Super excited I'm an LEF Fellow for this year's Flaherty Film Seminar. Can't wait to meet all the fellows and engage in the films and discussions. Dang, The Flaherty Seminar began in the 1950s before the era of film schools-when Robert Flaherty's widow, Frances, convened a group of filmmakers, critics, curators, musicians, and other film enthusiasts at the Flaherty farm in Vermont. For more than sixty years the Flaherty Seminar has been firmly established as a one-of-a-kind institution that seeks to encourage filmmakers and other artists to explore the potential of the moving image. The films of such directors as Louis Malle, the Maysles brothers, Mira Nair, Satyajit Ray, Agneés Varda, John Cassavetes, Marlon Riggs, Yasujiro Ozu, Pedro Costa and Joris Ivens were shown at the Seminar before they were known generally in the American film community! I'm grateful to the LEF Foundation for this opportunity. 

We are honored to receive a Maine Arts Commission Project Grant for Maine Artists for our continued production work on LIVING SOUND. Things have shifted during the pandemic, but are moving forward on production and interviews, to tell the story of legendary record producer Ethel Gabriel. Also, SoundGirls, who we are in association with, has awarded two Ethel Gabriel scholarships for 2021 to support continuing audio education for women in sound.The 2020 recipients are Katherine Brophy and Dian Yu. 
Dian Yu is from Beijing China, where she studied sound. She was accepted into the Sound Design graduate program at University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She wants to be a role model for young women in her field. 

Katherine Brophy is studying at Belmont University in Nashville, TN, graduating May 2021 (GPA 3.724, Dean’s List) . She will earn a Bachelor’s of Music Business with an emphasis in Production.  

WHEW! 2020! It's been a whirlwind, but we are still going strong on our Ethel Gabriel documentary-called LIVING SOUND. Some updates are that we've done some more interviews, research, and are also really thrilled to say that we are now part of the WOMEN MAKE MOVIES PRODUCTION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM and they also are our fiscal sponsors. We admire the work WMM does for women in film, and we join other filmmakers and films we admire. We also are honored to have been awarded grants from: ​the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, which provides resources for artists, engages with community and promotes the legacy of the founding artists, Joan Beauregard and John David Ellis. The grant allowed us to travel to the SF Bay Area in February, right before the pandemic hit, to interview key subjects and to visit Skywalker Sound! FUN! We also received a Maine Arts Commission Grant this summer, which will allow us to move forward on production, archival costs, and legal work. SUPPORT the arts in 2020, we all need art! We all need hope, reflection, and ART!

Hey hey! Am excited to share that I am in production on LIVING STRINGS - a new documentary that tells the story of trailblazing record producer Ethel Gabriel! I'm working with Christoph Gelfand, April Tucker, in collaboration with SoundGirls on this new documentary. Take a peak at the film website ethelgabrieldoc.com/

MORE SOON! 

Excited to announce that 2019 will bring a new project, BUS STOP STORIES. 

I'll be working alongside artist Kelly Rioux, the Portland, Maine METRO bus system and its riders to get this project off the ground. STAY TUNED!

Bus Stop Stories is a mobile public storytelling project that meets + engages riders right where they’re at–bus stops, shelters + on board the city’s buses. Working alongside riders to create and tell their own stories, the project culminates in an immersive tour, where the public is invited aboard a moving bus to listen to audio stories and view portraits, while stopping at temporary pop-up art/bus shelters created by riders. What if–instead of cultivating invisibility–using the city bus created a new modality for an abundance of omitted voices, ideas + narratives to be heard, celebrated + distributed? Bus Stop Stories centers the art and stories of riders to articulate and frame critical challenges and opportunities, while inserting excitement into a moving system.

Thanks to the KINDLING FUND, a statewide regranting program for artist-organized projects, administered by SPACE Gallery on behalf of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting Network.

I was honored to participate in a group installation, World Making, at NEW FRUIT in Portland this August, alongside so many rad women artists. I love New Fruit so much. 

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My work, TEMPORARY HOMES, an audio-driven installation based on interviews I've done with people living outdoors in Portland, Maine over about 7 years, was up and running. The first iteration of TEMPORARY HOMES was back in 2012 at the now-defunct DIRIGIMUS COLLECTIVE on Thompson's Point in Maine 

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Hey hey. Happy fall!

My frequent collaborator, Christoph Gelfand, and I created a new short documentary, GOOD NEWS, which we were so happy to screen at the documentary-centric Camden International Film Festival in mid-September. We had fun screening GOOD NEWS alongside other Maine-made films. 

GOOD NEWS follows Edgar Gatto and his junk shop in the Bayside neighborhood of Portland, a place where homelessness, politics, religion, and gentrification play out every day. It captures Edgar's small corner of our city, before it's gone.

We loved working with Josh and Erik at Planet Nutshell, animator Marcin Z and local musicians Big Blood. Whew! Looking forward to the festivals. 

As part of Maine-based photographer Shoshannah White's project CHATTERMARK, I was honored to produce an audio piece called ​ICE CORE, MEMORY OF THE PLANET (2017) 
5 mins 14 seconds.  

​ICE CORE, MEMORY OF THE PLANET is based on an interview with Paul Mayewski, Director of the Climate Change Institute at University of Maine. Aside from being a badass explorer, Mayewski has led 55 expeditions to some of the remotest polar and high altitude reaches of the planet-and he says humans are profoundly changed the planet in major ways. 

Shoshannah's CHATTERMARK project is a street-art initiative bringing imagery of the Arctic and melting glacial ice to the streets of Maine by injecting imagery of a continually changing Polar landscape into the busy rush of daily life as a reminder of new landscapes resulting from human impact, and a connection/disconnection we have with the world around us. Images are printed at mural scale and adhered to public, exterior walls with an all-natural binder meant to disintegrate with time and weather. 

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INTO THE LANTERN Exhibit OPENS AT MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM 

Happy to announce that our immersive installation Into the Lantern - which recreates the experience of being inside the eastern light at Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth, Maine just opened at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine. Have you been there?

Christoph Gelfand (True Life Media) and I have worked hard for the past year-after getting our own set of keys (TRUE!) to the East Tower lighthouse to create a panoramic time-lapse from the top interior of the eastern light. We're talking about rain, sleet, snow, hail, wind, sunsets, birds, cargo boats passing and more over a full year of seasons and sunrises and sunfalls. We also made two documentary shorts, Beyond the Harbor (about the Portland Pilots) and Keeper (a brief history of lighthouse keepers) as well as three unique audio stories about: the untold story of women lighthouse keepers (thanks to Elinor DeWire), Modern Day Lighthouse Keeper USCG Tony Robb, and a whimsical story about how (or if) commercial fishermen in Maine still use our lighthouses these days. (Hint: rarely.) 

Into the Lantern is a permanent exhibition so go on up and check it out!

Hey! 

If you're in NYC, go check out the Rural Route Film Festival - July 29-31st, 2016. 

The 12th annual Rural Route Film Festival is centered around stories of brave youth and their animal friends.  The line-up includes a mix of new movies and all-time classics, plus top notch shorts from around the globe.

We're honored that DIVER screens with other short films as part of the The Opening Night Screening Party (July 29) at Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm (Flagship Long Island City, Queens location). The Core Festival (July 30-31) is at Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NY. 

​FMI: https://ruralroutefilms.com/2016-program/friday-july-29-8pm-brooklyn-grange-rooftop-farm-queens-loc-opening-night-screening-party/

Hi Friends! Long time, no news.

The good news is that I've been busy, the bad news is that I'm no good at keeping this website news section up-to-date. Thanks for reading.

I'm happy to say I'm working with Christoph Gelfand (True Life Media) and photographer Tonee Harbert on a short high school basketball themed documentary. (It's about much more than that, more on that later!) We have been in production since Fall 2015, and expect to wrap up shooting in the next few months. This has been a fun one, with lots of community interest! 

We've been court-side, in the locker room, at team dinners, on the team bus, and in the school talking to players, coaches, parents and fans! If you'd like to follow the project on FB, please see PHS Basketball Film.

​It's looking like we'll be CROWDFUNDING this film, so stay tuned. Thanks!