nutritional Science: Toward a Novel, Unified Paradigm," and the forthcoming "Dietary Choices' Effects on Land Use and Reactive Nitrogen Discharge." An Israeli by birth, Gidon grew up on a Kibutz, and spent his youth in the Kibutz's 1,000-head Holstein dairy farm. After his military service, and before becoming an academic, Gidon spent several years raising beef cattle in northern Israel and the Golan Heights Eshel lectures widely on food-climate interactions, and is an avid bicyclist and outdoorsman.
Eshel will be part of a panel discussion following Planeat.
Bernadine (Bernie) Prince is Co-Founder, Co-Director and Treasurer/Secretary of the FRESHFARM Markets, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, dedicated to educating the public about food and farming issues, providing vital economic opportunities for farmers, and celebrating the Chesapeake Bay watershed region’s agricultural heritage and bounty. Since 2009, FRESHFARM Markets operates eight producer-only farmers’ markets, including four in the District of Columbia (Dupont Circle, Foggy Bottom, H St, NE and Penn Quarter) and four in Maryland (Annapolis, Harbor East-Baltimore, St. Michaels and Silver Spring). Prince has also directed a local foods and gardening program (FoodPrints) at Watkins Elementary School (Ward 6) in Washington, D.C. Bernadine Prince is a graduate of Ohio University where in the 1970’s she organized a food cooperative that purchased directly from local farmers, a bakery and dairy. She spent two years doing graduate work in anthropology at Penn State University, spent a summer doing fieldwork at Monticello near Charlottesville, VA and directed field archaeology projects in Virginia.
Prince will be moderating a panel discussion following Planeat.
Palmer will be participating in several events at American University throughout the festival.
Chris Palmer is a wildlife filmmaker who joined the SOC faculty in 2004. Since then, he has founded its Center for Environmental Filmmaking; launched Classroom in the Wild, which takes students to the Florida Everglades, Alaska and other wilderness areas to make films; and initiated collaborations with Maryland Public Television, which broadcasts SOC student films as part of its “EcoViews” series about the Chesapeake Bay, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which gives students an opportunity to participate in many of its media projects. Palmer has produced hundreds of hours of films for television and the global network of IMAX theaters. He and his colleagues have won numerous awards, including two Emmys, an Oscar nomination and, most recently, the Environmental Film Educator of the Decade Award at the Green Globe Film Awards. His book, “Shooting in the Wild”, was published in May by Sierra Club Books. He holds a BS (First Class Honors) in Mechanical Engineering from University College London; an MS in Ocean Engineering and Naval Architecture from University College London; an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Fleischli will be discussing CHASING WATER.
Steve Fleischli is an attorney and the former President of Waterkeeper Alliance, an international environmental organization supporting local watershed programs (such as Riverkeepers, Baykeepers and Soundkeepers) in nearly 200 communities across six continents. Steve previously served as Executive Director of Waterkeeper Alliance (2003-2007) and as the Santa Monica Baykeeper in Los Angeles (1999-2003). He also has held positions as a Legal and Policy Analyst for Heal the Bay and as an adjunct law professor at Pepperdine University School of Law. He is a graduate of UCLA School of Law and holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder, with majors in Economics; Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology; and Environmental Conservation.
David Steinke is currently assistant director for public affairs in the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Region. A 26-year veteran of the agency, Steinke runs the Region’s Creative Services Department, which produces videotapes, presentations, exhibits and Web content and oversees some training and meeting facilitation. Steinke also has been involved with fire for his entire Forest Service career and is currently qualified as a fire photographer and Type I Incident Information Officer, a position in which he provides information officer training.
Steinke will be discussing Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time.
J. Robinson West is Chairman of the Board, Founder and CEO of PFC Energy. As Founder and Chairman, Robin has gained a unique perspective on the international energy industry. He has advised Chief Executives of leading international oil and gas companies and national oil companies on corporate strategy, portfolio management, acquisitions, divestitures, and investor relations. Before founding PFC Energy in 1984, Robin served in the Reagan Administration as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Policy, Budget and Administration (1981-83), with responsibility for US offshore oil policy. Prior to that, he served in the Ford Administration as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Economic Affairs (1976-77) and on the White House Staff (1974-76). In 1976, he received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Civilian Service. Robin West received a B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a J.D. from Temple University and was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar.
West will be discussing Houston, We Have a Problem.
A veteran of the film distribution and exhibition worlds, Claire Weingarten has worked with The Film Society of Lincoln Center, The American Film Institute, and on the inaugural two years of AFI's documentary film festival, Silverdocs. In 2005 Weingarten co-founded Birdgirl Productions and Burning in the Sun is her initiation into the world of documentary production. Weingarten’s work at Silverdocs cemented her love for the documentary film genre and paved the way for her role as a producer of Burning in the Sun. Weingarten received a Masters degree in Cinema Studies from New York University and graduated cum laude from Columbia University with degrees in Film Studies, Ethnic Studies and Anthropology. In addition to her role as a documentary film producer, Claire currently oversees new media programming and publicity for the Chelsea-based foreign and independent film distribution company, Film Movement.
Weingarten will be discussing Burning in the Sun.
David Western is chairman of the African Conservation Centre, Nairobi. He began research into savannas ecosystems at Amboseli in 1967, looking at the interactions of humans and wildlife. His work, unbroken since then, has served as a barometer of changes in the savannas and test of conservation solutions based on the continued coexistence of people and wildlife. Western directed Wildlife Conservation Society programs internationally, established Kenya’s Wildlife Planning Unit, chaired the African Elephant and Rhino Specialist Group, and was founding president of The International Ecotourism Society, chairman of the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya, director of Kenya Wildlife Service and founder of the African Conservation Centre in Nairobi. He is an adjunct professor in Biology at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Minnesota.
Western will be discussing A Place Without People.
Simon Beins, under the moniker ‘The Fishermen Three,’ is a Brooklyn-based performer and composer whose music has appeared in projects by Focus Features and PBS’s Independent Lens and has been released on Warner Music’s Rhino Records. He tours regularly throughout the US and Europe and has released records on both continents. He collaborated with director Ian Cheney to compose the score for the urban agriculture folk opera Truck Farm. The Fishermen Three’s debut album, Rosina on Every Balcony, was released in 2008 on Norway’s prestigious Hype City label. A new single will be available in 2011 on a 45rpm 7” vinyl.
Beins will be discussing Truck Farm.
Barbara Coffin is Executive Producer for environmental documentaries of the Bell Museum of Natural History. She was Executive Producer for the Emmy Award winning 4-part documentary series, Minnesota: A History of the Land and most recently Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story. Throughout her career as a conservation biologist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, The Nature Conservancy and the University of Minnesota, she has been devoted to promoting ecological understanding through conservation action, research, and written and visual storytelling.
Coffin will be discussing Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story and Stories from the Gulf: Living the the BP Oil Disaster.
Daniel Engstrom is Director of the St. Croix Watershed Research Station -- the environmental research center of the Science Museum of Minnesota -- and Adjunct Professor in Geology and Geophysics and Water Resources Science at the University of Minnesota. He received a Ph.D. in Ecology in 1983 at the University of Minnesota. His scientific interests include historic trends in deposition of atmospheric pollutants, global climate change in arid landscapes, and long-term human impacts on lakes and rivers. Especially relevant to this film series is work by Dr. Engstrom and his staff on the changing water quality of the upper Mississippi River. This research provides much of the scientific underpinning for ongoing efforts to substantially reduce nutrient and sediment runoff and restore ecological health to this impaired waterway.
Engstrom will be discussing Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story and Stories From the Gulf: Living with the BP Oil Disaster.
Ian Cheney grew up in Massachusetts and Maine, and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale University. After graduate school, Ian co-created, co-produced and starred in the feature documentary King Corn, which was released theatrically in 60 cities and awarded a George Foster Peabody Award in 2009. Ian subsequently directed the feature documentary The Greening of Southie, featured in The New Yorker and on Good Morning America, and has recently completed work on two new films, Truck Farm – the story of urban agriculture in New York City – and The City Dark, a feature documentary about light pollution and the disappearing night. A founding board member of FoodCorps and a contributing blogger for the Hufffington Post, Ian travels frequently to show his films, lead workshops, and give talks about environment, agriculture, and the human relationship to the natural world. He lives in Brooklyn, NY and maintains a 1/1000th acre farm in the back of his old pickup truck.
Cheney will be discussing Truck Farm.
David Reeks, a D.C area native, started his career in video in 2001 with an invite from his wife-to-be, Renata Meirelles, to spend six months in the Amazon researching children’s play and culture. He purchased a prosumer handicam, 50 tapes, and a decent mic, and learned the “do’s and don’ts” of documentary filmmaking along the way. The expedition resulted in 6 short documentaries, a love for the Amazon Basin and its people, and a profound interest in filming children. After doing a year-long internship at a production house that produced broadcast animation and video, David opened his own video production company with his wife: Ludus Videos e Cultura. The couple currently lives in São Paulo, and, amongst a variety of professional projects they carry out all over Brazil, they continue producing documentaries about children’s culture.
Reeks will be discussing The Madeira River: Life Before the Dams.
Roque Sevilla of Quito, Ecuador, is the former President of the Yasuní-ITT Initiative Presidential Commission. He is the chief executive officer of Grupo Futuro, an insurance, tourism, and agriculture holding company, as well as the chairman of the Ecuadorian chamber of tourism. He is a founder, former board chairman, and director of Fundación Natura, Ecuador’s most prominent conservation organization. A leader in designing and implementing debt-swap arrangements, he engineered Ecuador’s $10 million debt-for-nature program, working with Ecuador’s Central Bank and uniting the financial and conservation communities in Ecuador to support the country’s wildlife and wild lands. He was Director of the Forest Service in Ecuador’s Ministry of Agriculture. has served on the board of the World Wildlife Fund-US and the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands; he has also served as mayor of Quito and was city council member. Roque Sevilla received a master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Sevilla will be dicussing A Future Without Oil via video-conference.
Donna Stockton has worked at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo for the last eight years and has a great interest in pollinators. She has participated in many projects that have focused on pollinator education and awareness including working with citizen scientists and volunteers on native bee and butterfly surveys and participating in the webcast called PollinatorLive that partnered the zoo with teachers, scientists, and students to inform and promote pollinator awareness. Donna received a master’s degree in entomology from the University of Maryland.
Stockton will be discussing Hummingbirds: Magic in the Air.
Nicole Torre is President of New Angle Media, which is devoted to bringing important social and environmental issues into focus. Her debut feature film, Houston We Have a Problem, has played at film festivals around the world. New Angle is currently developing several other documentary projects, as well as scripted features. Nicole Torre is an advocate for environmental security and energy reform. She started her voyage into progressive media when she served as an Associate Producer on the groundbreaking documentary The Next Epoch. The film was commissioned by Physicians for Social Responsibility and featured Jonas Salk. She is the former CEO of Native Range Productions, where she spearheaded a web campaign about the key steps to restoring the planet and is a twice recipient of the East West Fellowship. She also consults for the Native Forest Council and Greenpeace International. Nicolle Torre is a graduate of Emerson College.
Torre will be discussing Houston, We Have a Problem.
Thomas E. Lovejoy became the first recipient of the newly created Heinz Center Biodiversity Chair in August 2008. Previously he served as President of the Heinz Center since May 2002. Before coming to The Heinz Center, he was the World Bank’s Chief Biodiversity Advisor and Lead Specialist for Environment for Latin America and the Caribbean and Senior Advisor to the President of the United Nations Foundation. Lovejoy has been Assistant Secretary and Counselor to the Secretary at the Smithsonian Institution, Science Advisor to the Secretary of the Interior, and Executive Vice President of the World Wildlife Fund–U.S. He is the founder of the public television series Nature. In 2001 he was awarded the prestigious Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. Thomas E. Lovejoy served on science and environmental councils or committees under the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations. He received his B. S. and Ph.D. (biology) degrees from Yale University.
Lovejoy will be introducing Journey of the Universe and participating in a panel discussion following Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
Babbitt was Governor of Arizona for nine years, 1978-1987, and Attorney General of Arizona, 1975-1978. In 1988 he was a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for President. Born June 27, 1938, Babbitt grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona, where his family pioneered a ranching and trading business in the 1880's. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, he received a Masters Degree in geophysics from the University of Newcastle in England. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1965. Babbitt was a founding member of the Democratic Leadership Council and served as chairman of the Democratic Governors Association in 1985. He has been a member of the Advisory Council on Intergovernmental Relations and was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Grand Canyon Trust. Described by the Almanac of American Politics as one of America's most original "governors, his advocacy led to passage of a nationally acclaimed state water management code in 1980, and in 1986 of a water quality act described by the Los Angeles Times as perhaps "the nation's toughest law to protect underground water."
Babbitt will be participating of a panel discussion following Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
After many years as a successful visual effects artist on the popular Star Trek franchise, Greg Rainoff embarked on a bike ride across the Tibetan Plateau, arriving in Nepal in time to witness the culmination of the Maoist Insurgency. Rather than returning to Hollywood, he instead turned his talents to documentary film making. His first endeavor, El Muro, chronicles the human and environmental consequences of the Tactical Infrastructure Project (better known as the Border Wall) between San Diego and Tijuana, focusing primarily on its impacts on the Tijuana Estuary, the largest intact estuarine system in Southern California.
Rainoff will be dicussing El Muro.
Kaitilin Gaffney is the Director of Ecosystem Protection and has been with Ocean Conservancy since 1999. She is responsible for promoting protection of the Pacific Coast with an emphasis on California. She directs a team of staff that works on ecosystem protection issues in the Pacific, and is currently leading efforts to implement an effective, state-wide, science-based network of marine protected areas under California's Marine Life Protection Act. Kaitilin Gaffney's background is in environmental law and fisheries policy. She formerly served on the Executive Board of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council. She is based in the Santa Cruz, California field office. She has a law degree from Boalt Hall, an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara and in 1997 served as Fulbright Fellow in New Zealand.
Gaffney will be discussing Footprints in the Sand.
Zia Mian directs the Project on Peace and Security in South Asia, at the Program on Science and Global Security. His research and teaching focuses on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy policy, especially in Pakistan and India, and on issues of nuclear disarmament and peace. Previously, he has taught at Yale University and Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, and worked at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge (Mass.), and the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad. He is Co-Editor of Science & Global Security, an international journal of technical analysis for arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation policy. He is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM). He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Mian will be discussing Countdown to Zero.
Peter Fox-Penner is a consulting executive and internationally recognized authority on energy and electric power industry issues. He is a Principal and Chairman Emeritus of The Brattle Group, a leading economic consulting firm, and author of the highly acclaimed book “Smart Power: Climate Change, the Smart Grid, and the Future of Electric Utilities.” In his consulting practice, Peter Fox-Penner advises energy companies, government agencies, and their counsels on energy regulatory and market policy issues. His primary focus is on electric industry structure, climate change, and energy efficiency policies. From 1993 to 1996 he was a senior official in the U.S. Department of Energy and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and held staff positions in the Illinois Governor’s office. He has served on the boards or advisory boards of Enviance, Gridpoint, The Solar Foundation, and other Cleantech firms and was a co-founder of Environment 2004 and the Environmental Alliance. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and the University of Illinois.
Fox-Penner will be introducing The Pipe.
Fisher Stevens is an American actor, director and producer. His most recent successes include the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for his film The Cove and 2008 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature for his film Crazy Love. As an actor, he is well-known for his portrayals of Chuck Fishman on Early Edition, and many others. His television credits include Frazier, Friends, Law & Order, Key West and Lost. Fisher also has a distinguished Broadway and off-Broadway career spanning nearly 3 decades. He played Jigger Craigin in the 1994 Lincoln Center revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel. He had an early success in the 1982 Broadway production of Torch Song Trilogy and the original Broadway production of Brighton Beach Memoirs, where he succeeded Matthew Broderick in starring role of Eugene. Throughout his career, he has acted in and directed more than 50 stage productions. In 2010, Fisher co-founded a new media and documentary film company, Insurgent Media, with Andrew S. Karsch and Erik H. Gordon.
Stevens will be discussing Mission Blue.
Judi Urquhart has served as a Board Member for the Wopanaak Language Reclamation Project since 2005. In her role as she has been instrumental in grant writing, general fundraising and helping the project obtain 501c3 status. In 2010, together with Jessie Little-Doe, she wrote and won a grant from the Administration for Native Americans that is allowing the project to conduct a two-year Master-Apprentice program. This program allows three more individuals to gain advanced fluency in the Wopanaak language. Judi, who holds a BA from Mount Holyoke College and an MBA from Northwestern University, has been taking language lessons along with her children for several years.
Urquhart will be discussing We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân.
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Use the Map to find the locations of film screenings and EFF partnering organizations
Plan your trips to Festival screenings by train, bus, bike or foot by visiting GoDCGo and using their interactive map.
For Metrorail and Metrobus information, consult the Metropolitan Area Transit Authority or call 202-637-7000 to reach customer information.
Visit Capital Bikeshare to learn how to use their bikes at stations across D.C. and Arlington County.
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