Pivoting Through the Pause

Dawn Porter is an award-winning filmmaker whose 2013 documentary, Gideon’s Army, won the Sundance Film Festival Editing Award, the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, and an Emmy. The film broadcast on HBO in July 2013 and has been used to engage local communities about issues of indigent defense and socioeconomic influences on crime. Dawn’s other films include Spies of Mississippi (2014, PBS) and Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper, a documentary film chronicling President Obama’s program to help young men and boys of color succeed. Dawn interviewed President Obama for the film, which aired nationally on The Discovery Channel and The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) in 2015. Dawn’s latest project, Trapped, explores the impact of laws that regulate abortion clinics in the South. The film coincides with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision to rule on a constitutional challenge to Texas’ HB 2 law, which places unprecedented restrictions on abortion providers in the state. Trapped premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where it won the Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking. During the festival Mashable named Dawn to its list of “10 Female Directors to Watch in 2016,” which also included Jodie Foster, Angelina Jolie, and Niki Caro. Dawn is a Keppler Speaker. She has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and was a returning guest on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show.

Geeta Gandbhir has been nominated for three Emmy Awards and has won two. As editor, films have been nominated twice for the Academy Award, winning once, and have also won three Peabody Awards. Most recently, a feature documentary she produced with Perri Peltz and directed with Academy Award Winning director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, A Journey of A Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers, premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. She is currently co-directing and co-producing a “Conversation” series on race with The New York Times Op-Docs, and she co-directed and edited the film Remembering the Artist, Robert De Niro, Sr. with Perri Peltz for HBO. Additional notable works as an editor include, Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown, the Emmy-nominated Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley for HBO, When the Levees Broke, By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, Music By Prudence, Budrus, If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise, and God is the Bigger Elvis which was nominated for the 2012 Academy Awards. Her film, Which Way is the Front Line From Here? with author and Academy Award nominated director Sebastian Junger was nominated for the 2014 News and Doc Emmys.

Writer/director/producer Mariam Ghani’s films and multiple-channel installations, frequently characterized by intensive archival research, have been presented and collected by museums, festivals, and biennials across the US, UK, Europe, Asia and the Middle East since 2002. Her interactive work has been covered by Fast Company and the Guardian and preserved by the Rhizome ArtBase. Her critical writing on archives, databases, and speculative and shadow histories has been published in Filmmaker, Foreign Policy, Frieze, the NYRB, and a number of anthologies. Ghani’s first feature, the award-winning and critically acclaimed documentary What We Left Unfinished, is about five unfinished films from the Communist period in Afghanistan. It premiered at the 2019 Berlinale and is distributed by Good Docs and Wide House. She was an archival producer for the recent ARTE series Afghanistan: The Wounded Land and has worked with the national archive of Afghanistan to restore and circulate classic films. Ghani is currently in post on the feature doc Dis-Ease, about the unexpected consequences of a century-plus of waging metaphorical war on disease. She has appeared on Democracy Now! and been profiled in The New York Times and The Guardian, was an artist in residence at the New York Public Library and the Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law, and received the inaugural Changemaker Storyteller Award from the Center for Constitutional Rights. Ghani is on the Film/Video faculty at Bennington College and lectures internationally.

Jill Campbell has produced, directed and edited numerous documentaries that have been broadcast on Netflix, Sky TV, VOD and in numerous festivals including Atlanta, American Black, Dance on Camera, Hamptons Doc Fest, Martha’s Vineyard, Miami, Montclair, Sarasota, Seattle, Yes, Tribeca, and Warsaw. Jill directed, produced and wrote the award-winning Mr. Chibbs (Village Voice Critics Pick) about NBA All-Star Kenny Anderson screening on Amazon, Kanopy, & Urban Movie Channel. The film premiered at DOC NYC, was acquired by Abramorama and screened theatrically at IFC Center and Alamo Draft House. Most recently, Jill was a Field Producer for Kevin Bright‘s upcoming Doc Severinsen documentary. Jill received her MFA from Hunter College’s IMA documentary program. She received a scholarship to Killer Films‘ 20/20/20 program where she directed the short film After Tomorrow mentored by legendary producer Christine Vachon. Jill’s a produced playwright with work appearing around the world including La MaMa, Dublin Fringe, and the Actors Studio. She’s been a resident of Mabou Mines and an invited participant in CBS Writers’ Development Program. She is developing several projects including SEAT 20D which is set to premiere in 2020. Jill serves as the Chair of the Producers Guild of America‘s Documentary Salon Series. She works as a freelance director, producer, and editor.