Ambarien AlQadar grew up in a conservative Muslim family in 1990s India and spent part of her childhood in Libya. With degrees in English literature, modern European languages and communications, she is fascinated with an exploration of the documentary image in fictional, experimental and interactive contexts. She is an alumnus of the AJK Mass Communication Research Center in New Delhi—one of India’s premier institutes in film and video training—where she also worked as an assistant professor. Re-enactment, performance and visual and aural found-footage, first used in her film Who Can Speak of Men, have emerged as recurring threads in her work. She has explored these ideas in subsequent films, such as Four Women and a Room,The Ghetto Girl and Between Leaving and Arriving. As a freelance practitioner in India, she has directed, edited and produced several public television projects and features. Her work has won national and international awards and has been screened in festivals as well as in academic and interdisciplinary research settings. Currently a Fulbright Scholar at Temple, she is developing her thesis, A Day in the Life of Ayesha, as a way of synthesizing her interest in documentary and experimental methods with dramatic approaches to storytelling. The project was awarded a Temple University Completion Grant. Ambarien has been a recipient of many prestigious fellowships and awards, including an Independent Research Fellowship through Sarai Programme at the Center of Study of Developing Societies in India, the European Union–India Documentary Exchange Programme on Peace and Conflict Resolution and the Public Service Broadcasting Trust Film Fellowship, India. The first retrospective of her work was held at the Indo-Korea International Women’s Film Festival in Chennai, India, in 2009.
Jon Barr
Jon Barr is a filmmaker from Philadelphia, now living in Portales, New Mexico. Jon has worn many hats, including restaurant manager, corporate sales rep and landscape gardener. He returned to school and study filmmaking in his mid-30s and hasn’t looked back since. Jon’s work covers the spectrum from conventional narrative to experimental documentary and animation. Regardless of form and style, he likes to explore themes of power, relationship and dissent. Jon believes in film’s potential to reveal truth and incite change. His undergraduate thesis film, The Paradigm Shift, is a 26-minute film shot on Super 16mm. In two years, it screened at 19 festivals and won several awards. His latest project, This Imagination, is an experimental documentary that combines dreamlike images and music with a heavily edited autobiographical voiceover to both reveal and question the truthfulness of the narratives we tell ourselves and others. This piece was created in close collaboration between subject and director, highlighting the constructed nature of documentary. Jon is currently an instructor in the Department of Communications and in the Digital Filmmaking program at Eastern New Mexico University and will complete his MFA at Temple in May.
Charles Blevins
Charles Eugene Blevins was born to a loving mother and father on a rainy morning on the 4th of July in 1984, in Louisville, Kentucky. The parents decided to call him Chad, which, as anyone would know, is not short for Charles, but close enough. Chad grew up playing with plastic farm animals and pretending he was interested in dinosaurs. He watched Zoobilee Zoo and Fraggle Rock, and, later, any period piece starring Bruce Willis, all of which inspire his work today. Chad believes in Magic, and maintaining an adolescent sensibility. Before coming to Temple, he studied creative writing at Indiana University. For further inquiry, Chad can be reached at the Offices of the United Nations in Grant City, Missouri.
Malia Bruker
Malia Bruker is a screenwriter and documentary filmmaker. Before coming to Temple, Malia worked at the national news and documentary channel Free Speech TV. She was production manager, writer and producer for the news magazine SourceCode and national program coordinator for the flagship daily news and discussion show GRITtv. Malia graduated summa cum laude from Florida State University, where she worked on a number of award-winning documentary and narrative films. Her work has screened internationally and throughout the United States, and her recent documentary, Chase, won the Knight Arts Short Film Competition at the Philadelphia Film Festival. Her honors include a Temple University Fellowship, the Ben Lazaroff Screenwriting Scholarship, the Diamond Screen Film Festival Screenplay Award, Best Documentary at the Florida State Media Production Film Festival, and Best Student Cinematography at the American Dance Festival.
Chris Fernando
Christopher Fernando is working on a feature narrative for his thesis film, I Want It, Bad. His critical interests include Jean Baudrillard, the Frankfurt School and post-Jungian studies—specifically, furthering the analysis of cinematic narratives as archetypal mandalas. Additionally, he has a long-term goal of analyzing Hollywood economic and distribution practices through a theoretical lens. He has had film and photographic work exhibited at film festivals and alternative venues and has won screenwriting awards. Christopher has a working background in education, art and photography and a BS in television, film and new media from San Diego State University. He founded a media company, GreyUnicorn, with friends affiliated with Temple University. The company is currently developing a documentary about consumer culture, a tablet app graphic novel and a new feature film.
Haitao Guo
Haitao Guo grew up in China. He graduated from Huazhong Normal University in Wuhan with a BS in biochemistry. After he got an MS in microbiology at Texas A&M University in 2007, he realized that what he really wanted to do is make films. He joined the MFA program at Temple University in 2009 and began his transition from scientist to artist. He is pretty happy with his new life in Philadelphia.
Katya Gorker
Katya Gorker was born in Moscow on the day Chairman Mao died. She immigrated to the United States with her family at the tail end of the Cold War ‘80s and became an incidental product of bicultural identity. She received her BFA in filmmaking from the Massachusetts College of Art. Upon graduating, Katya spent the next six years massaging celluloid as an art-house and film-festival projectionista, itinerant archivist and multimedia curator. In 2000 she co-founded the Berwick Research Institute, a nonprofit arts organization that nurtures the experimentation of conceptually challenging work from emerging artists, outside of the pressures of commercial production. Her interests in film range from the immediacy of digital media’s impact on time and collective memory to personal ethnography and the shifting locations of cultural identity. Her work at Temple plays on the mutable boundaries of narrative and explores the visceral nature of the cinematic image.
Sarah Greenleaf
Sarah Greenleaf is a poet and media maker from Seattle, Washington. She studied journalism and English literature at the University of Washington before relocating to Philadelphia. Her films have screened in a variety of venues, from Brooklyn galleries to the Citizen Jane Film Festival. She has poetry published in the DMQ Review and HOARSE and featured on InkNode.com. Sarah’s recent work explores the negative space of familiar storytelling narratives and non-traditional ways to tell overlooked histories.
Kandis Hutcherson
Kandis Hutcherson landed in Philadelphia by way of Far Rockaway, New York, and Atlanta, Georgia. After she graduated from Georgia State University, she wanted to put her writing skills to use through film. In addition to writing and directing, Kandis immerses herself in the art and film communities. Recently, she served as head organizer and documentarian of the Philadelphia-based film and media arts festival Gender Reel. Kandis also completed a community mural project at a local recreation center. She is currently working on Growing Old Gracefully, a feature-length documentary about aging transgendered seniors. Kandis views film as a tool to explore and transform the world in and outside us. Her work examines the margins of our complex and evolving society, reminding us that we’re all in this universe together.
Ginger Jolly
Ginger Jolly is a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on social justice issues. She specifically explores race, class and gender and how these figure in present-day society. She presents these issues while incorporating an artistic aesthetic which helps to make the subjects more visually stimulating and thus more compelling to the viewer. Her films have screened at the DocMiami Film Festival in Miami, Florida; the Urban Suburban Film Festival in Philadelphia; the International Black Film Festival in Nashville, Tennessee; the Sidewalk Moving Picture Film Festival in Birmingham, Alabama; the Jubilee Film Festival in Selma, Alabama; and the Mid-Atlantic Black Film Festival in Norfolk, Virginia. Her work has also been featured on Alabama Public Television.
Joseph A. Kraemer
Joseph Kraemer hails from Wisconsin and now calls Philadelphia his home. Before coming to Temple, he earned his a BFA in film from the University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee. He has worked as the festival director for the NextFrame International Student Film and Video Festival, one of the world’s preeminent student film festivals, and also interned for the Milwaukee International Film Festival in 2007. Several of his animations have screened at the Wisconsin Film Festival and the Milwaukee International Film Festival and have also been featured online on PBS.org and PoetryFoundation.org. He has begun to explore new-media genres with his web-based interactive documentary, Between Leaving and Arriving. His interest in the hybrid blending of documentary and fictional story structures and aesthetics has driven his work toward his thesis film, which focuses on the complicated relationship between modern society and the natural world. To see Joseph’s work, visit www.josephkraemer.com.
Naomi Levine
Naomi Levine grew up in Takoma Park, Maryland. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in urban studies and finds herself unable (or maybe unwilling) to leave Philadelphia so far. She is primarily interested in documentary film, especially portraits. This may change.
Doris ChiaChing Lin
Doris Chia-ching Lin is a filmmaker, multimedia artist and stage designer from Taiwan. Her work explores multimedia arts. Currently she is working on her thesis film, Maquette 1:1000, a short narrative film shot in Taipei and Philadelphia. Her screen adaptation of a short story by Charlie Fish, Drop Dead Gorgeous, screened at the International Student Film Festival Hollywood in Los Angeles. Troupe de Fetishe, a large-scale video installation on which she collaborated as co-director and model builder, was exhibited at the Ice Box Project Space in Philadelphia. She has made several other shorts, including Missing Peaces, a 16mm experimental narrative that was selected into the 2010 University Film and Video Association screening section, the 2010 Philadelphia Independent Film Festival and the Sexy International Film Festival in Australia; Silou Vege and Fruit Market, a documentary about a full day at a market in Taiwan; and Transdialection, an experimental sound and video piece. Her previous work as a set designer won several awards for theatrical productions. She was chosen to represent Taiwan at Scenofest at the Prague Quadrennial in 2007 after her stage design project won first place in the Taiwan competition.
L. Capco Lincoln
L. Capco Lincoln, born and raised in Gainesville, Florida, left to study film and video at Antioch College. In 1998, Lincoln made i’m not other, aka ay mestiza (video), which screened at several festivals, including Frameline in San Francisco. Lincoln’s other films include home (1999; 16mm) and Found Our Way (2006; 16mm), which screened at the Black Lily Film Festival and the Dance Boom Film Festival. Found Our Way aired on Drexel University Television in 2007. Lincoln, committed to alternative and community-based media since the age of 15, published ‘zines at the Gainesville Freedom School, started low-power FM radio stations in Florida and Ohio, hosted a short-wave radio program in Costa Rica, assisted director Nick Deocampo at the Mowelfund Institute in the Philippines, and worked on Academy Award–nominated filmmaker Anne Bohlen’s documentary Toxic Tours. In Philadelphia, Lincoln currently works with the Asian Arts Initiative, Scribe Video Center and the Media Mobilizing Project. Lincoln’s current documentary-in-progress, Autobiography of an Ocean, has screened at Ohio Weslyan University in Delaware, Ohio; the Hippodrome Theater in Gainesville, Florida; and Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia.
J. Louise Makary
J. Louise Makary’s first film debuted at the American Dance Festival in 2006. Since then, she has developed projects influenced by video art, classic and experimental cinema, and contemporary dance. From 2008 to 2010, she was artist-in-residence at the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks through their Contemporary Projects initiative. Her residency culminated in a solo exhibition at Powel House Museum in 2010 and fostered an enduring interest in the ways that films can bring to light issues in public history. J.’s films and videos have been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Slought Foundation, Bartram’s Garden, NEXUS and International House, all in Philadelphia; SPACES in Cleveland, Ohio; Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey; and Zodiak Center for New Dance in Helsinki, Finland. Originally trained as a writer and editor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, J. also studied fine art at the University of Pennsylvania. She sits on the Temple University Gallery Advisory Council and the Temple University Vice Provost for the Arts Student Advisory Council. Examples of her work can be seen at www.jmakary.com.
Lindsey Martin
Lindsey Martin is a film- and videomaker from Virginia. She received her BFA in photography and film from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Her work experiments with traditional narrative storytelling while approaching topics of gender identity, body image and the microcosms of family structure. Lindsey has screened her work nationally and internationally, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and the Nomad Project at the Access and Paradox Open Art Fair in Paris, France. Every Speed, a collaboration with Julia Fuller, won the Premio Asolo Award for Best Film on Architecture at the Asolo Art Film Festival. Lindsey is currently finishing her thesis film, The Unfolding of an American Love Letter, a fictional puppet narrative about a 9-year-old girl dealing with the divorce of her parents.
Oscar Molina
Oscar Molina is a filmmaker with a background in making documentaries. He studied journalism and visual arts as an undergraduate, and his professional work has moved between photojournalism, documentaries, educational television, film programming, audience development and teaching. His work as a photographer won awards in two of the largest national photography competitions in his home country, Colombia, and his video work has been exhibited at La Habana Film Festival (Cuba), Rosario Film Festival (Argentina), FIPATEL Biarritz (France), Bogota Film Festival (Colombia), Cartagena Film Festival (Colombia), and Contra el Silencio Todas las Voces (Mexican Human Rights Film Festival). The Enchanted Kingdom, a film that Oscar co-directed, was named Best Colombian Documentary in 2004. He started his MFA in film at Columbia University before moving to Philadelphia to attend Temple. Throughout his MFA studies, Oscar has focused on narrative and experimental film methods. His recent work has been moving in two directions—one dealing with reflexivity of time and framing and the other with the intercultural representation of people coming from developed countries and in developing countries.
Natasha Ngaiza
Born in London and raised in the United States by Tanzanian immigrants, Natasha Ngaiza makes films that celebrate the cultural, historical, social and political experiences of Africans across the diaspora. She envisions film as a tool to educate, enlighten and initiate activism, and also seeks to incorporate the structure of traditional African storytelling into narrative films and documentary hybrids. She is fascinated by Nollywood, Bongo Flava music videos and America’s undying obsession with “Mammy.”
Jamel Northern
A native of Philadelphia, Jamel Northern received his undergraduate degree in computer and information science at Temple. Somehow he managed to work in television instead. Jamel worked for 12 years at WTXF-TV FOX 29 as a video editor, earning two National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Mid-Atlantic Emmy nominations. Even then, it was not enough for Jamel. Taking a gamble, he left FOX 29 to return to school to study his true love—film. Jamel plans to concentrate on narrative film directing, though he isn’t averse to directing a play or two.
Lisa Marie Patzer
Lisa Marie Patzer is a multimedia artist with a background in performance art, video installation and experimental filmmaking. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, at venues such as the Buntport Theater (Denver, Colorado), the American Airlines Center (Dallas, Texas), the Lab Gallery (San Francisco, California), the University of Northampton (Northampton, UK), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia) and the Ice Box Project Space (Philadelphia). Lisa Marie is currently directing a collaborative experimental narrative project, aka Profile Glitch, which investigates the performance of identity in online and off-line social communities. This is illustrated through a narrative about three women who become unlikely friends at an intentional community in Philadelphia and then, after leaving the commune, continue their friendship online through a social network. For more information about aka Profile Glitch, visit the project website at www.akaprofileglitch.org or follow on Twitter (@akaprofilglitch). Lisa Marie’s other work can be viewed online at www.lisamariepatzer.com and www.troupedefetishe.com.
Alyssa Pearson
Alyssa Pearson was once asked to define her talent during a powwow meet-and-greet as an undergraduate student. After about a half hour of thought, when finally pressed for an answer, the only thing she could say was, “I like to tell stories.” Maybe that just means she talks a lot, but mostly she spends time trying to engage different forms and roles within storytelling—a life-giving enterprise personally cultivated through her family, community, academic development and personal paradigm. Alyssa graduated with a degree in communication arts from Malone University in Canton, Ohio, where she fostered the value of humans as storytelling creatures. Filmmaking is where she hopes to develop her loquaciousness . . . er, storytelling.
Tracy Pereira
Tracy Pereira’s academic route to the MFA program has been almost completely serendipitous. With an undergraduate degree in commerce in her home country, India, she almost pursued an MBA, but thanks to some wise words, she jumped ship, country, degree—and her senses, according to some—to complete her MA in broadcasting at Temple. With this second wind, she dabbled in some video production, rubbed shoulders with the film school and once again decided to switch over to the “dark side.” Her time at Temple as a student and a teacher has spawned and fuelled her interest in media education. She believes strongly and passionately in the empowerment of children and youth and in teaching them to find their voice, particularly those with learning disabilities and emotional disorders and the socially disenfranchised. She was awarded the Fred Rogers Memorial Scholarship in 2007 to work on a series of recordings of children’s personal video diaries that illustrate the ways they navigate their lives, with a vision to translate these into new media forms. She hopes to hone her current fledgling abilities as a filmmaker to speak out on education, faith and family, creating work that questions and demonstrates.
Tom Quinn
Tom Quinn grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he directed a few short films, including Via Bicycles, a 2006 Eastman Scholarship finalist. His current feature film, The New Year Parade, was one of 10 projects selected for the 2007 Independent Filmmaker Project Narrative Rough Cut Labs. The Labs paired Tom with producers Scott Macaulay (Raising Victor Vargas) and Gretchen McGowan (HDNet Films), editors Sabine Hoffman (Personal Velocity) and Kate Williams (Interview), composer Mychael Danna (Little Miss Sunshine, The Ice Storm) and other industry veterans to shape his project. His film website is at www.thenewyearparade.com.
Vedran Residbegovic
Vedran Residbegovic was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1996, he moved to Chicago, where he studied graphic design and film at the University of Illinois. Beginning in 2001, Vedran worked as a videographer, video editor, youth media educator and film festival organizer in Chicago. He also taught in the post-production department at Columbia College Chicago as an adjunct instructor. Vedran’s work and research focuses on documentary and experimental film, but also collaborative/open-source video and interactive new media.
David Romberg
Having been born into a family of internationally known artists, David Romberg has been immersed in the visual arts all of his life. He studied sculpture at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and became passionate about filmmaking during his junior year, when he took a course on Italian neorealism during a study-abroad program in Rome. David began to immerse himself in video art and film and to create new works through artist residencies, including a six-month film residency at the Neue Galerie in Graz, Austria. He has recently come back from the Brazilian rainforest, where he finished production on his feature-length documentary Man of The Monkey. For more information, visit www.manofthemonkey.com.
Santiago Soto
Santiago Soto, born in Quito in 1982. Ecuadorian writer and filmmaker. MFA candidate at Temple University. Focusing on screenwriting. Co-writer of the screenplay for the feature film Saudade. Director of the short films 2013, ANA747, La Celebración and NY3. Singer and composer for the band Queen Size Bed. Currently making his first feature film The Butter and the Fly.
Jonathan Stutzman
Jonathan Stutzman grew up on the coast of Virginia, inheriting during his childhood a hunger for stories from old films, novels, bedtime stories, music and Peanuts. Jonathan has written and directed a number of diverse films that have shown at festivals and venues across the country. His films include Amelioration, The Day Dad Died, Blaue Blume, and the award-winning Paper Turtle. Along with a collection of screenplays, Jonathan has penned a handful of short stories and children’s books and has had his work published in two books of poetry. Jonathan graduated from Messiah College with a degree in communication and an emphasis in film. He wants to continue to develop as a filmmaker and storyteller so that he can create works that move, inspire, challenge and entertain.
Israel Vasquez
Israel Vasquez is currently interested in writing and directing and video installation. He is interested in the transformative spirit of cinema—how learning occurs, visual acts of contemplation and the importance of collaboration amidst an increasingly individualist society. He has studied at Michigan State University and learned the ropes of photography at Pittsburgh Filmmakers (mad respect!). To see Israel’s work, visit www.vimeo.com/ipv.
Michael Thomas Vassallo
Michael Thomas Vassallo is a filmmaker working in both narrative and experimental forms. A native Philadelphian, he entered the MFA program at Temple in 2009, and is currently living and working in Philadelphia and New York City. He is interested in and influenced by horror cinema, teen films, the French New Wave, the occult, and punk/metal/DIY subcultures. His work has been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia and the Athens Institute of Contemporary Art. After shooting his short film, Lucy, 4:57 PM, in 2011, his next project will be his thesis film, a class-based satire set amid the New York art and poetry scenes. Michael Tom frequently collaborates with his sister, Nadine Vassallo, as a writing partner.
Peng Wan
Peng Wan grew up in Shenyang, the center city of northeast China. After graduating from Communication University of China, he moved to Philadelphia to pursue his MFA in film at Temple. He is currently working on his thesis movie, Family Plan. Peng has worked at China Central TV, the Travel Channel and ICN TV as a cameraman and editor in Beijing, New York City, and Washington, D.C. He is interested in writing, directing and cinematography. His previous short films have won awards nationally and internationally and have been shown at museums and in film festivals in London, Berlin, Prague, Beijing, Shanghai, Philadelphia and New York City.
Brandon Watz
Brandon Watz goes to Temple University. He learns about film in the MFA program. Prior to this he did a great number of things. He cannot remember all of them. That’s impossible. He began doing things in Lexington, Kentucky, at the age of zero. Eighteen years later he went to New Orleans. That’s where he studied psychology and computer science at Tulane University. After college he moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, and tried to understand the English spoken there. Later he moved to Paris, France, and tried to understand the French spoken there. He also lived in Boulder, Colorado, and did computational cognitive neuroscience research. He likes to make films. He hopes that you like to watch films.
Gary Yong
Born in Malaysia, raised partly in Singapore, Gary Yong has also lived and worked in Canada, the United States, and Thailand. Since his earliest daily crossings of the Malaysia–Singapore border the age of 7, he has been drawn to stories and lives taking form outside of the rigid designs of nationhood, race, class, gender and sexuality. Grounded in the physical and emotional experience of border crossing, his work seeks to describe the liberating but volatile spaces inhabited by people in transition. In 2010, he was sponsored by the Federation of National Film Associations of Thailand to shoot a short film portraying a slice of Thai culture, its people, and their relationship to their spiritual and political leader, H.M. King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The film, Canopy Crossings, has also received support from the Tourism Authority of Thailand, and has screened worldwide at more than 18 international film festivals. The Timishort Festival (Romania) honored the film with a Special Mention for its original hybrid of documentary and fiction. His first feature in progress, How Far is Your Colony, is a bold adventure in narrative form, pulling elements of documentary, costume melodrama, and science fiction to assemble a restless portrait of foreigners in search of a home. He holds a BA from the University of Windsor in Canada and is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talent Campus 2012. Currently, he is based in Singapore and Malaysia. For more information on his work, visit www.fluidrace.com.
Alessandro Zangirolami
Born and raised in a small, silent town in Northern Italy, Alessandro Zangirolami was interested in drawings and illustration in his early education. His path changed slightly. He graduated with a BA in contemporary art and film/new media in Milan, and then started working on small, independent projects, creating short formats for several Italian television and web networks, including Telecom, Endemol, MilanChannel, and ANSA. At Temple, he is shaping his idea of filmmaking and directing as an art that is far from narrative and close to the animality of human actions. His recent works have been featured in several film and video art festivals and film collections (TFI, NOMAD Archives, Le Musee Di-visioniste). With his narrative thesis film, Deer (in production), he’s creating a highly sensory character study, a rendition of the effects that neurological conditions manage to have on human relationships, affection and perception.
Recent Graduates
Andrew Bateman
Andrew Bateman is a documentary and experimental filmmaker whose work moves outward from the core belief that love is a dynamic and complex force of human action. As an activist in Denver, Colorado, he co-founded the Breakdown Book Collective and Community Space, which won several “Best of Denver” awards. As an undergraduate in 1999, he made his first documentary—a critical look at the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Washington—and has continued to make work on social justice issues, including access to health care for low-income New Mexicans, an educational video exploring the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and a series of videos to help people with developmental disabilities obtain employment. He is currently finishing a feature-length documentary titled Roy: Dream Catcher and is developing a documentary exploring the intersection of farm workers and the drug war. Andrew earned his MFA in 2011 and also holds an MA in American studies from the University of New Mexico and a BA in political science from Metropolitan State College of Denver. In his spare time, Andrew enjoys making music videos. His current projects and work samples can be seen at www.pabloagua.com.
Bruce Byker James
Bruce Byker James grew up in a small tourist town on a lake in south-central Missouri. After college in Michigan, he lived in Philadelphia and Boston, and then moved back to Philadelphia, working for several years as a grip and electrician for film and video productions. During his time at Temple, he served as Director of Photography on several student productions. He now works for Temple’s School of Communications and Theater as the Media Technology Coordinator. Bruce started out in film with fictional narratives, winning Best Short Film at the United States Super 8 and Digital Video Festival in New Brunswick, New Jersey, but he has since made experimental, installation-based and documentary work. His documentary God’s Critters screened at a number of film festivals, including the Landlocked Film Festival in Iowa City, Iowa, and Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas. His work concentrates on telling engaging stories that highlight the connection that humans have to the rest of the natural world. Bruce’s current documentary project, They’re in the River, investigates the connections among animals, people, and the culture of the Delaware River told through interactions and collaborations with a migratory fish, the American shad.
Chinonye Chukwu
Chinonye Chukwu is a Nigerian-born, Alaskan-raised screenwriter and director. Artistically, she is most concerned with images that are rich with cultural nuances, often dealing with the complex and contradictory issues of ethnic identity, dual identity and cross-cultural, cross-generational interaction. A recipient of the prestigious Princess Grace Award, Chinonye’s latest film, The Dance Lesson, is a short fictional narrative about a 13-year-old black girl who wants to be a ballerina in her gentrified community of North Philadelphia. The Dance Lesson premiered at the Ritz Theater of Philadelphia and was also a Regional Finalist for the 2010 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Student Academy Awards and an Honorary Mention at the Los Angeles International Film Festival. Chinonye’s other work includes Igbo Kwenu!, a recipient of a Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Association subsidy grant and the Best Motion Picture and Best Screenplay awards at the 2009 Diamond Screen Festival. Currently, she is in pre-production for her first feature-length film.
Marc D’Agostino
Marc D’Agostino is a filmmaker, multimedia artist and teacher in Philadelphia. He earned his BA in cognitive science and filmmaking from Hampshire College. For the stage, he directed All the King’s Men, an original play by Glenn Kessler and Brian Savelson, presented by Dixon Place and HERE Arts Center at the NYC FUSE Festival. Void Therapies, a collaboration with artist Kimberly Brandt, was presented at University Settlement and P.S. 122 in New York City in 2004. His short experimental film Tiny Umbrellas was commissioned by Spout Press to accompany the release of Jeffrey Little’s The Book of Arcana: Tomorrow’s Stone Age Cosmology Today, and premiered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He designed video projection for David O’Connor’s production of The Devils in Philadelphia. Scrapbook, a multimedia installation, was presented in a solo, two-month exhibition at the Squeaky Wheel Media Arts Center, in Buffalo, New York, in 2007. Marc is currently at work on a short narrative about a young man dealing with the death of a childhood friend in Iraq. He is an adjunct instructor of film at La Salle University and Temple University.
Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz
Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz graduated in August 2011. She also holds an MA in multicultural literature and women’s studies from the University of Georgia, where she served as a researcher for The Civil Rights Digital Library Initiative, an Emmy award–winning project. While at Temple, Aggie wrote and directed three documentary films exploring issues of the Iranian diaspora. Her first film, Conversations with My Aunt, won the Best Documentary Award at the Greater Philadelphia Student Film Festival in 2009. Aggie’s most recent film, Inheritance (2011), blends poetic and observational documentary forms to investigate diasporic identity formation and gender politics in the shadow of
the Iranian Revolution. She hopes to screen this film at universities around the country to spark much-needed conversation about the emergence of the Iranian American community as a legitimate, complex and powerful voice within North American cultural politics. Aggie currently serves as a freelance media maker and consultant for non-profits looking to expand their messaging campaigns.
Ben Kalina
Ben Kalina’s film and video projects focus on the intersection of science, culture and the environment. He has worked with Niijii Films on the nationally broadcast documentaries Two Square Miles and A Sea Change and is the director and producer of grand-prize–winning fiction shorts and documentaries. Ben’s current projects include Shored Up, a documentary about surfing, sea-level rise and the control of nature on the New Jersey shore; Plan C for Civilization, about global-scale geo-engineering; and After the Cap, an interactive web series chronicling the human and environmental impacts of the BP oil spill. He is the owner/operator of Mangrove Media in Philadelphia and the co-founder and creative director of Evidence Based Media, based in Washington, D.C. Ben is on the boards of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Explorer’s Club and the Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Association.
Ellen Knechel
In her thesis film, 3956 County Road 15, filmmaker Ellen Knechel returns to Indiana to help in the sale of her grandmother’s longtime home. The film follows her grandmother and family as they pack belongings and prepare for her grandmother’s move. Outside the house, the changing landscape reflects the turmoil within. Ellen enjoys making documentaries because it gives her the opportunity to explore new worlds and—as was the case with editing her thesis film—spend time with her family even when they’re not around. Ellen lives in New York and is currently collaborating as an editor, producer and researcher on several documentaries in progress. In addition to her MFA from Temple, she also holds a BA in English from Haverford College. Before deciding to pursue filmmaking, she worked at an non-governmental organization in Honduras and taught in a middle school.
Alexis McCrimmon
Alexis McCrimmon is a multimedia artist and filmmaker of Midwestern origins. Her media work ranges in mode, incorporating performative documentary and hybrid narrative strategies as well as elements of collage cinema. Currently, she is developing a new series of works exploring the theme of nostalgia and the transformation of public and private landscapes. Alexis’ film and video work has screened at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Frameline 32, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, MIXNYC and the Boston LGBT Film Festival.
David Miranda
Originally from Chile, David Miranda grew up in Spain during the Pinochet dictatorship years. He holds a BA from the University of Chile and recently earned his MFA from Temple University, where he studied under a Fulbright Fellowship. David worked as a sound designer for the Latin American film industry with directors such as Francisco Lombardi and Lucrecia Martel. In 2008 he wrote and directed his first short film, Persistence of Memory, which was featured in the Philadelphia International Film Festival. His thesis film, Topo Gigio Is Dead, premiered at the Toulouse Latin American Film Festival 2011 in France, and has subsequently been featured in Los Angeles Latino Film Festival, Denver Film Festival, aluCine Toronto, Angelus Student Film Festival(Los Angeles), Huelva Latin American Film Festival (Spain), and a dozen more festivals in Chile, Mexico, Peru, Japan, Colombia and Belgium. For its production, David received the Chilean National Arts Fund Award.
David Cooper Moore
David Cooper Moore graduated in August 2011. As a filmmaker, he focused on experimental and essay documentary filmmaking, culminating in a graduate thesis, Things We Keep, which documented the promises and pitfalls of exploring memory and genealogical documents in film. David worked extensively with the Media Education Lab at Temple University to participate in the national and international fields of digital and media literacy. In his time as a media literacy educator, researcher and scholar, he created videos, curriculum documents and programming designed to improve the integration of media analysis and production activities into K-12 and higher education. His published scholarship explores the challenges of using popular culture and mass media to engage student interest in a variety of academic settings. David is also an activist for fair use rights under existing copyright law, facilitating workshops and giving lectures to help filmmakers, educators and others better understand how to incorporate copyrighted materials into their work.
Jonathan Olshefski
Jonathan Olshefski was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2004 he graduated with a BA in English literature and film and media arts from Temple University. There he was first exposed to new media and interactive narrative. In the years following he continued to develop his aesthetic by engaging in urban documentary projects, teaching photography and working as a web designer in the commercial field. He has also become more and more rooted in the culture of Philadelphia’s diverse
neighborhoods and the organic process of recovery, reconciliation and healing. His ambition is to collect the stories and experiences of the city, expressed in multiple forms (visual, aural, textual, concrete, abstract, documentary, allegorical and experimental), and to synthesize the pieces in an interactive world that reflects the chaotic and mysterious world we live in, a culmination of all of the intensity, beauty and tragedy that swirls around us everyday, a world that is dynamic and demands choice. As an interactive form, the intended experience mirrors the desired result: participation. His ultimate desire is to encourage positive action and interaction among the segregated populations of Philadelphia through storytelling and equal relationships. For more information about his work, visit http://myfaeriestory.com and http://questfilm.org.
Ilya Simakov
Ilya Simakov was born in a small town of Dolgoderevenskoye, Russia, in 1984. Since 2000 he has been studying and living in the United States. He has collaborated on a wide range of projects, spanning fiction narrative, documentary and experimental film.
Sara Suleman
Sara Suleman is from Karachi, Pakistan. She works in various media from video to installation. To view her work, visit www.sarasuleman.com.
Daniel Van Wert
Dan Van Wert is a Philadelphia native. Having earned an undergraduate degree in English with a focus in creative writing from Florida State University in 2002, Dan began focusing his attention on acting, film and narrative screenwriting. A member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), Dan has appeared in more than 50 shorts and feature films, as well as various television programs, advertisements and music videos. His primary interests are
in directing, narrative screenwriting and adaptation.
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Graduate Students
Current Students
Ambarien AlQadar
Jon Barr
Andrew Bateman
Charles Blevins
Shane Book
Malia Bruker
Qiuchen Cao
Timothy Day
Jacob Feiring
Chris Fernando
Katya Gorker
Sarah Greenleaf
Haitao Guo
Paul Hinson
Viola Mingyuan Huang
Kandis Hutcherson
Shahin Izadi
Michael Johnston
Ginger Jolly
Joseph A Kraemer
Leslie Koren
Naomi Levine
Doris ChiaChing Lin
L. Capco Lincoln
Santiago Loera
J. Louise Makary
Lindsey Martin
Oscar Molina
Natasha Ngaiza
Jamel Northern
Fiona Otway
Lisa Marie Patzer
Alyssa Pearson
Tracy Pereira
Alina Postula
Tom Quinn
Vedran Residbegovic
David Romberg
Manuela Salamovich
Palesa Shongwe
Santiago Soto
Christian Strevy
Jonathan Stutzman
Israel Vasquez
Michael Vassallo
Peng Wan
Brandon Watz
Gary Yong
Alessandro Zangirolami
Recent Graduates
Andrew Bateman
Bruce Byker James
Chinonye Chukwu
Marc D’Agostino
Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz
Ben Kalina
Ellen Knechel
Alexis McCrimmon
David Miranda
David Moore
Jonathan Olshefski
Carolina Roca-Smith
Ilya_Simakov
Sara Suleman
Dan Van Wert
Current Graduate Students
Ambarien AlQadar
Jon Barr
Charles Blevins
Malia Bruker
Chris Fernando
Haitao Guo
Haitao Guo grew up in China. He graduated from Huazhong Normal University in Wuhan with a BS in biochemistry. After he got an MS in microbiology at Texas A&M University in 2007, he realized that what he really wanted to do is make films. He joined the MFA program at Temple University in 2009 and began his transition from scientist to artist. He is pretty happy with his new life in Philadelphia.
Katya Gorker
Katya Gorker was born in Moscow on the day Chairman Mao died. She immigrated to the United States with her family at the tail end of the Cold War ‘80s and became an incidental product of bicultural identity. She received her BFA in filmmaking from the Massachusetts College of Art. Upon graduating, Katya spent the next six years massaging celluloid as an art-house and film-festival projectionista, itinerant archivist and multimedia curator. In 2000 she co-founded the Berwick Research Institute, a nonprofit arts organization that nurtures the experimentation of conceptually challenging work from emerging artists, outside of the pressures of commercial production. Her interests in film range from the immediacy of digital media’s impact on time and collective memory to personal ethnography and the shifting locations of cultural identity. Her work at Temple plays on the mutable boundaries of narrative and explores the visceral nature of the cinematic image.
Sarah Greenleaf
Kandis Hutcherson
Ginger Jolly
Ginger Jolly is a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on social justice issues. She specifically explores race, class and gender and how these figure in present-day society. She presents these issues while incorporating an artistic aesthetic which helps to make the subjects more visually stimulating and thus more compelling to the viewer. Her films have screened at the DocMiami Film Festival in Miami, Florida; the Urban Suburban Film Festival in Philadelphia; the International Black Film Festival in Nashville, Tennessee; the Sidewalk Moving Picture Film Festival in Birmingham, Alabama; the Jubilee Film Festival in Selma, Alabama; and the Mid-Atlantic Black Film Festival in Norfolk, Virginia. Her work has also been featured on Alabama Public Television.
Joseph A. Kraemer
Naomi Levine
Naomi Levine grew up in Takoma Park, Maryland. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in urban studies and finds herself unable (or maybe unwilling) to leave Philadelphia so far. She is primarily interested in documentary film, especially portraits. This may change.
Doris ChiaChing Lin
L. Capco Lincoln
L. Capco Lincoln, born and raised in Gainesville, Florida, left to study film and video at Antioch College. In 1998, Lincoln made i’m not other, aka ay mestiza (video), which screened at several festivals, including Frameline in San Francisco. Lincoln’s other films include home (1999; 16mm) and Found Our Way (2006; 16mm), which screened at the Black Lily Film Festival and the Dance Boom Film Festival. Found Our Way aired on Drexel University Television in 2007. Lincoln, committed to alternative and community-based media since the age of 15, published ‘zines at the Gainesville Freedom School, started low-power FM radio stations in Florida and Ohio, hosted a short-wave radio program in Costa Rica, assisted director Nick Deocampo at the Mowelfund Institute in the Philippines, and worked on Academy Award–nominated filmmaker Anne Bohlen’s documentary Toxic Tours. In Philadelphia, Lincoln currently works with the Asian Arts Initiative, Scribe Video Center and the Media Mobilizing Project. Lincoln’s current documentary-in-progress, Autobiography of an Ocean, has screened at Ohio Weslyan University in Delaware, Ohio; the Hippodrome Theater in Gainesville, Florida; and Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia.
J. Louise Makary
Lindsey Martin
Lindsey Martin is a film- and videomaker from Virginia. She received her BFA in photography and film from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Her work experiments with traditional narrative storytelling while approaching topics of gender identity, body image and the microcosms of family structure. Lindsey has screened her work nationally and internationally, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and the Nomad Project at the Access and Paradox Open Art Fair in Paris, France. Every Speed, a collaboration with Julia Fuller, won the Premio Asolo Award for Best Film on Architecture at the Asolo Art Film Festival. Lindsey is currently finishing her thesis film, The Unfolding of an American Love Letter, a fictional puppet narrative about a 9-year-old girl dealing with the divorce of her parents.
Oscar Molina
Natasha Ngaiza
Born in London and raised in the United States by Tanzanian immigrants, Natasha Ngaiza makes films that celebrate the cultural, historical, social and political experiences of Africans across the diaspora. She envisions film as a tool to educate, enlighten and initiate activism, and also seeks to incorporate the structure of traditional African storytelling into narrative films and documentary hybrids. She is fascinated by Nollywood, Bongo Flava music videos and America’s undying obsession with “Mammy.”
Jamel Northern
A native of Philadelphia, Jamel Northern received his undergraduate degree in computer and information science at Temple. Somehow he managed to work in television instead. Jamel worked for 12 years at WTXF-TV FOX 29 as a video editor, earning two National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Mid-Atlantic Emmy nominations. Even then, it was not enough for Jamel. Taking a gamble, he left FOX 29 to return to school to study his true love—film. Jamel plans to concentrate on narrative film directing, though he isn’t averse to directing a play or two.
Lisa Marie Patzer
Lisa Marie Patzer is a multimedia artist with a background in performance art, video installation and experimental filmmaking. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, at venues such as the Buntport Theater (Denver, Colorado), the American Airlines Center (Dallas, Texas), the Lab Gallery (San Francisco, California), the University of Northampton (Northampton, UK), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia) and the Ice Box Project Space (Philadelphia). Lisa Marie is currently directing a collaborative experimental narrative project, aka Profile Glitch, which investigates the performance of identity in online and off-line social communities. This is illustrated through a narrative about three women who become unlikely friends at an intentional community in Philadelphia and then, after leaving the commune, continue their friendship online through a social network. For more information about aka Profile Glitch, visit the project website at www.akaprofileglitch.org or follow on Twitter (@akaprofilglitch). Lisa Marie’s other work can be viewed online at www.lisamariepatzer.com and www.troupedefetishe.com.
Alyssa Pearson
Alyssa Pearson was once asked to define her talent during a powwow meet-and-greet as an undergraduate student. After about a half hour of thought, when finally pressed for an answer, the only thing she could say was, “I like to tell stories.” Maybe that just means she talks a lot, but mostly she spends time trying to engage different forms and roles within storytelling—a life-giving enterprise personally cultivated through her family, community, academic development and personal paradigm. Alyssa graduated with a degree in communication arts from Malone University in Canton, Ohio, where she fostered the value of humans as storytelling creatures. Filmmaking is where she hopes to develop her loquaciousness . . . er, storytelling.
Tracy Pereira
Tracy Pereira’s academic route to the MFA program has been almost completely serendipitous. With an undergraduate degree in commerce in her home country, India, she almost pursued an MBA, but thanks to some wise words, she jumped ship, country, degree—and her senses, according to some—to complete her MA in broadcasting at Temple. With this second wind, she dabbled in some video production, rubbed shoulders with the film school and once again decided to switch over to the “dark side.” Her time at Temple as a student and a teacher has spawned and fuelled her interest in media education. She believes strongly and passionately in the empowerment of children and youth and in teaching them to find their voice, particularly those with learning disabilities and emotional disorders and the socially disenfranchised. She was awarded the Fred Rogers Memorial Scholarship in 2007 to work on a series of recordings of children’s personal video diaries that illustrate the ways they navigate their lives, with a vision to translate these into new media forms. She hopes to hone her current fledgling abilities as a filmmaker to speak out on education, faith and family, creating work that questions and demonstrates.
Tom Quinn
Tom Quinn grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he directed a few short films, including Via Bicycles, a 2006 Eastman Scholarship finalist. His current feature film, The New Year Parade, was one of 10 projects selected for the 2007 Independent Filmmaker Project Narrative Rough Cut Labs. The Labs paired Tom with producers Scott Macaulay (Raising Victor Vargas) and Gretchen McGowan (HDNet Films), editors Sabine Hoffman (Personal Velocity) and Kate Williams (Interview), composer Mychael Danna (Little Miss Sunshine, The Ice Storm) and other industry veterans to shape his project. His film website is at www.thenewyearparade.com.
Vedran Residbegovic
Vedran Residbegovic was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1996, he moved to Chicago, where he studied graphic design and film at the University of Illinois. Beginning in 2001, Vedran worked as a videographer, video editor, youth media educator and film festival organizer in Chicago. He also taught in the post-production department at Columbia College Chicago as an adjunct instructor. Vedran’s work and research focuses on documentary and experimental film, but also collaborative/open-source video and interactive new media.
David Romberg
Santiago Soto
Santiago Soto, born in Quito in 1982. Ecuadorian writer and filmmaker. MFA candidate at Temple University. Focusing on screenwriting. Co-writer of the screenplay for the feature film Saudade. Director of the short films 2013, ANA747, La Celebración and NY3. Singer and composer for the band Queen Size Bed. Currently making his first feature film The Butter and the Fly.
Jonathan Stutzman
Israel Vasquez
Israel Vasquez is currently interested in writing and directing and video installation. He is interested in the transformative spirit of cinema—how learning occurs, visual acts of contemplation and the importance of collaboration amidst an increasingly individualist society. He has studied at Michigan State University and learned the ropes of photography at Pittsburgh Filmmakers (mad respect!). To see Israel’s work, visit www.vimeo.com/ipv.
Michael Thomas Vassallo
Peng Wan
Peng Wan grew up in Shenyang, the center city of northeast China. After graduating from Communication University of China, he moved to Philadelphia to pursue his MFA in film at Temple. He is currently working on his thesis movie, Family Plan. Peng has worked at China Central TV, the Travel Channel and ICN TV as a cameraman and editor in Beijing, New York City, and Washington, D.C. He is interested in writing, directing and cinematography. His previous short films have won awards nationally and internationally and have been shown at museums and in film festivals in London, Berlin, Prague, Beijing, Shanghai, Philadelphia and New York City.
Brandon Watz
Gary Yong
Born in Malaysia, raised partly in Singapore, Gary Yong has also lived and worked in Canada, the United States, and Thailand. Since his earliest daily crossings of the Malaysia–Singapore border the age of 7, he has been drawn to stories and lives taking form outside of the rigid designs of nationhood, race, class, gender and sexuality. Grounded in the physical and emotional experience of border crossing, his work seeks to describe the liberating but volatile spaces inhabited by people in transition. In 2010, he was sponsored by the Federation of National Film Associations of Thailand to shoot a short film portraying a slice of Thai culture, its people, and their relationship to their spiritual and political leader, H.M. King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The film, Canopy Crossings, has also received support from the Tourism Authority of Thailand, and has screened worldwide at more than 18 international film festivals. The Timishort Festival (Romania) honored the film with a Special Mention for its original hybrid of documentary and fiction. His first feature in progress, How Far is Your Colony, is a bold adventure in narrative form, pulling elements of documentary, costume melodrama, and science fiction to assemble a restless portrait of foreigners in search of a home. He holds a BA from the University of Windsor in Canada and is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talent Campus 2012. Currently, he is based in Singapore and Malaysia. For more information on his work, visit www.fluidrace.com.
Alessandro Zangirolami
Recent Graduates
Andrew Bateman
Andrew Bateman is a documentary and experimental filmmaker whose work moves outward from the core belief that love is a dynamic and complex force of human action. As an activist in Denver, Colorado, he co-founded the Breakdown Book Collective and Community Space, which won several “Best of Denver” awards. As an undergraduate in 1999, he made his first documentary—a critical look at the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Washington—and has continued to make work on social justice issues, including access to health care for low-income New Mexicans, an educational video exploring the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and a series of videos to help people with developmental disabilities obtain employment. He is currently finishing a feature-length documentary titled Roy: Dream Catcher and is developing a documentary exploring the intersection of farm workers and the drug war. Andrew earned his MFA in 2011 and also holds an MA in American studies from the University of New Mexico and a BA in political science from Metropolitan State College of Denver. In his spare time, Andrew enjoys making music videos. His current projects and work samples can be seen at www.pabloagua.com.
Bruce Byker James
Chinonye Chukwu
Student Academy Awards and an Honorary Mention at the Los Angeles International Film Festival. Chinonye’s other work includes Igbo Kwenu!, a recipient of a Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Association subsidy grant and the Best Motion Picture and Best Screenplay awards at the 2009 Diamond Screen Festival. Currently, she is in pre-production for her first feature-length film.
Marc D’Agostino
Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz
Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz graduated in August 2011. She also holds an MA in multicultural literature and women’s studies from the University of Georgia, where she served as a researcher for The Civil Rights Digital Library Initiative, an Emmy award–winning project. While at Temple, Aggie wrote and directed three documentary films exploring issues of the Iranian diaspora. Her first film, Conversations with My Aunt, won the Best Documentary Award at the Greater Philadelphia Student Film Festival in 2009. Aggie’s most recent film, Inheritance (2011), blends poetic and observational documentary forms to investigate diasporic identity formation and gender politics in the shadow of
the Iranian Revolution. She hopes to screen this film at universities around the country to spark much-needed conversation about the emergence of the Iranian American community as a legitimate, complex and powerful voice within North American cultural politics. Aggie currently serves as a freelance media maker and consultant for non-profits looking to expand their messaging campaigns.
Ben Kalina
Ben Kalina’s film and video projects focus on the intersection of science, culture and the environment. He has worked with Niijii Films on the nationally broadcast documentaries Two Square Miles and A Sea Change and is the director and producer of grand-prize–winning fiction shorts and documentaries. Ben’s current projects include Shored Up, a documentary about surfing, sea-level rise and the control of nature on the New Jersey shore; Plan C for Civilization, about global-scale geo-engineering; and After the Cap, an interactive web series chronicling the human and environmental impacts of the BP oil spill. He is the owner/operator of Mangrove Media in Philadelphia and the co-founder and creative director of Evidence Based Media, based in Washington, D.C. Ben is on the boards of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Explorer’s Club and the Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Association.
Ellen Knechel
Alexis McCrimmon
David Miranda
David Cooper Moore
David Cooper Moore graduated in August 2011. As a filmmaker, he focused on experimental and essay documentary filmmaking, culminating in a graduate thesis, Things We Keep, which documented the promises and pitfalls of exploring memory and genealogical documents in film. David worked extensively with the Media Education Lab at Temple University to participate in the national and international fields of digital and media literacy. In his time as a media literacy educator, researcher and scholar, he created videos, curriculum documents and programming designed to improve the integration of media analysis and production activities into K-12 and higher education. His published scholarship explores the challenges of using popular culture and mass media to engage student interest in a variety of academic settings. David is also an activist for fair use rights under existing copyright law, facilitating workshops and giving lectures to help filmmakers, educators and others better understand how to incorporate copyrighted materials into their work.
Jonathan Olshefski
Jonathan Olshefski was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2004 he graduated with a BA in English literature and film and media arts from Temple University. There he was first exposed to new media and interactive narrative. In the years following he continued to develop his aesthetic by engaging in urban documentary projects, teaching photography and working as a web designer in the commercial field. He has also become more and more rooted in the culture of Philadelphia’s diverse
neighborhoods and the organic process of recovery, reconciliation and healing. His ambition is to collect the stories and experiences of the city, expressed in multiple forms (visual, aural, textual, concrete, abstract, documentary, allegorical and experimental), and to synthesize the pieces in an interactive world that reflects the chaotic and mysterious world we live in, a culmination of all of the intensity, beauty and tragedy that swirls around us everyday, a world that is dynamic and demands choice. As an interactive form, the intended experience mirrors the desired result: participation. His ultimate desire is to encourage positive action and interaction among the segregated populations of Philadelphia through storytelling and equal relationships. For more information about his work, visit http://myfaeriestory.com and http://questfilm.org.
Ilya Simakov
Ilya Simakov was born in a small town of Dolgoderevenskoye, Russia, in 1984. Since 2000 he has been studying and living in the United States. He has collaborated on a wide range of projects, spanning fiction narrative, documentary and experimental film.
Sara Suleman
Sara Suleman is from Karachi, Pakistan. She works in various media from video to installation. To view her work, visit www.sarasuleman.com.
Daniel Van Wert
Dan Van Wert is a Philadelphia native. Having earned an undergraduate degree in English with a focus in creative writing from Florida State University in 2002, Dan began focusing his attention on acting, film and narrative screenwriting. A member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), Dan has appeared in more than 50 shorts and feature films, as well as various television programs, advertisements and music videos. His primary interests are
in directing, narrative screenwriting and adaptation.