Director / Producer
MY DISABILITY ROADMAP, INTELLIGENT LIVES

Dan Habib is the Director and Producer of the nationally broadcast documentary films Intelligent Lives, Who Cares About Kelsey?, Mr. Connolly Has ALS and Including Samuel, as well as many other short, disability-related films. His films have been featured in dozens of film festivals, translated into 17 languages, and used worldwide to support inclusive education and disability rights. From 2014-2017, Dan served on the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities under President Barack Obama. Habib has also screened and discussed his films hundreds of times in the United States and internationally, at universities, corporations, national conferences, and independent theaters for educators, families, students, employees, policy makers, and the general public. Habib delivered a widely viewed TEDx talk titled “Disabling Segregation” on the benefits of inclusion to students with and without disabilities. He is the Inclusive Communities Project Director at the Westchester Institute for Human Development and the founder of LikeRightNow Films.

Director / Producer
KABOOM! HOW COMICS CHANGED AMERICA

Over my career as an independent filmmaker, I have raised over $8.5 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities, for five documentaries that I produced through my first production company, and four more that I have produced or executive produced with other filmmakers. I have been an NEH panelist several times, most recently this past March, and I once organized a panel about working with the NEH and other humanities funders, for the FC Making Media Now conference. As onerous as their proposals are, I am very comfortable writing them and I am working on a new one right now. I am currently producing an NEH-funded film about the Fleischer brothers, who were animation pioneers, and am developing a new NEH-funded series on the history of comics in America. In addition to this work, I am a writer, director, executive producer, and teacher at Emerson College.

Director / Editor
RAISING THE FLOOR, A RECKONING IN BOSTON

James Rutenbeck’s nonfiction films have screened internationally at venues including Cinema du Reel, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery and the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. His latest feature film, A Reckoning in Boston, premiered at the 2021 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and screened at numerous other festivals including Morehouse College Human Rights Film Festival where it won the Best Feature Award. Reckoning aired on the PBS series Independent Lens last January. James is also two-time recipient of the Alfred I. du Pont Columbia Journalism Award for his work as episodic producer of the PBS series, Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? (2008), about health disparities in the U.S. and Class of ’27 (2016), which he executive produced, directed and edited. Class of ’27, which explores the lives of young children in three rural American communities, is streaming as an Editor’s Pick at The Atlantic. The Sundance Documentary Fund, LEF Moving Image Fund, Southern Humanities Media Fund and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have supported his film work. Broadcast editing credits include Zoot Suit Riots, Jimmy Carter and Roberto Clemente for the PBS series American Experience, American Denial and Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness for Independent Lens and the New York Time OpDoc, My Disability Road Map, directed by Dan and Samuel Habib. James was a 2019/20 Fellow at the Film Study Center at Harvard University and a 2021 Poynter Fellow at Yale University.

Director / Producer
RAISING THE FLOOR

Sabrina Avilés is an award-winning independent filmmaker, whose work has taken her throughout Latin America, Canada and Europe. During her 25+ year career, she has worked on many PBS programs, among them the six-hour Peabody award-winning series, Latino Americans. Currently, she is in production for her first feature-length documentary on the city of Chelsea, MA and its response to the pandemic. Sabrina has received grants from ITVS’ Diversity Development Fund, the LEF Foundation, Mass Humanities, Latino Public Broadcasting, and the New England Foundation for the Arts. She was a 2019 LEF Foundation Flaherty Fellow, is a member of the Documentary Producers Alliance and currently serves on the boards of Filmmakers Collaborative and Massachusetts Production Coalition. In addition to her film production career, in 2016 Sabrina became the Executive Director of the Boston Latino International Film Festival. In 2022, Sabrina founded CineFest Latino Boston film festival.

Director / Producer
THE RABBI GOES WEST

Amy M. Geller is an award-winning creative producer and filmmaker whose 20+ year career includes fiction and documentaries for broadcast, educational media, industrials, animation, and branded content. Her work has been broadcast on PBS, the BBC, Documentary Channel, Turner Classic Movies Spain and France and YES Satellite TV in Israel and is available on Netflix, iTunes, Amazon and HERE TV. Geller served as the Artistic Director of the Boston Jewish Film Festival and was President of Women in Film & Video/New England. She is currently a full-time visiting lecturer at Boston University. She is the co-director of two acclaimed feature documentaries, The Guys Next Door (2016) and The Rabbi Goes West (2019).

Producer
RIOTSVILLE, USA

Sara Archambault is a Creative Producer dedicated to the craft of artful nonfiction storytelling. She has an extensive history in production, programming and foundation work, including 10 years as LEF Foundation's Program Director, and nine years as Head Programmer of the award-winning nonfiction series The DocYard. Past credits include Associate Producer on Emmy-nominated documentary Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North (Sundance 2007, POV), and Producer on Sundance-supported documentary Street Fighting Men, award-winning short Community Patrol (Big Sky 2020), Truth or Consequences (Rotterdam 2020) and Contents Inventory (IDFA 2021). Sara's work has played in festivals around the world, and received support from the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, IDA Enterprise Fund, Hot Docs International Pitch Forum, Catapult Film Fund, SFFilm, Film Independent, and CPH:FORUM among others. She is a 2020 Impact Partners Producing Fellow, a 2013 Sundance Creative Producers Lab Fellow and was named the 2020 SF DocFest Vanguard Awardee.