Archives

A woman with dark wavy hair smiles at the camera.

Alana Davis

Alana (she/her) has been in the film festival world for nearly a decade. Born and raised in New York’s Hudson Valley, she traveled the country working for organizations including Tribeca, Sundance, Mill Valley, Telluride, New York, Seattle, Woodstock, and DOC NYC. Alana now resides in Brooklyn where she is Customer Success Manager at Eventive. Specializing in artist relations, operations, and production in film, music fests, and corporate events; she loves working with filmmakers and independent artists as they bring their stories into the world. Her work at Eventive allows her to use the customer service skills from many different film festival roles and serve the indie film community further.


A man with dark hair and a goatee gives the camera an intense stare.

Gregg Mozgala

Gregg Mozgala has been on stage in various productions on stage with The Public Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, New York Theatre Workshop, La Mama ETC, Theater Breaking Through Barriers, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Kennedy Center, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and the Huntington Theatre.

He received a Lucille Lortel Award (Best Featured Actor) for his work in the Pulitzer Prize winning play, “Cost Of Living” by Martyna Majok. He was nominated for a Drama League Distinguished Performance Award for the role of Richard in “Teenage Dick” by Michael Lew.

He is featured in the music video for “Rise Up”, which currently has 97 million+ views on YouTube, directed by M. Night Shyamalan and performed by Grammy nominated recording artist, Andra Day. He is also the star of the documentary, “Enter The Faun” which has had multiple showings on the award winning PBS series, America Reframed.

Mr. Mozgala was honored as a “Champion Of Change” by The New York City Mayor’s Office For People With Disabilities in 2017, and named a Kennedy Citizen Artist Fellow by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2016.

Gregg is the founder and Artistic Director of The Apothetae, a theatre company dedicated to the production of works that explore and illuminate the, “Disabled Experience.” He is currently the Director of Inclusion at Queens Theatre.

A woman with light blonde hair and a pink blazer smiling.

Mary Beth Coudal

Mary Beth Coudal is a teacher and a writer. Her short funny essays have appeared in the New York Times, Salon and Self magazine. With Chris Jones, she is the co-parent of three young adult children. Originally from Park Ridge, Illinois, she came to NYC for her master’s and bachelor’s from NYU and never left. She loves coffee, the Upper West Side, and theater.

A woman wearing a hijab with glasses resting atop is turned to the side. She holds a phone in her hands and looks to the camera..

Alaa Zabara

 Alaa Zabara is an independent Hard-of-Hearing Yemeni-American Director and Cinematographer. Drawn to the power of photographs from an early age, she started to document the daily life around her through the use of a camera. These documentations became her conversation with, and introduction to, the world. She became attracted by the ability of cinema to change the hearts and minds of an audience, highlight the stories that need to be told, and to amplify the voices of the voiceless.

Her approach in telling stories is, through vision, to challenge herself in telling stories that come from personal experience and have a representation of what is usually untold or hidden. She expresses her take on the world creatively, insightfully, and humanely. She likes to play with perception and nudge the audience that they are watching something established by an Arab Hard-of-Hearing woman. Rather than trying to surprise the audience, she strives to unveil potential connections to the characters or the story, creating a new view of their own lives. She wants them to relate to her not as a filmmaker but as a human, filling the distance that comes between each of us.

Her latest narrative short film Selahy was selected for Honorable Mention in Slamdance 2022, and was selected for Competition Shorts in Bentonville Film Festival & HollyShorts, primarily focusing on deaf/hard-of-hearing story living in a war zone. Recently Alaa was selected to participate as a Director of CBS leadership Pipeline Challenge 2022. She also recently finished a project Who am I?  that was selected to present a work of nonfiction for the Arab American National Museum 2021 (AANM) and was a participant in its third annual RespectAbility Lab for Entertainment Professionals with Disabilities.

Alaa finished the Minorities in Film (MiFIM) branded Lab to demystify the process of working in the commercial industry and was a Semi-Finalists for the Paxeros 2020 inaugural WCCDP to direct a spot for Subaru.

 

 

A man with Down Syndrome, who has short brown hair and wears a suit and glasses, smiles widely. He sits at a desk with his hands held together.

Nicholas Herd

Nick Herd is a Canadian actor, author, and LGBTQ activist who was born with Down syndrome. He has worked on stage, and in film and television for 20 years. Most recently, Nick hosted Battle of the Fans, the first international lip sync competition hosted by persons with intellectual disabilities. He also hosts his own online talk show on the Disability Channel, Keeping it Real with Nick, and starred in a recent episode of Employable Me.

A man with long brown hair going down to his shoulders speaks in front of a screen.

Michael Joseph McDonald

Michael Joseph McDonald is a writer, filmmaker, and disability activist. His films explore the intersections of fragility and dignity. Among his best known works are 6,000 Waiting and Freebird. Freebird qualified for the 94th Academy Awards; 6,000 Waiting was honored with a screening at the White House to President Biden.

A man with dark hair, arms crossed and smiling at the camera.

Lawrence Guterman

Lawrence Guterman graduated from USC Film School and was then hired by
DreamWorks Interactive to direct the flagship “Goosebumps” computer game after
Steven Spielberg saw his live action U.S.C. Master’s Thesis film “Headless!” The film
had just won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Student Film at the Worldfest Houston
International Film Festival.

As a result of his work on “Goosebumps”, DreamWorks then hired him to direct
sequences on ANTZ, the company’s first C.G.I. feature, starring the voices of Woody
Allen, Sharon Stone, and Christopher Walken. The film went on to make $171 million.
Next, Guterman developed and prepped a live-action/C.G.I. version of the feature film
CURIOUS GEORGE to direct for Imagine, producer Ron Howard and Universal Studios
for the better part of a year before the project was put on hold following changes at the
studio.

He then went on to direct the hit film CATS & DOGS for Warner Bros., which earned
more than $200 Million in worldwide box office revenue. The BBC said about the film that
it “succeeds both as a parody of the spy genre, and in stretching the boundaries of what
you believe is possible,” and A.O. Scott of the New York Times called it “exuberant fun.”
Entertainment Weekly dubbed the “Russian Cat” sequence in the film the “IT Sequence
of the Summer.”

Guterman directed New Line’s effects-filled “Son of the Mask”, which has earned $100
million in theatrical and ancillary revenue (Source: DGA). As a co-writer (and while still in
film school) Guterman sold a Tales from the Crypt episode to Bob Zemeckis for him to
direct, as well as a feature sci-fi thriller to Paramount and a family comedy to Tri-Star.
He also created and directed CAPTAIN AMAZING, a live action TV pilot presentation
starring Sean Hayes, that was purchased by Fox.

Guterman developed “My Middle Earth Crisis” to direct for New Regency,
VALEDICTORIAN, described as “Rushmore” meets “The Graduate,” for producer Mason
Novick (JUNO), as well as DOG’S BEST FRIEND for Universal-based Gold Circle Films.
He is Executive Producer of the film REMEMBER directed by Atom Egoyan, starring
Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau, which won four Canadian Academy awards in
2016 including best screenplay and best actor (Plummer).

He is currently co-founder of SonicCloud, a technology startup company developing
revolutionary software for personalizing sound on smartphones and computers for
people with hearing loss.

Guterman received an undergraduate degree in physics from Harvard University, where
he illustrated and wrote for the “Harvard Lampoon,” after attending MIT his freshman
year.

A man with a goatee wearing a dark cap and shirt laughs.

Nick Papadopolous

Nick Papadopoulos has lived in a nursing home for the past four years. He’s only forty-three years old. He was born and raised in Astoria, Queens where after school he worked in real estate until his brother convinced him to move down to Athens, Georgia. He has cerebral palsy,  has used a wheelchair since he was thirty-two, and has always led a full life surrounded by friends and family. Among the various titles Nick’s held in his life, he’s long been a disability advocate.

Despite his long, frustrating battle to escape the nursing home, he’s never given up on himself or his community. He participated in the film 6,000 Waiting to inspire change in the system. “People with disabilities are musicians, artists, bankers, and scientists with dreams and ideas,” Nick says. “They just require extra help. Without that extra help, those dreams won’t happen.”