Sandy Cioffi is a Seattle-based film and video artist. [1] [2] She is director and producer of the documentary film Sweet Crude and has produced and/or directed the films Crocodile Tears, Terminal 187 and Just Us. She was a tenured professor in the Film and Video Communications Department at Seattle Central Community College. [3]
Sandy has worked with human rights organizations in global hot zones before, during and after conflict. She first ventured into video production as a volunteer for Witness for Peace during the Contra War in Nicaragua. She traveled with students from the U.S. to film South Africa’s transition from Apartheid in 1995. She used film as a documentation and verification tool to provide video evidence regarding compliance with the Good Friday Peace Agreement during the 1998 Marching Season in Northern Ireland. Sandy has worked extensively with the Hate Free Zone in Seattle, producing films about treatment of immigrants after September 11. She was Seattle Director for the video documentation of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in 2003.
Robert Greenwald is an American filmmaker, and the founder of Brave New Films, a nonprofit film and advocacy organization whose work is distributed for free in concert with nonprofit partners and movements in order to educate and mobilize for progressive causes. With Brave New Films, Greenwald has made investigative documentaries such as Uncovered: The War on Iraq (2004), Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004), Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005), Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006), Rethink Afghanistan (2009), Koch Brothers Exposed (2012), and War on Whistleblowers (2013), Suppressed 2020: The Fight to Vote (2020), Suppressed and Sabotaged: The Fight to Vote (2022), Beyond Bars: A Son's Fight for Justice (2022) as well as many short investigative films and internet videos.
The Niger Delta is the delta of the Niger River sitting directly on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria. It is located within nine coastal southern Nigerian states, which include: all six states from the South South geopolitical zone, one state (Ondo) from South West geopolitical zone and two states from South East geopolitical zone.
Roko Belic is an American film producer and director. His directorial debut, Genghis Blues, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Jon Alpert is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films.
Joy Lusco, also known as Joy Kecken and Joy Lusco Kecken, is an American film and television director and writer. She often works with her husband, Scott Kecken. They worked on the HBO drama series The Wire on four of the show's five seasons.
Renee Tajima-Peña is an American filmmaker whose work focuses on immigrant communities, race, gender and social justice. Her directing and producing credits include the documentaries Who Killed Vincent Chin?, No Más Bebés, My America...or Honk if You Love Buddha, Calavera Highway, Skate Manzanar, Labor Women and the 5-part docuseries Asian Americans.
James Moll is an American director and producer of film documentaries and television documentaries. His documentary work has earned him an Academy Award, two Emmys, and a Grammy. Moll's production company, Allentown Productions Inc., has been based at Universal Studios since 1994, primarily producing non-fiction film and television projects. Moll also serves on the executive committee of the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and serves as chair of the documentary award for the Directors Guild of America.
Nora Marie Tschirner is a German film actress, musician and former television and radio presenter.
Sweet Crude is a documentary film about Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta directed by Sandy Cioffi. The film premiered in April 2009 at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and has since screened at 30 film festivals around the world and has won numerous awards.
Michal Aviad is an Israeli director, script writer, producer and senior lecturer at the Department of Cinema and Television, Tel Aviv University.
Cynthia Wade is an American television, commercial and film director, producer and cinematographer based in New York City. She has directed documentaries on social issues including Shelter Dogs in 2003 about animal welfare and Freeheld in 2007 about LGBT rights as well as television commercials and web campaigns. She has won over 40 film festival awards, won an Oscar in 2008, and was nominated for her second Oscar in 2013.
Tami Kashia Gold is a documentary filmmaker, visual artist and educator. She is also a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York in the Department of Film and Media Studies.
Eddie Schmidt is an American director, showrunner, producer, writer, commentator and satirist. He is perhaps best known for producing several feature documentaries that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, including Valentine Road (2013), This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006), and Twist of Faith (2005), and for directing and showrunning television projects including Ugly Delicious (2018), Chelsea Does (2016), and The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey (2016).
Black women filmmakers have made contributions throughout the history of film. According to Nsenga Burton, writer for The Root, "the film industry remains overwhelmingly white and male. In 2020, 74.6 percent of movie directors of theatrical films were white, showing a small decrease from the previous year. In terms of representation, 25.4 percent of film directors were of ethnic minority in 2020. Of the 25.4 percent of minority filmmakers, a small percentage was female.
The Seattle Asian American Film Festival was founded in 1985 and has been revived over the years by different producers. The current iteration was founded in 2012 and made its debut in 2013 by co-founders Kevin Bang and Vanessa Au. It is a revival of of the previously running Northwest Asian American Film Festival, which was directed by Wes Kim from 2003 to 2007 and which had experienced a five-year hiatus. The inaugural film festival was also held at the Wing Luke Asian Museum from January 25 to 27, 2013. The festival is currently run and directed by Executive Director, Vanessa Au, and Festival Director, Victoria Ju.
Nina Gilden Seavey is a documentary filmmaker and Research Professor of History and Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University (GWU). She was the Director of the Documentary Center at GW, which she founded in October 1990, before stepping down in 2020. In 2017, Seavey was named a visiting research scholar at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.
RYOT is an American immersive media company founded in 2012 by Bryn Mooser, David Darg, Molly DeWolf Swenson and Martha Rogers, based in Los Angeles. It specializes in documentary film production, commercial production, virtual reality and augmented reality.
Roya Sadat is an Afghan film producer and director. She was the first woman director in the history of Afghan cinema in the post-Taliban era, and ventured into making feature films and documentaries on the theme of injustice and restrictions imposed on women. Following the fall of the Taliban regime in the country, she made her debut feature film Three Dots. For this film she received six of nine awards which included as best director and best film. In 2003,A Letter to the President her most famous film that received many international awards, she and her sister Alka Sadat established the Roya Film House and under this banner produced more than 30 documentaries and feature films and TV series. She is now involved to direct the opera of A Thousand Splendid Suns for the Seattle Opera and she is during pre production of her 2nd feature film Forgotten History.
Beth Harrington is an Emmy-winning, Grammy-nominated filmmaker based in Vancouver, Washington, specializing in documentary features. Her documentaries often explore American history, music and culture, including the Carter Family and Johnny Cash, and the history of women in rockabilly. In addition to her film work as a producer, director and writer, Harrington is also a singer and guitarist, and was a member of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers from 1980 to 1983.
Larysa Mykhailivna Artyugina is a Ukrainian documentary film director and activist. She is a member of the Union of Cinematographers of Ukraine, the Union of Theater Actors of Ukraine, the creative association Babylon'13 and the Assembly of Cultural Figures of Ukraine. She also heads the public organization New Donbas NGO and produces work on the docUA Platform of Ukrainian Documentaries.