The Spring '06 Archives: Episode One aired on April 5th 2006

Eye Am: Women Behind the Lens a monthly show that highlights women's memoir film and women's exploration of the Self from behind their cameras.

Airing on MNN from 8-9 pm on Time Warner #34/RCN #83 (in Manhattan), and WORLDWIDE at www.mnn.org (just click on the #34 icon during the time of the broadcast.)

Films~












Unearth (Au creux du Monde): “To be rooted is one of the most important and least recognized needs of the human soul."-Simone Weil "Unearth" retraces my journey back to the 300-inhabitant French village where I grew up. Questioning the reasons why all the young adults of my generation chose to stay there, “Unearth” explores what it takes to re-discover one's place, while revealing how belonging, community and choices might resonate in each of us.

Filmmaker Biography: Delphine Dhilly is a documentary filmmaker from Champagne, France. After studying Film Theory and French Literature in Paris, she moved to New York to learn Film Production. She received her MFA in Television Production at Brooklyn College in 2004 and lives now in Paris. The short documentaries she directed, The B68, Gloria’s Party, and Unearth, have played at various venues and festivals, and aired on New York and French cable television. She is currently editing her feature-length documentary There’s still a Girl Crying, exploring the emotional and political journeys of four American soldiers’ wives and girlfriends whose husband and partner were recently deployed in Iraq.













Transitions: This video explores the first hand experiences of thirteen year-old girls transitioning from life in Africa to America. The girls discover what home means to them in a new land.

Filmmaker Biography: Media educator and filmmaker, Jesse Epstein produced this piece in close collaboration with the youth appearing in the video who were part of the International Refugee Committee's after-school program for girls. Jesse is a documentary filmmaker and youth media educator. Her film WET DREAMS AND FALSE IMAGES, about media manipulation and body image, won a Jury Award for Short Subject at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, and is being distributed through New Day Films. She is the founder of GSS Productions, a youth video program in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, an instructor for Reel Stories, The Sundance Institute’s Youth Documentary Program, and has worked with youth through the International Rescue Committee.













We Are The Littletons: A true story with forged signatures, the video is about what’s outside the margins of the American Dream, the people and memories that get removed from the family photos and erased from the records. It is also about their persistent struggle to come home, welcome or not. The story of Eve Littleton and her family is told in an experimental docudrama format including video diaries kept by Penny Lane during her stay in the “Littleton Museum;” dramatic reenactments of correspondences between Mrs. Littleton and Penny; documentation of found objects such as letter, diaries and assorted bric-a-brac.

Filmmaker Biography: Penny Lane is an independent filmmaker living in upstate New York . Her collaborative and solo experimental, narrative and documentary work has screened at AFI FEST, Int'l Film Festival Rottersam, San Francisco Int'l Film Festival, Seattle Int'l Film Festival, Women in the Director's Chair, Santa Fe Art Institute, MOMA, and dumbo_art. She is currently earning her MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is a core producer of the Hudson-Mohawk Independent Media Center, a group dedicated to making journalistic work that challenges the assumptions of the mainstream media. She has also worked extensively with youth at media centers such as Children's Media Project and The Ark, Inc.














NYFI (The Bride): In an emotionally infused montage using archival footage, text and voice-over, the filmmaker compares the premise of contemporary marriage to that of arranged marriage. By juxtaposing her own experience to that of her Greek immigrant grandparents, the piece reflects on the possibility that although we enjoy more freedom today, the same uncertainties about love continue to plague us.

Filmmaker Biography: Alana Kakoyiannis is a filmmaker whose work ranges from interview-based documentary to abstract, image-dominated experimentalism. Her current projects focus on the oral history of New York immigrant communities and romantic love in the context of traditional cultures. Her approach to film is often improvisatory, character driven, and drawn to the idiosyncratic charm of the "local." Recently, Alana was selected to participate in a filmmaking workshop sponsored by the Tribeca Film Institute in Morocco.












11 Houses: This video documents the artist's journey to visit the places she lived as a child and explores the psychological impact of moving.

Filmmaker Biography: Courtney Rile is an international video artist and curator living and working in Syracuse, NY. She has shown her video art extensively in Syracuse and recently at Swarm Gallery in London, UK and as part of Zemos98 in Sevilla, Spain. In 2005, she curated"Videohm," an international moving imagery videoprogram at an upscale downtown lounge in Syracuse. Rile graduated from Syracuse University with a B.F.A. in Art Video and currently works at Delavan Art Gallery in Syracuse.

The Spring '06 Archives: Episode Two aired on May 3rd 2006

Eye Am: Women Behind the Lens a monthly show that highlights women's memoir film and women's exploration of the Self from behind their cameras.

Airing on MNN from 8-9 pm on Time Warner #34/RCN #83 (in Manhattan), and WORLDWIDE at www.mnn.org (just click on the #34 icon during the time of the broadcast.)

Films~













Gloria’s Party: Acted by young teenagers from the White Bird Productions' Performance Team, "Gloria's Party" is the result of a workshop blending the boundaries of improvisation, fiction and documentary. Exploring the themes of image, belonging and adolescence in Brooklyn, “Gloria's Party” portrays the tensions and expectations that emerge from nine girls suddenly forced to interact at their common friend's surprise party.

Filmmaker Biography: Delphine Dhilly is a documentary filmmaker from Champagne, France. After studying Film Theory and French Literature in Paris, she moved to New York to learn Film Production. She received her MFA in Television Production at Brooklyn College in 2004 and lives now in Paris. The short documentaries she directed, The B68, Gloria’s Party, and Unearth, have played at various venues and festivals, and aired on New York and French cable television. She is currently editing her feature-length documentary There’s still a Girl Crying, exploring the emotional and political journeys of four American soldiers’ wives and girlfriends whose husband and partner were recently deployed in Iraq. Welker White is an actress and teacher living in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Welker has worked in theater, television and film for over twenty years in notable productions On and Off-Broadway, roles in films such as Goodfellas, Dead Poet’s Society, and This Is My Life and numerous guest roles on television series such as Sex and the City, Law and Order, and Spin City. As a teaching artist, Welker has created theater workshops in public schools as well as working with students from Creative Theatrics, an after-school and summer theater program in Park Slope.











Tu Me Souviens (Remember Me): Part-fiction, part-love story, this piece delves into the chaotic world of a woman who is rapidly losing her memory. To retain some sense of her identity, she hires a photographer to follow her and document her life. Narrated and shot from the perspective of the photographer who falls madly in love with his subject, the film paints a landscape of growing obsession. Ultimately the story is one of a woman who chooses not to descend into existential trauma, but instead turns her illness into a work of art. Composed largely of still photographs, the film finds poetic balance between documentary, narrative, and experimental modes.

Filmmaker Biography: Isabel Sadurni has written, produced, and directed fictional narrative and non-fiction documentary films in the US and France. Her films range in subject from love stories to war documentaries. Her work has been aired on regional television in California and New York, has been screened in festivals around the world and is a part of the permanent collection of the videothèque of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. Her films have been selected by numerous international festivals including Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival and Market, Films des Femmes of Crèteil, France, the Latino Film Festival of California, and Festival International de Cinéma in Monterrey, Mexico. She currently lives in New York, New York and is working on her next film set in Spanish Harlem.













Carla Cope: A story of life, love and loss during the 9/11 tragedy in New York City. The film follows Carla through the city as she looks back on all she has lost while grappling with the uncertainty of her future.

Filmmaker Biography: Alak Films has been producing underground short films for the last two decades. A family venture whose hands-on approach infiltrates every aspect of filmmaking from conception to completion. Alak’s trademark style incorporates super-8 film and archival stock which is assembled together at a fast and furious pace creating new stories out of old footage.











Anamika: A reconstruction of the story of a young Devadasi brought to New York. My access to her has been limited. We don’t know of her pain, happiness or her loss. This much we do know, she has been taken to a foreign land to continue an ancient tradition. The film is a quest is to raise questions about different women and the different paths they choose to follow.

Filmmaker Biography: Pavitra Chalam is a graduate student at the New York Film Academy's Filmmaking Program. She received her B.A. in History, Political Science and Economics in 2002 from Mount Carmel College (Bangalore University). In July 2003, Pavitra was privileged to represent India at the Youth Initiative for Peace in Pakistan where she made her film debut with "Bus" – a cinematic exposition of the shared ideals of the youth of both nations. In August 2003, as a journalist at the World Youth Congress in Morocco, Pavitra contributed to the creation of the Casablanca Declaration presented to the UN. Enriched by her international experiences, Pavitra returned to India to pursue her passion for documentary filmmaking. Pavitra's compassion for trafficked women and children, intellectual curiosity about the legalities of the institution of prostitution and need to create awareness about the current state of Indian female sex workers led to the creation of "Bound By Us". This film was screened at schools and colleges all over India and at two international film festivals. Over the course of her research for "Bound By Us", she developed a fascination for the ancient and glorious South Indian Devadasi tradition. "Anamika" marks the beginning of her quest to understand the transformation of the Devadasi from the revered patron of the arts (in the second to the eighteenth centuries in India) to the wronged, fallen woman of today.













A Steady Grind: Another American Family Portrait is a portrait of a grandmother’s life as the head of the family’s 53-year-old junkyard business in Chester, Pennsylvania. As she falls further into tax debt and ill health, Eloyse Kereszi comes to terms with the loss of her husband and sons, and is faced with the decision to sell the junkyard. Through the documentary and memoir film forms, the filmmaker explores this matriarchy as her grandmother looks back on her life and negotiates the sale of the family business. This presentation is the filmmaker's thesis project. A final version is in the works.

Filmmaker Biography: Victoria L. Kereszi, is a graduate of New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a Master’s degree in Documentary and Women’s Memoir Film. She received her B.A. in Psychology and Women’s Studies from West Chester University of Pennsylvania where she worked as a hotline counselor at a women’s domestic violence shelter. She is currently working in Programming at Manhattan Neighborhood Network, New York City’s community access center. She has also taught video production at public schools around New York City. Her teaching artist experience extends to Global Action Project, a youth media organization, where she worked with youth in Washington Heights on teen issues of sexual health and anti-tobacco campaigns. She has also traveled to Costa Rica and Cuba to work with youth and co-directed, Cuba Beside Us, a video documenting the experiences of Cuban and American youth during the summer of 2002. In Victoria’s personal documentary work, A Steady Grind: Another American Family Portrait, she addresses issues of class and gender as she filmed the sale of her grandmother’s 53-year-old junkyard business in Chester, Pennsylvania.