Reach Film Fellowship

Brent is the editor and co-founder of Wholphin DVD, a quarterly DVD magazine published by McSweeney’s, where he films drunk bees, crying competitions, and illegal transborder volleyball matches. Before that, he authored Mapping Epidemics, a book on pandemic disease transmission; created television programs at The Daily Show, VH1, and Nickelodeon; and wrote articles about squid. His first feature script on the last days of Ol’ Dirty Bastard (Russell Tyrone Jones) is currently in production.

21 Grams, American Splendor, Happiness, In the Bed- room — Ted, co-founder of This is that & Good Machine, has produced close to sixty films, including three Sun- dance Grand Prize winners and the first features of Alan Ball, Michel Gondry, Hal Hartley, Nicole Holofcener, and Ang Lee. He blogs at hopeforfilm.com and co-founded the Indie Film review site HammerToNail.com. Ted is cur- rently in post-production on two films: Super, written and directed by James Gunn, and starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler and Kevin Bacon; and Longfellow, written, directed and starring Martin Donovan, and also starring David Morse and Olivia Williams.

Senain is a Pakistani-American filmmaker who was selected as a Tribeca All Access Fellow in 2005, a Sundance Institute Fellow in 2006 where she attended the Documentary Editing, Composing and Producing Labs, and is a recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Emerging Filmmaker/ReNew Media Film Fellowship. She recently returned from Pakistan where she began work on a project with acclaimed Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, James Longley (Iraq in Fragments). She co-directed the feature documentary Project Kashmir with Geeta V. Patel, which was filmed by Ross Kauffman (Born Into Brothels). The film has been awarded grants from ITVS/PBS, The Sundance Institute, Cinereach, and The Fledgling Fund among others. It will be broadcast on PBS in May 2010 and has been selected by the US State Department to be screened at over 55 embassies and consulates worldwide. Senain is currently developing a narrative feature based on her father’s journey from being the most famous television game show host in Pakistan in the 1960s to his life in the American South in the 1980s.

Simon joined American Documentary | POV in 1999 and was appointed executive director in 2006. Simon over- sees all aspects of American Documentary’s programs and operations, and serves as Executive Producer of POV, PBS’s award-winning documentary series. He has been involved in the production of over 160 POV films, and has helped lead new initiatives to increase POV’s reach and diversity, including the Diverse Voices Project, for emerging filmmakers, and the Webby-winning online series Borders.

Dee earned her MFA from NYU’s graduate film program and is a Sundance Screenwriting & Directing Lab Fellow. She wrote and directed the short film Pariah, which screened at over 40 festivals including the 2008 Sun- dance Film Festival, and won 25 Best Short awards. Dee directed and edited the doc feature, Eventual Salvation, which received a 2007 Sundance Documentary Fund Grant and premiered on the Sundance Channel in October 2009. She was named a 2008 Tribeca Institute/Renew Media Arts Fellow, one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” for 2008, and nominated for a USA Fellowship in 2009. Dee recently wrapped production on her debut narrative feature film, Pariah, which was a finalist for the 2009 Sundance/NHK International Award.

The Cinereach staff review all applications, and at times will request input from external judges. Ben Goldhirsh, the founder of GOOD, a multi-platform media company whose first feature film Son of Rambow premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and René Bastien, the founder and president of Belladonna Productions, Inc. which produced Transamerica, and L.I.E., both were external judges in past years reviewing applications and providing feedback. At the close of the fellowship, Cinereach staff, external judges, and past fellows, assist in selecting the recipient of the Reach Out Award. Roberta Marie Munroe a former short films programmer for the Sundance Film Festival and the author of “How NOT to Make a Short Film: Secrets from a Sundance Programmer” was a 2009 Reach Out Award external judge.