CTVN
CTVN was founded in 1974 by Executive Director Denise Zaccardi as a special project of the Alternative Schools Network. Since then, over 8,000 at-risk Chicago youth have graduated from CTVN’s long-term programs, producing insightful media for their communities. Our mission is to empower low-income young adults and children in Chicago to identify, address, and resolve issues through the use and understanding of digital media arts. By learning how to express themselves through video production, youth gain the opportunity to investigate their cultural roots and think critically about the world they live in while presenting their ideas to a nationwide audience. As applied by the CTVN media-literacy curriculum, video continually proves to be a successful, alternative method of enhancing academic learning, developing essential skills that are prerequisite to success in other subjects. Through production and on-the-job media training, youth develop job skills, leadership abilities, teamwork, organization, time management, visual aptitude, and literacy. CTVN made possible the Manhood project.
Tristan Ahtone
Tristan Ahtone is a member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma. Before becoming a reporter, Tristan held a number of exciting jobs, such as door-to-door salesman, delivery driver, telemarketer, secretary, janitor, busboy, and office clerk to name a few. In 2008, Tristan graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism with a masters degree in broadcast journalism. His favorite medium is radio, followed closely by video and print. Tristan is currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico covering the presidential elections and their effect on Indian Country. He will stay there until the heat kills him, he gets a better offer, or makes a rash decision to escape the desert at high speed. He is one of the producers for BmX.
Colin Alford (Nam1Sekatti)
Colin Alford, whose stage name, Nam1Sekatti is "It takes one man" spelled backwards (because "it takes one man for change"), is a Chicago-area emcee who creates political hip hop and works as a supervisor at an animal hospital surgical ward. He also plays basketball, writes, records, and is a member of Armageddon Clik, a nationwide network of lyricists and producers. Born in Germany, where his father was stationed in the Air Force, Nam1Sekatti and his family later moved to Champagne-Urbana. He has based most of his art as an emcee in rap about the struggle of the African-American within this nation. Listen to Nam1Sekatti's music at http://www.reverbnation.com/nam1sekatti
Domnique Anderson
Dominique Anderson (Another Statistic) is a talented 16-year-old from Brooklyn. She says of her role in Another Statistic, “It’s funny ‘cause I don’t even know how to act but my character Bon Qui Qui is so crazy. I’m not even like that- I’m very calm and laid back… I’m so grateful to be a part of this film, and it’s a blessing. I want to thank everyone who supported our movie.”
Phil Beterlsen
An award-winning filmmaker, PHIL BERTELSEN works in both fiction and non-fiction. His narrative feature debut, Rock the Paint, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival where it received the Creative Promise Award. Bertelsen produced the Peabody Award-winning Chisholm ’72 – Unbought & Unbossed. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast nationally on public television. His first film, Around the Time, was a drama honored with several awards, including a Student Academy Award while his next film The Sunshine also won numerous festival awards including a Director’s Guild East Award. Additionally, Bertelsen wrote and directed Outside Looking In, an hour- long documentary examining trans-racial adoption in America airing on PBS.
Rebecca Cerese
REBECCA CERESE is an award winning filmmaker who has worked for Video Dialog, Inc. for 10 years, producing videos for many non-profit organizations and foundations, such as the Ford Foundation. Her first production as a documentary film producer was FEBRUARY ONE: The Story of the Greensboro Four, which had its world premiere screening at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in April 2003. The film has also screened at the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta and the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, DC. The film has been nationally broadcast on PBS. Rebecca served as co-producer of the recent documentary by Steven Channing, Durham: A Self Portrait. She also co-authored the commemorative book, A Tradition of Excellence: A Pictorial History of the Watts School of Nursing (2006). Most recently, she produced Change Comes Knocking: The Story of the North Carolina Fund. The film continues the work she started in February One.
Steven Channing
STEVEN CHANNING brings a wide range of experiences as an historian, author and Emmy Award winning filmmaker. He began his professional life as an academic historian, with a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Beginning in the 1980’s, he began to communicate true stories about the American past through documentary and educational television. His initial productions include America’s 400th Anniversary, narrated by Andy Griffith, and Loyalty on Trial, which received the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel award. The following year, he produced the historical drama Alamance for PBS, on the coming of the American Revolution. Alamance was an Emmy Award winner. Steve followed his success with Alamance with February One: The Story of the Greensboro Four. More recently, his documentary Durham: A Self-Portrait explained 150 years of race and class in this unique southern community, and he created Change Comes Knocking on the first antipoverty efforts in the South.
Zettler Clay
Zettler C. Clay IV is a journalist born and raised in southwestern Atlanta, and a recent graduate of Georgia State University. Currently freelancing, he has covered subjects ranging from Barack Obama to Amare Stoudamire to Sheila Johnson. Zettler is currently producing The Atlanta Way, a documentary on the rampant gentrification movement in Atlanta and the ripple effects it has caused on the whole city. He holds the unusual dichotomy of having his favorite movie casting no African-Americans (The Godfather) and his favorite television show (The Wire) casting majority black actors. His interests are omnivorous, with excellent sports plays, a good nonfiction book and dissecting human motives being at the top.
Public Radio Exchange
PUBLIC RADIO EXCHANGE is a Cambridge, MA-based non-profit distributor, aggregator and social networking Internet site where tens of thousands of listeners meet producers, stations and networks that exchange public radio programs and audio for broadcast on hundreds of stations and web sites.
Byron Hurt
BYRON HURT is the New York-based producer of the award-winning documentary and underground classic I Am A Man: Black Masculinity in America and Moving Memories: The Black Senior Video Yearbook. For more than five years, he was the associate director and founding member of the Mentors in Violence Prevention program, the leading college-based rape and domestic violence prevention initiative for professional athletics. He is also the former associate director of the first gender violence prevention program in the United States Marine Corps. In 1999, Hurt was the recipient of the Echoing Green Public Service Fellowship, an award given to ambitious young activists devoted to creating social change in their communities. Over the past decade, he has lectured at more than 100 college campuses and trained thousands of young men and women on issues related to gender, race, sex, violence, music and visual media. He is the producer of Barack & Curtis.
Andrea Kalin
ANDREA KALIN, the founder and executive producer of Spark Media, is an award-winning filmmaker whose work has earned more than 50 international awards in the past decade. Employing new communication tools and superior storytelling gifts to promote social change, her films depict lives of courage, perseverance and dignity set against brutal injustices and seemingly insurmountable hardships. Some of her productions, like the recently released PBS special, Prince Among Slaves, dramatize lives that have until now been lost to history, while others address contemporary social issues. Her multimedia firm, officially launched in 1989, truly is a “spark,” as it utilizes visual narratives to increase awareness among cultures and gives audience members a chance to become more engaged in the world in which they live. She is the director and producer of The Pact.
Jed Kim
Jed Kim grew up in Toledo, Ohio and attended college in Chicago. After receiving his degree in biology, he decided that he would rather spend his time making radio and film documentaries. He worked on the documentary, Stand Up: Muslim American Comics Come of Age, as well as for the public television show, Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York, where he works as a freelance journalist. He is one of the producers for BmX.
Jason Marck
As director for Eight Forty-Eight, Chicago Public Radio’s award-winning weekday morning newsmagazine, Jason is responsible for putting together and executing the many elements that go into the daily show, as well as producing individual segments that air throughout the week. Prior to joining Chicago Public Radio in 2004, Jason worked as a producer, director and writer for Fox Sports Radio’s nationally syndicated morning show in Los Angeles, CA. Before that he performed a variety of roles as morning host for KLZR radio in Lawrence, Kansas, where he helped develop one of the first alternative music stations in the country. Jason studied music history and communications at the University of Kansas. A native of Chicago, Jason lives in the Rogers Park neighborhood.
Anthony Marshall
At the young age of 16, ANTHONY MARSHALL co-founded the Lyricist Lounge. Through determination and a natural instinct for the business, Mr. Marshall would establish the Lyricist Lounge to become the blueprint for discovering emerging Hip-Hop MCs. Sean "Puffy" Combs, Notorious B.I.G., Mos Def, Eminem, Talib Kweli, and the Black Eyed Peas are just a few of the artists that have been a part of the respected history. He most recently helped to launch, former Vice President, Al Gore’s independent cable and satellite television network, Current TV, where he worked as a Creative Executive aggregating user generated content. He now works with them independently as a Host and Producer. He is the producer of the My Life, My Hustle series, featuring: real estate businessman Anthony Morris, poet Ise Lyfe, independent entrepreneur Karl Carter, filmmaker Kevin Epps, and working man and electrician, Steven Corbis.
Stuart Math
STUART MATH is a documentary filmmaker/cameraman who lives and works in New York City. He has produced and photographed films on a wide variety of subjects, from the history of the New York City subway (River of Steel) to the Lindy Hop (Can’t Top the Lindy Hop); from race relations in the suburbs (The Struggle for Integration) to travelogues (West Point: American Icon). His work has been shown theatrically, broadcast nationally on PBS and cable TV, viewed in classrooms all over the country, and screened in film festivals worldwide.
David Barclay Moore
DAVID BARCLAY MOORE was born and raised in Missouri. After studying Creative Writing at Iowa State University, Film at Howard University in Washington DC, and Language Studies at L’Universite de Montpellier in France, David moved to New York City in 1995. David has worked in different creative and writing capacities with: Sony StudiOne, DreamWorks TV, Barbra Streisand’s Barwood Films, and @radical.media among others. His work has appeared in Vibe Magazine, Callaloo, and Blithe House Quarterly, and he has freelanced for the Associated Press. David is also a Semi-Finalist for the 2008 Sundance Screenwriters Lab and a 2006-07 Yaddo Fellow in Creative Writing & Film. He was selected as a 2002-03 Independent Feature Project/Project Involve Honoree for Screenwriting & Narrative and was a Grantee in the 2001 Artists Mentor Program at Film/Video Arts. He is the producer of Doctor Al's Rebels and Realness.
Tesfaye Negussie
Tesfaye Negussie was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland (suburbs of D.C.). His earliest memories are of watching his father in the studio reporting for the Voice of America, however, he didn’t consider taking up journalism till he was in college. Since then, he has made it his life’s goal to travel the world, and tell the stories of people who are seldom seen in mainstream media. He wants to tell stories of all types of people, but as an African-American who is the son of Ethiopian immigrants, he takes special interest in telling the stories of Ethiopians, African-Americans and the African Diaspora as a whole. Tesfaye recently graduated from Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism. He currently works as a correspondent assistant on NOW on PBS with David Brancaccio and Maria Hinojosa. He is one of the producers for BmX.
Sabrina Schmidt Gordon
Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, Producer, Director and Editor, has been committed to cultural and social issues documentary filmmaking for over a decade. Her editing debut was an Emmy-winning episode of WGBH’s Greater Boston Arts series, and she has continued to distinguish herself as both a producer and editor, having worked on numerous award-winning documentaries for public television and cable. Sabrina is the Co-Producer and Editor of Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a ground-breaking PBS documentary about manhood and gender politics in mainstream Hip-Hop. Currently, she is directing Common Ground: The Good Fight of Malik Rahim, about the former Black Panther’s daunting mission to save the Lower Ninth Ward section of New Orleans, and 180 Days, which examines the NYC Teaching Fellows Program through the eyes of three new teachers during their first year in the public school system. She is also producing several new media web projects around the issues of constitutional rights, and healthcare in minority communities.
Karen Thorsen
An award-winning writer/filmmaker, KAREN THORSEN began her career as an editor for Simon & Schuster, a journalist for Life Magazine, and a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. In 1989, as culmination of a long association with the renowned Maysles Films, Thorsen wrote, produced and directed the internationally praised feature-length documentary, James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket, which premiered on PBS/American Masters. Thorsen’s second co-production with PBS/American Masters “scheduled to premiere in 2009” is Joe Papp in Five Acts. Other recent productions include an Intimate Portrait for Lifetime Television, a three-part series for the History Channel, segments of a weekly series for The Learning Channel and a documentary film history of the Pilgrims, now a permanent installation at Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, MA.
Angela Tucker
ANGELA TUCKER is a filmmaker based in New York City. She has been the Director of Production at Arts Engine Inc./Big Mouth Films for the past six years. Her past film credits include the Emmy®-nominated documentary Deadline (NBC), Beyond The Steps: The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (Great Performances) and Election Day (P.O.V.). She is currently producing the films Rose and Nangabire and Dreaming Nicaragua. She is also directing a feature length documentary, Asexuality: The Making Of A Movement. She received an MFA in Film from Columbia University where she received a Dean’s Fellowship and a grant from The Academy of Arts and Sciences. She writes for The Huffington Post. She is the producer of the Invisible Men series, featuring Andrew and Gregory.
BCAM TV
Now in it’s second year, BCAMTV is the video arts program of Brooklyn Community Arts and Media High School. Our elective class has produced 4 short documentary and narrative films. We are also involved with academic classes, and have collaborated with the Student Press Initiative to produce supplementary media for a published book of student narratives. Current projects include another narrative short and a piece with the Hip Hop Theater Festival documenting our student interns’ involvement aiding such artists as Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Danny Hoch. Upcoming is a collaboration with spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Break/s Beyond the Ballot project, in which students will write poems, speeches, and articles and make short films to address issues that are important to them. The BCAM team produced "Another Statistic." email to amendola@bcamhs.org for more info.