About

Originally from Los Angeles, California, I spent most of the 1980s and 90s working as a media producer, project director and branding consultant on behalf of independent artists, filmmakers, corporate and non-profit clients. When not working in Los Angeles, I traveled the world as a freelance writer and photographer. In the midst of this portion of my work career, I was accepted at Sarah Lawrence College in New York to finish my Bachelor’s Degree. I graduated from SLC in 1993 with honors in three strands of study/research: reading and writing poetry, the history and literature of the American South, and Italian language and literature.

After volunteering at various independent film organizations in Los Angeles, I started to study and write on film and in 2003, I got an opportunity to produce and shoot my first documentary for director Lisandro Perez-Rey. The film is called La Fabri_K: The Cuban Hip Hop Factory and we shot in Havana, Cuba, New York, Miami and Philadelphia. I have devoted my career to documentary filmmaking ever since. After a few years of writing for other film blogs, in 2007 I began my own, devoting it to the art of nonfiction cinema. Called Still in Motion, I began to compile an archive of long-form interviews with some of today’s most dynamic filmmakers.

In the spring of 2007, I moved to New York. I co-produced the very first Cinema Eye Honors ceremony and contributed original content on new media and the then-emerging field of online film distribution for the Tribeca Film Institute (originally Renew Media). I worked for several years as a consultant for TFI on projects for the organization’s documentary funds and grants, including the Gucci Fund. I also worked as an Outreach and Audience Engagement Producer (then, a new field) for independent documentary filmmakers through the auspices of New York-based distribution companies such as First Run Features. Currently, I am a member of several screening and selection committees for documentary and short film festivals and pitch forums across Europe and the UK.

I am a contributing writer for several arts and film publications and websites such as FILMMAKER Magazine, DOX Magazine, BOMB Magazine’s arts blog, Guernica, Senses of Cinema, Desistfilm, Kosovo 2.0, and The Calvert Journal. I am a member of FIPRESCI, CAMIRA – Cinema and Moving Image Research Assembly, and Verband der deutschen Filmkritik – German Film Critics’ Association.

For links to work, and other information, please see my Writing Section.

In 2010, after working as a guest programmer for the DocPoint festival in Helsinki, Finland and teaching as a guest-lecturer in the documentary department at the National Film School, I moved to Berlin, Germany where I currently reside full-time. I work as a freelance story consultant; curate and produce my own experimental film and video screening series called Kino Satellite; work as a juror, master class and panel host at many festivals; write and edit catalogue texts and other exhibition materials for video artists; and, write and edit for The DOX BOX Association, a new initiative and online platform for Arab World filmmakers run by Syrian producer, Diana El Jeroudi. Since 2012, I have been an associate programmer at DokuFest in Prizren, Kosovo and am a freelance or guest curator and programming consultant for other European festivals. I am on the programming team for the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri.

Taking a sabbatical from Berlin in 2013, I went to go live in Tirana, Albania, where I taught English at a local Turkish university, developed and launched film workshops for high school and university students in Kosovo, and began developing my first nonfiction feature in the countries of Kosovo and Albania entitled Vatër | Atdheu (Hearth | Homeland), now in production. As well, I am a co-producer with Mistrus Media in Riga, Latvia and Kick!Films in Munich, Germany on award-winning Estonian director Jaak Kilmi’s latest feature documentary People From Nowhere, also currently in production.