PRODUCER/DIRECTOR/CAMERA

Lisa Olivieri is an award-winning documentary filmmaker in the Boston area. Her first documentary, Blindsided, is an intimate portrait of a female artist slowly losing her sight and hearing while surviving her abusive girlfriend. The film has won numerous awards, including the Artistic Achievement Award in Directing from the qFLIX Film Festival/Worcester, and the Jury Award for Best Documentary from The Women’s Film Festival/Philadelphia. Blindsided aired on Maine Public Television in 2016 and received national grants from LEF Foundation, Frameline Film and Video Completion Fund, Women in Film Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Olivieri is best known for her ability to coax and capture unwavering raw and intense footage from her subjects. She is currently filming and directing her second documentary, Recovery City, about women in recovery in Worcester, MA.

PRODUCER

Angelica Brisk spent her early career at Blackside Films, American Experience, and Nova. At WGBH-TV she produced several award winning programs for local and national broadcast including Freshman Year on Beacon Hill, 20 Days to 10th Grade, Far From Cuba, Behind the Blue Diner, Post Cards from Buster, Peep and the Big Wide World, and Curious George.

Her independent film credits include Sex Without Love-a poem by Sharon Olds, feature film Never Met Picasso, and 16 Decisions, an international festival favorite exploring a woman's life changed through micro-lending. She edited and co-produced Cartoneros, a subculture fueling a fast growing industry in the wake of Buenos Aires’ economic crisis. Her documentary, Hyman Bloom: The Beauty of All Things captures the work and philosophy of a mystic and a mentor among Boston painters.

EDITOR

Dickran Manoogian is an Emmy award winning writer/editor with over twenty years experience cutting compelling and engaging stories for broadcast, cable and digital distribution in the United States. His credits include PBS, ABC, Discovery, History Channel, and National Geographic.

Manoogian’s versatile style ranges from high-energy reality cable and sports television to thoughtful, contemplative PBS programming. For the past several years he has been an editor on the PBS series NOVA and FRONTLINE, and most recently, High School Quiz Show/GBH. Whether it’s working with extensive multi-camera material or a spare single camera perspective, Manoogian intuitively carves out a fascinating and irresistible chronicle. He contributed his expertise to Olivieri’s documentary, Blindsided, and is currently editing her latest film, Recovery City. Manoogian has also taught editing at the Maine Media Workshops.

COMPOSER

As a musician, Lozaw's resume runs from leading a rock group that opened for U2 on 43 dates in the 1980s, to compositions for string quartet, to performing in Rhys Chatham’s A Crimson Grail at Lincoln Center. Lozaw was also music journalist, columnist for Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and publisher of Boston Rock Magazine.

Lozaw’s film music credits include award-winning productions: Lisa Olivieri’s Blindsided, Morgan Spurlock's Bully-Free PSA, Seminal Films' Shades of Gray, Danny Boyd's Chillers, Peabody Award-ed radio doc The Great Textbook War.

As an audio engineer, Lozaw has recorded and produced recordings including the all-star album Rhinestone Hillbilly: Tribute to Little Jimmie Dickens, WV Music Hall of Fame projects. V Arts Council He worked on Rock Band game “The Eighties” and created radio advertising for several companies a produced audio spots and videos on consumer education.

ADVISOR

Holding an MFA from Boston University Cynthia Close has had several productive careers in the arts including Dean of Admissions at The Art Institute of Boston and for nineteen years was executive director and later president of Documentary Educational Resources, a Massachusetts-based film company. From 2009 to the present she has been a contributing editor for Documentary Magazine, a publication of the International Documentary Association. She has served on numerous film festival juries worldwide. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of The Vermont Film Foundation.

ADVISOR

Allie Humenuk is an award-winning filmmaker and Emmy-nominated cinematographer based in Boston whose films have been broadcast nationally and internationally. She has made three of her own films. Currently, she freelances as a director and cinematographer. Allie was nominated for an Emmy for her camera work on the PBS series Design Squad. Her other camera credits include programs for HBO, Netflix, A&E, PBS, National Geographic, MTV, BBC, and ESPN, as well as many independent filmmakers. She has taught film and video production at Harvard University, the Massachusetts College of Art, and the Maine Media Workshops. For 15 years, Allie was the Executive Producer at Vida Health Communications, where she directed, produced, shot and edited films about women’s health and early childhood development.

PRODUCER, IMPACT & DISTRIBUTION STRATEGY

Marga Varea is a consulting producer and distribution strategist with over 20 years of experience in the field. Originally from Spain, Marga started her film career as a line producer, worked as script supervisor for a national television series, and taught screenwriting courses at a local film school in Madrid for several years.

After relocating in the United States, Marga joined the team behind Emmy nominated film Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, which premiered at Sundance in 2009, and was subsequently acquired by PBS POV. For five years, she worked as the film's impact producer and led international sales. Inspired by the remarkable success of Traces, Marga founded Twin Seas Media, a creative distribution boutique agency that specializes in supporting independent filmmakers, blending traditional and non-traditional approaches and pioneering alternative paths to distribution. Under the agency’s umbrella, Marga has worked with dozens of storytellers and award-winning films, including A Crime on the Bayou, by Nancy Buirsky, NYT Op-Docs’ Pony Boys, Our American Family, by Hallee Adelman, or A Reckoning in Boston, by James Rutenbeck, among many others.

Marga has frequently partnered with film festivals in the areas of audience engagement and programming. Currently, she collaborates with DC/DOX, a major new documentary festival in Washington, DC, where she contributes her expertise to enhance the festival's impact and reach.