Jenn Shaw is an award-winning commercial, documentary, and narrative director specializing in coming-of-age, dramady and sports content. Her bold and cinematic filmmaking has both distinctive humor and dramatic instinct.Her ESPN film $15 Kicks was executive produced by Spike Lee and earned a Black Reel Award. Within the last two years, she’s directed three narrative shorts, I Won The Lottery… and Charlie and the Hunt starring Lauren Ridloff (Eternals, Walking Dead) and a Tribeca Studios P&G filmed titled Gaps Executive Produced by Queen Latifah and starring Lorraine Toussaint. Her film’s have appeared at Cannes Short Film Corner, Pan African Film Festival, Hollyshorts and Tribeca Film Festival (2023) to name a few. She’s directed projects supported by NBC Universal, NFL Network, and numerous high-level commercial brands. Recently, she was the executive producer and director of the docu-series Running While Black for Vice, and Adidas. Her feature film The Pill is in development with tinygiant and in TIFF’s Break Through the Lens 2022-23. The film is set for production in 2024 with casting director Kim Coleman (Love Craft, SpaceJam: The New Legacy) slated as Executive Producer. She’s managed by Anonymous Content.
Youmee Lee is a deaf Korean American animator, projection designer, and visual poet based in New York. She teaches deaf art, cinema, and literature courses at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID). She has been advocating for deaf representation in cinema and art at film festivals and conference exhibitions. Growing up with limited access to the aural world, she delved into the visual world and studied art in New York City, Amsterdam, and Seoul. With her artistic skills, she strives to deconstruct and break down the communication barriers, such as illustrating several books and murals for and about the deaf community. As a first generation American raised by an immigrant family, Lee continues to explore storytelling with different materials, embodying sign language and physical movements. Developing experimental films, she experiments with the American Sign Language poetry format. Her goal is to create visually poetic work that is accessible to a wider audience. She has served as a chairperson and jury member for festivals and has presented to various festivals across the United States. She graduated with an M.F.A. in Film and Animation from RIT.
Catriona Rubenis-Stevens is a multi-award-winning director and producer and was part of the team that went to the 93rd Academy Awards with the Oscar nominated live action short; Feeling Through. Born and raised in a small town in the UK, she moved to NYC in her early 20s to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and soon learned her passions lay behind the camera, turning her attention to directing and producing.
She has directed several award-winning short films for the Easterseals’ Disability Film
Challenge that have screened across America at top tier festivals including Slamdance,
Hollyshorts and Heartland. Her film e.ro.sion, noun screened at over 20 festivals worldwide
receiving numerous wins and nominations including Best Director and Best Film. She is
currently now on the festival circuit again with her short veteran suicide awareness film, The One They Wanted and her disability magic realism short, Andy & Kaliope.
Every Halloween Catriona also directs and produces the Zombie Opera experiential concert in her hometown bringing international opera singers together with an orchestra for one night, attracting audiences of over 4000 people. Catriona is also an established theater director in New York and New Jersey, directing shows including Allerleirauh, The Wizard of Oz, Cats, Oklahoma!, Anything Goes, Hairspray, Into The Woods and Spring Awakening. Outside of her own filmmaking career, Catriona serves as a mentor for jHRTS members and Reel Works as well teens and kids as they begin their journey into the world of film.
Kristen Abate is the co writer/director of the Slamdance Grand Jury Prize winner (2022) STRAIGHTEN UP AND FLY RIGHT, it is her writing and directorial debut. She was also nominated for the Slamdance Acting Award for her lead performance in the film. The film also won the Grand Jury Prize for Narrative Feature at the Calgary Underground Film Festival (2022). Abate is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts NYC Women in Film Fund (2019) courtesy of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. She was born and raised in the West Village in New York City and started acting and dancing with the renowned children’s dance and theater company Loco-Motion run by Lisa Pilato, where she met award-winning playwright/filmmaker and collaborator, Steven Tanenbaum. Tanenbaum cast her in his multi-media play at the first FringeNYC festival and the two have worked together for over twenty years. Her first film role was in Hannah Weyer’s ARRESTING GENA, starring Summer Phoenix, Sam Rockwell, and Adrian Grenier. Her short film, SWIPE, was nominated for Most Original Story at the Blackbird Film Festival and Won Best Editor (Armando Croda). Abate is a college dropout whose work is centered around New York stories/characters and women-driven narratives.
Steven Tanenbaum is the co writer/director of the Slamdance Grand Jury Prize winner (2022) Straighten Up and Fly Right. Tanenbaum was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis, a severe form of crippling arthritis, when he was eleven. The arthritis curved his spine into a vertebral question mark and accounts for his bent point of view and twenty-year streak of never stepping in dog poop. In 2004, walking home after a performance of his play, MONO, he was run over by a truck. Less than eight months later, while still recuperating, he directed, Coming Soon, his first feature film.
Tanenbaum started the film/theatre production company, Another Urban Riff, in 2002; and since then, has written and directed eight plays (including MONO which ran for 4 years), four short films and three feature-length films. His films were official selections at festivals around the world and have won numerous awards. Tanenbaum’s plays have been performed in Paris, Barcelona and Sao Paolo.
For over a decade, Tanenbaum has worked with a dedicated ensemble that has developed a style of performing that could only transpire when the same artists collaborate together for many years. Other actors Tanenbaum has directed include: Ezra Miller (Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, The Flash), Andre Holland (Moonlight, The Knick), Mereille Enos (The Killing), Cara Seymour (The Knick), Lori Petty (Tank Girl), Utkarsh Ambudkar (Pitch Perfect), Sam Rockwell (True West), and Jessica Kresa/One Dirty Bitch (Three-time World Champion Professional Wrestler).
Tanenbaum is a published monologist. His one-man show, Q101 or How To Get To Rikers, a critical hit, was based on his experiences as a teacher in a maxi-maxi security facility and AIDS ward on Rikers Island.
Lesia Kordonets was born and grew up in the remote border region of Ukraine, which was once a western outpost for the UDSSR and now represents the Eastern borders of the EU.
Shaped by the political and societal whirlwind of her home country, she graduated from the Theodor-Heuss College in Ukraine, which promotes democratic leadership and public
involvement into Eastern Europa. Since then she has engaged with medium film.
In 2020, she finished her Masters in Film at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, in Switzerland, with a focus on editing and documentary film production.
Afton Quast Saler is a documentary and narrative fiction filmmaker, writer, and performer, who is committed to disability and mental health advocacy through the arts. Afton began her professional career in the arts at 13 years old, getting paid to play pretend in musicals and plays around the world and regional theaters across the country. When she realized that being a writer and director meant she got to play ALL the parts, she attended USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, channeling her love of storytelling into filmmaking and writing. Afton’s writing has since placed in screenwriting competitions such as Austin Film Festival, Hollyshorts Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, and received the HFPA Center for Cinema & Television award for Best Short Script. Most recently Afton has gained recognition for directing and writing her short USC thesis documentary, Neurodivergent, a personal mixed-media experience about women with ADHD. The film has played over 30 film festivals worldwide, received the Jury Prize at the DGA Student Film Awards, and was broadcast on KCET’s Fine Cut Festival of Films, for which it won Best Documentary. Currently, she lives and freelances in Pasadena, CA, with her husband Jesse, their dog Johanna, and the wild parrots that live in the tree outside their window.
Feature Film: CICADA SONG (streaming on AppleTV, Amazon, etc.) Judith/Exec. Producer;
Pilot: IMMIGRANTS (post- production) Delores Clark; Festival Shorts: I AM RUPERT
CALDWELL, NO RETURNS, WILLOWBROOK; Webisodes: THE SECRET LIVES OF
NANCY JONES Nancy/Writer/Exec. Producer, SHORT TERM (season 3) Joan; TV: NCIS
and CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM.
Laurie J. Gardiner is a writer, director, and musician who recently finished working on
Yellowstone and Mayor of Kingstown for Paramount+ after stints at Walt Disney Studios, FOX, GRB Studios, and Big City TV as an associate producer, story editor, and production executive.
Her films have aired on the BBC, Aspire TV, and Omeleto and have been featured at prestigious Oscar-qualifying film festivals such as Cannes, Martha’s Vineyard African-American Film Festival, and the Pan African Film Festival. Additionally, her screenplays have placed in the Academy Nicholl Fellowship for Screenwriters, Nashville Film Festival, and she was a second-rounder in the Austin Film Festival. She received her MFA from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Julie Ridge swam the English Channel in 1982, became the first person to swim two
consecutive non-stop laps around Manhattan island in ’83 (earning her a guest
appearance on the David Letterman Show); completed the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon in
’84; and swam into the Guinness Book of World Records in 1985 by swimming one 28.5
mile lap around Manhattan each day for five consecutive days. That year, she was
inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame. In 1990 she bicycled
across America with her father Frank Ridge. Julie performed on Broadway in Oh!
Calcutta! and is a published author. She earned her Masters degree in social work from
Columbia University in 1994 and has been a foster and adoptive parent to special
needs children. Currently, Julie works as a licensed psychiatric social worker; designs
and facilitates learning seminars for continuing education contact hours for mental
health care professionals in New York; and is a member of the SAG-AFTRA Performers
with Disabilities Committee. In 2013, Julie established the Frank Ridge Memorial
Foundation Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to living well with mental health
conditions through awareness and understanding, in loving memory of her father. In
2018, her one-woman show BIPOLAR & THE ENGLISH CHANNEL premiered Off
Broadway at the Studio Theater on 42nd Street. She presented BIPOLAR & THE
ENGLISH CHANNEL Off Broadway in the 2021 and 2022 United Solo Theater Festival.
Zac Norrington’s short documentary film BREATHE, featuring the intersection of Ridge’s
double swim around Manhattan Island and her life with bipolar disorder, debuted at the
NYCDOC Film Festival in 2022. Julie is proud mom to Jason Peterson-Ridge. She lives
well with bipolar disorder in New York City.
