Apr 21, 2010
Artist Development
The San Francisco Film Society announced today the formation of the 2010 SFFSFilmmakers Advisory Committee, an active group of established Bay Area film professionals whose role is to aid in further developing SFFS Filmmaker Services, a multilayered suite of programs and events designed to promote and support the independent filmmaking community.
Peter Bratt‘s first film, the critically acclaimed Follow Me Home (SFIFF 1996), premiered in competition at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. Its exploration of the journey to redemption and the ultimate reach toward conquering societal ills is a thematic echo further examined in his sophomore effort, La Mission, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, opened the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival and won the 2010 Estela Award from the National Association of Latino Independent Producers. Bratt was honored in 2000 with a Rockefeller Foundation Film/Video/Multimedia Fellowship; through this fellowship, he penned an as-yet-unproduced screenplay, Four Marys. He cofounded 5 Stick Films with his brother, Benjamin Bratt, and their producing partner Alpita Patel. La Mission is the first film from 5 Stick.
Cristine Dewey is president of ro*co films international, for which she builds and maintains relationships with media buyers and acquisition executives around the world, manages international contracts and works collaboratively with filmmakers to maintain long-term international distribution presence for the company’s films. Dewey joined ro*co in 2005 after several years of experience as a community activist. While at ro*co, she has worked on international distribution for numerous titles including Born Into Brothels, Promises, Jesus Camp, The Weather Underground and The Judge and the General. She has a B.A. in English from Carleton College and a professional background in development and grants administration.
Hannah Eaves oversees Link TV’s Internet operations, managing design, engineering and new-technology development. Prior to Link TV, she worked for ten years as an interactive multimedia producer, video producer and video editor for clients including Tower Records, Kaiser Permanente and Blockbuster. She has worked on Web management projects for Sam Goody, Hewlett-Packard and Altera, and has held staff positions at several Bay Area VOD start-ups. As a journalist she has covered the convergence of film, TV and the tech world for publications including SOMA Magazine, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary Film, Alternet, GreenCine, PopMatters and most recently as a tech columnist for sf360.org.
Pamela Harris has worked in the documentary field for a decade and currently serves as a program director for Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media. She recently produced and directed Land of Promise: The Story of Allensworth, an award-winning documentary about a historically black town in California that faces the threat of encroachment by agribusiness. Harris codirected Waging a Living, a PBS documentary about low-wage working families, and oversaw educational outreach for the Oscar-nominated Long Night’s Journey into Day, about South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She is executive director of Iris Films, a Bay Area film company that has produced award-winning titles such as Long Night’s Journey Into Day and Skin Deep. Harris earned a Masters degree in journalism with a focus on documentary film from the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.
Tony Liano is a San Francisco¬-based director and producer. His most recent work as a producer was Everything Strange and New, a feature that premiered at Sundance in 2009 and screened at the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival. Liano’s directing credits include Barberland, The Three-Cornered Hat and Seven Fallen Objects (currently in postproduction). As a filmmaker, Liano puts a wide range of business experience to use, from product management at Microsoft to, most recently, senior vice president at Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Jamie Meltzer‘s documentary feature film debut Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story was broadcast nationally on PBS’s Independent Lens series. It has played at festivals worldwide and throughout rock clubs in the U.S. paired with musical acts such acts as NRBQ, Robbie Fulks, Edith Frost and Cynthia Plaster Caster. His second documentary feature, Welcome to Nollywood, investigates the wildly successful Nigerian film industry. It was produced in partnership with the National Black Programming Consortium and aired on PBS in 2008, as part of the series AfroPop. La Caminata, a recent short film, explores a small town in Mexico that puts on a simulated border crossing as a tourist attraction. Meltzer teaches in the MFA program in documentary film at Stanford University.
Beth Pielert is a producer, director, cinematographer and editor specializing in social-justice documentary film and corporate ethnographic film. She has played key roles on award-winning series and feature films including the Digital Divide series, The Corporation, Out of the Poison Tree, Girls Rock! and the award-winning short, Claiming the Title. Her work has screened theatrically, aired on PBS and has been distributed online. In addition to running Good Film Works, a San Francisco-based production company, Pielert works with EA|Visceral Studios as a senior video artist. Her client roster includes Apple, IDEO, ActiveVoice, Lucasfilm, Cobra Creative, Crushpad and BuildingGreenTV.
Peter Quartaroli is an actor and producer working consistently in film and television. With lead roles in independent films and supporting roles in studio films such as Zodiac and Scorpion King, Quartaroli has worked with talent such as David Fincher, Billy Bob Thornton, Mark Ruffalo and Cate Blanchett. Quartaroli started the production company Table 21 Films, which is currently developing Tony’s Moneyand the documentary Deep Blues/Flamenco Jondo. He has also produced four films including the award-winning The Poker House, directed by Lori Petty.
Ellen Schneider has worked at the intersection of film and civic engagement for over 25 years. She was formerly the executive producer of POV, PBS’s longest-running independent documentary series. Schneider created and executive-produced the pilot TV series Right Here, Right Now, which Entertainment Weekly called “a blueprint for what reality television should be all about.” Schneider lectures widely and has served on juries ranging from the Sundance Film Festival to the Rio Cine Festival in Brazil.
Tiffany Shlain is an award-winning filmmaker, artist, founder of the Webby Awards and cofounder of International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, who was honored by Newsweek as one of the Women Shaping the 21st century. Shlain’s films have played at more than 100 festivals including Sundance and the San Francisco International Film Festival, have received 24 awards and have been translated into eight languages. Her last film, The Tribe, was the number one film on iTunes. She is currently directing a feature-length documentary, Connected: A Declaration of Interdependence. Shlain is a Henry Crown fellow of the Aspen Institute.
Robin Sloan works on the media team at Twitter, helping media organizations harness tweets in interesting, innovative ways. Previously he was a strategist at Current, an independent TV network cofounded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, and a reporter and producer at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school and think tank. He graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in economics. Sloan is also a writer who works at the intersection of storytelling and technology.