NEWS
For Immediate Release
[Date]
Contact:
[Name]
[Phone]
[Email]
[Org name] presents [Movie Title] as part of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s
On Screen/In Person Tour
[City, State]: [Org Name] will be presenting [Insert Movie Name] through Mid Atlantic Arts
Foundation’s On Screen/In Person program. On Screen/In Person is designed to bring some of
the best new independent American films and their respective filmmakers to communities across
the mid-Atlantic region. The filmmakers will tour with their films and work with the host sites to
develop community activities that provide audiences context and greater appreciation for their
respective work and the art of film. [Insert info about ancillary activities here]
[Org Name] will present [Movie Name] on [insert event location, time, date info here]. Tickets
are available [insert ticket info here].
[Insert info about movie/director here – see descriptions below]
Deaf Jam
Director Judy Lieff
Illuminating the extraordinary power of American Sign Language (ASL) poetry, Deaf Jam is
story of Aneta Brodski's bold journey into the spoken word slam scene. When Aneta, a deaf
Israeli immigrant high school student, makes an extraordinary connection with a hearing
Palestinian slam poet, they transcend personal and political divisions to generate a new form of
poetry that speaks to both the hearing and the deaf.
Judy Lieff is a filmmaker and educator with a background in dance and experimental film. She
participated in the American Film Showcase 2013/2014 program with her first feature
documentary, Deaf Jam, traveling to South Korea, Zimbabwe, and Turkey. Judy won a finishing
grant from ITVS for the film. She is on faculty at SUNY Purchase teaching film production that
explores the intersections of film and dance. Judy earned her M.F.A. in dance & experimental
film/video from the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts), following a career as a
professional dancer. Her credits include: a Dance On Camera residency with BBC producer Bob
Lockyer at the Banff Centre for the Arts, a National Dance/Media fellowship from the Pew
Charitable Trusts, and six grants for media projects with youth. Judy has years of experience
working in production and post-production on commercials, industrials, shorts, and EPKs for
feature films. Additionally, she has worked as a motion capture performer/choreographer, and as
a stop-motion performer/choreographer on projects including Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas and Pat O'Neil's The Decay of Fiction.
Foreign Puzzle
Director Chithra Jeyaram
Foreign Puzzle follows dancer and choreographer Sharon Marroquin as she endures intensive
breast cancer treatments and explores her fear of death through the creation of a 90 minute dance
titled, “The Materiality of Impermanence.” The dance becomes Sharon’s only outlet, allowing
her to escape the daily pressures of the disease and life as a single working parent, and shapes
her perceptions about life as she fights to heal her body and mind.
Chithra Jeyaram is an award winning documentary filmmaker and educator based in Washington
D.C. She is the technical instructor at the Institute for Documentary Filmmaking at George
Washington University and is a master instructor at Arlington Independent Media where she
teaches Documentary Production and Video Editing Courses. Her short film Mijo aired on
KLRU TV, PBS online film festival and in more than 50 film festivals around the world. Foreign
Puzzle is her debut feature documentary and she is in pre-production for an interactive
documentary project titled 1001 Breast Cancer Nights. She is the recipient of the 2014 Creative
Arts Fellowship and BAVC National Mediamaker Fellowship for 1001 Breast Cancer Nights;
2013 Docs in Progress Fellowship for Foreign Puzzle; 2012 Commonwealth Broadcasting
Association Your Worldview Documentary grant for Mijo and Dina Sherzer Award for Social
Awareness for her documentary Refugee Musings.
Miriam Beerman: Expressing the Chaos
Director Jonathan Gruber
In her more than 60 years as a groundbreaking artist, Miriam Beerman has overcome loss and
tragedy to inspire friends, family, and fans about how to remain defiant, creative and strong.
Miriam Beerman: Expressing the Chaos is the retrospective of a remarkable career and the
profile of an artist whose personal demons and empathy for human suffering colored a lifetime
of her work.
Jonathan Gruber is the executive producer of Black Eye Productions, where he has been
producing and directing award winning documentaries, films, videos and interactive media since
1995. His work has aired on PBS, The History Channel, the National Geographic Channel, and
Discovery Channels. He has worked extensively in historical subjects, including Alexander the
Great, Leonardo da Vinci, and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. His first feature documentary,
Pola's March, aired on public television stations across the United States, and received a
distinguished Crystal Heart Award from the Heartland Film Festival. His second feature
documentary film, Life is a Banquet: The Rosalind Russell Story, premiered at film festivals
around the U.S. and has aired on PBS stations and on ABC/Australia. He is currently screening
two feature documentaries: Jewish Soldiers in Blue & Gray, a first-of-its-kind film on the Jewish
experience during the Civil War, as well as the award-winning Follow Me: the Yoni Netanyahu
Story.
REBEL
Director Maria Agui Carter
One of the thousand women said to have fought in the Civil War, Loreta Janeta Velazquez
altered her sex, ethnicity, and identity in order to become a Confederate soldier spy and double
agent for the Union, only to be dismissed as a hoax after revealing her story in her scandalous
1876 memoir, The Woman in Battle. REBEL is a detective story about a woman, a myth, and the
politics of national memory.
Maria Agui Carter immigrated to the U.S. from Ecuador, grew up an undocumented "Dreamer,"
and graduated from Harvard University. She been a grantee of, and has served as a panelist and
juror for institutions including film festivals and organizations such as ITVS, the National
Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has won a George
Peabody Gardner, a Warren, a Corporation for Public Broadcasting/PBS fellowship, and a
Rockefeller Fellowship, among others, and has served as a visiting scholar/artist at Harvard,
Tulane and Brandeis universities. She is a trustee of the National Association of Latino
Independent Producers and on the Advisory Board of the Filmmaker's Collaborative. Agui Carter
has been a working member of the Writer's Guild since 2000. Her new play 14 Freight Trains
opened to excellent reviews at Arena Stage in Washington, DC in fall of 2014. Her new script
about an undocumented teen code-writer enamored of the Monarch butterfly called The Secret
Life of La Mariposa, was a Sundance Screenwriter's Lab finalist. She is currently developing a
documentary on immigration called Mother Land.
Small Small Thing: The Olivia Zinnah Story
Director Jessica Vale
In December 2012, Olivia Zinnah died of complications from a rape injury caused when she was
seven years old. After filmmaker Jessica Vale became personally involved with Olivia and her
mother while working on another project in Monrovia, Liberia, her quest to film them became a
mission of hope and medical help in a country where rape is the number one crime, and the
majority of the victims are children.
Jessica Vale is an accomplished non-fiction television producer and editor, working freelance for
over 12 years. Originally from New Hope, Pennsylvania, Jess graduated from the film program
at Temple University. Her credits include work for NBC News, CBS News, National
Geographic, History Channel, The Weinstein Co., and more. Small Small Thing: The Olivia
Zinnah Story is her award winning feature directorial debut which had its worldwide television
premiere on Al Jazeera English. The film received high praise and Vale received substantial
media attention including appearances on MSNBC's Melissa Harris Perry Show, Huffington Post
Live and WABC NY's Weekend Morning Show. Vale is currently post producing LIV a feature
narrative by director Catherine Eaton, as she works on her next documentary The Limits of
Dissent. She a member of the NYC chapter of Film Fatales.
The Winding Stream
Director Beth Harrington
The Winding Stream tells the story of the American roots music dynasty, the Carters and the
Cashes, tracing the influence of their music from the 1920s through the present day, and how a
seemingly unlikely young man named Johnny Cash would be the one to lift up the Carter legacy
from obscurity. An intimate account of reciprocity and love, The Winding Stream features
interviews and performances with roots music practitioners, including one of the last interviews
ever granted by Johnny Cash.
Beth Harrington is an independent producer, director and writer, born in Boston and transplanted
to the Pacific Northwest. Harrington's independent production Welcome to the Club - The
Women of Rockabilly was honored with a 2003 Grammy nomination. This and other work
reflects a long-standing love of music. She is a singer and guitarist, most noted for her years as a
member of Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers on the Warner Brothers Sire Records label.
Harrington has also worked with public television stations WGBH in Boston and OPB in
Portland producing, researching, and developing shows for both national and local air on series
such as NOVA, Frontline, Health Quarterly, History Detectives and Oregon Experience, in
addition to numerous one-off specials. She is active in various film communities, having served
on the board of Film Action Oregon as well as the Oregon Media Production Association. She is
a past President of Women in Film/New England and a former Vice President of Women in
Film/Seattle.
On Screen/In Person is made possible by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through the generous
support of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Regional Touring Program.
[Insert info about your organization here]