Evyenia Constantine
Head of Social Impact, Odyssey Impact
Creative Distribution (Nov. 16)
Gain valuable insights on educational distribution, retaining film rights, and exploring innovative distribution ideas to reach wider audiences and make a lasting impact with your storytelling.
In the Festival Lounge, the day starts with Breakfast (9-10AM) and ends with a Happy Hour (4:30-5:30PM) co-presented by Fever Content.
10-11:15AM
Empowering Change Through Partnerships
Join changemakers Evyenia Constantine (Odyssey Impact®), Ray Boyd (Law & Racial Justice Center, Yale University), Brian Walker (Picture Motion), Jenna LeDoux (The Just Trust), and moderator Amelia Hanibelsz (Tell2C Productions) for an illuminating panel discussion that delves into the art of strategic collaboration between documentary filmmakers and nonprofits to find grant money to help create and support the impact campaign for your documentary film. Explore how powerful storytelling can be harnessed to drive impactful change, learn the strategies for forming and nurturing partnerships that elevate your documentary’s reach and effectiveness in promoting social and environmental causes. Discover real-world success stories and practical insights that will empower you to make a difference through your documentary work.
Evyenia Constantine
Head of Social Impact, Odyssey Impact
Evyenia Constantine is the Head of Social Impact at Odyssey Impact® where she leads the impact team, and strategy and execution for all impact campaigns and initiatives. She is a graduate of Northwestern University’s School of Communication where she earned a Master’s degree in Leadership for Creative Enterprises, graduating summa cum laude. She holds a Bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, from The New School in New York City where she majored in Film and Media Studies, concentrating on all aspects of screenwriting. She holds a certificate in Negotiation Mastery from Harvard Business School. She has produced Award-winning films with KaplaniKid Productions, which have had their debut screenings at the Festival de Cannes.Evyenia has held positions at various film and media companies, including Media Strategist at Spark Foundry, and handling Acquisitions and Development Strategy for film streaming start-up, Flix Premiere. She is a member of IDA, ACLU, NAACP and the Impact Guild, and a very proud and active member of both The New School Alumni Association and the Northwestern University Alumni Association, where she serves on the Alumni Admissions Council.
Brian Walker
Picture Motion
Brian Walker
Picture Motion
Bridging content producers and decision makers with community stakeholders and tastemakers to drive everyday social change around real issues and for real people.
Brian Walker, CEO of Picture Motion, is a versatile change agent with over a decade of experience working at the intersection of culture, digital media, social enterprise, and social justice. Formerly, Brian worked at Participant Media, where he directed social impact and digital strategy for the TEACH and He Named Me Malala campaigns . After his time at Participant Media, Brian served as the first Culture and Entertainment Advocacy Director at Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. Most recently, Brian served as a Stakeholder Engagement Leader with the Enterprise Diversity & Inclusion group at The Walt Disney Company.
Ray Boyd
Law & Racial Justice Center at Yale University
Ray Boyd
Law & Racial Justice Center at Yale University
In November 2021, Ray Boyd was released from the Connecticut Department of Correction. He was incarcerated at the age of 17 and served 30 years. During his incarceration, in 2015, Ray cofounded the Skills of Socialization (S.O.S.) program at the Osborn Correctional Institute, and in 2018 he cofounded the T.R.U.E. Reentry program at the Cheshire Correctional Institute. The innovative program was the subject of segment aired on 60 Minutes. In April of 2022, Ray was a presenter of Restorative Justice Practices at the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice (NACRJ) in Chicago, Illinois. Since his release, Ray has worked at Lewis Real Estate Services and Yale New Haven Health. He currently volunteers his time as a Board Member of CT Stop Solitary Confinement and advocates for second chances for offenders. Ray also volunteers his time with the United States Department of Justice as a speaker with FED Up, Project Safe Neighborhood, and Project Longevity. Ray also lends his lived experience to Odyssey Impact as an Expert Contributor to the Documentary Second Shot by Andrew Michael Ellis. The film is part of a National Campaign to bring awareness to social injustices here in America and abroad.
Jenna LeDoux
The Just Trust
Jenna LeDoux
The Just Trust
Jenna LeDoux is the Vice President of Brand & Communications at The Just Trust, an organization dedicated to powering criminal justice reform across the country. She has a background in nonprofit and philanthropic communications – working at both the national and global level – and has also served in various grantmaking roles. Prior to The Just Trust, Jenna led communications for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s Justice & Opportunity work. There she supported the organization’s investments in criminal justice reform, housing affordability, and immigration reform, and also ran a multi-issue media grants portfolio. Additionally, Jenna brings nearly a decade of experience in the sustainability sector, running communications and marketing strategy for Fair Trade USA and collaborating with influential consumer brands, movement leaders, and producer communities to help build momentum for responsibly-sourced goods. Jenna holds a degree from UC Berkeley in International Peace and Conflict Studies, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
Amelia Hanibelsz
Tell2C Productions
Amelia Hanibelsz
Tell2C Productions
Amelia is an Award-Winning Executive Producer, Primetime Emmy-Nominated Supervising Producer, Genesis Award-Winning Producer-Director, and most recently, Executive Director of Development at ABC News Studios -Disney, where she focused on developing premium documentary specials and series for Hulu and ABC Broadcast.
Over the past 20+ years, Amelia has acquired extensive experience in discovering, and cultivating new talent for content initiatives on leading media networks such as Hulu, ABC, Discovery, A&E, National Geographic, Animal Planet, The Smithsonian Channel, MTV, and VICE World News.
She is the Founder and Executive Producer of Tell2C Productions, a global collective of award-winning female filmmakers for change. An active member of the Television Academy, Global Impacts Alliance, IDA, and a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia.
A global nomad, having lived and worked in over 10 Countries, Amelia is passionate about empowering diverse voices through authentic storytelling.
Co-presented by Odyssey Impact®
11:15-12:45PM
HOPE
In an industry marked by evolving distribution landscapes, documentary filmmakers find themselves navigating uncharted waters. Join Stacey Reiss (Radical Media), Dawn Porter (The Lady Bird Diaries), for an inspiring and introspective panel discussion led by Sian-Pierre Regis (Duty Free) that addresses the essence of hope in this challenging era. Panelists will share stories of resilience, explore innovative distribution models, and discuss the transformative power of documentary storytelling. Together, we’ll confront the current challenges of documentary distribution and collaboratively chart a course towards a more stable future for our films.
Sian-Pierre Regis
Director
Sian-Pierre Regis
Director
Sian- Pierre Regis is a filmmaker who directed, produced and self-distributed his debut feature documentary DUTY FREE. Called a “tender love poem from son to mother” by CBS News, the film was released in 30 theaters over Mother’s Day 2021 and fast-became a press magnet garnering coverage from CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, MSNBC, The Tamron Hall Show, AARP; the film was also a #1 Apple News story through the weekend. It will have its debut broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens on November 22 at 10pET.
Prior to filmmaking, Regis was a journalist and on-camera contributor to CNN, HLN, and MTV and founded Swagger, an online lifestyle magazine for millennials with over 1.5 million fans. He is a Firelight Media fellow and Film Independent Documentary Lab Fellow.
Stacey Reiss
Producer
Stacey Reiss
Producer
Stacey Reiss is an Executive Producer at RadicalMedia. She’s an Emmy award winning filmmaker who produces documentary features, narrative films and series. Her credits include The Andy Warhol Diaries (Netflix); The Eagle Huntress (Sony Classics); Spaceship Earth (Neon); The Diplomat (HBO); and The Perfection (Netflix) starring Allison Williams and Logan Browning. Her films have premiered at festivals around the world including Sundance, Telluride, Toronto, Tribeca, SxSW and IDFA. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Producers Guild and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Dawn Porter
2016 Visionaries Tribute Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence
Dawn Porter
2016 Visionaries Tribute Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence
Dawn Porter’s film Trapped premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking. Her documentary Gideon’s Army won the Sundance Film Festival Editing Award and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy. Her other films include Spies of Mississippi and Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper.
[Biography from 2016]
1:45-3PM
The Power of Educational Distribution
Explore the dynamic world of educational distribution as a strategic avenue for documentary filmmakers in a discussion moderated by Sean Weiner (Untitled Filmmaker Organization). Join our panelists Kristin Cooney (Roco Films), Chithra Jeyaram (New Day Films), and Brittany Quirarte (New York Public Library) as they share insights into harnessing this platform to not only generate revenue but also amplify your project’s visibility and social impact. Discover how to navigate the educational distribution landscape effectively, engage with institutions, and make a lasting impression.
Kristin Cooney
Vice-President and Co-Founder, Roco Films
Kristin Cooney
Vice-President and Co-Founder, Roco Films
As Vice President and Co-Founder of ROCO’s Impact and Engagement division, Kristin Cooney and her team are responsible for executing bespoke screening campaigns to achieve targeted impact goals. Before starting ROCO’s Impact division, Kristin helped to launch ROCO’s Educational Distribution division, where she served as managing director for nine years, growing the educational catalogue from 1 film to several hundred and bringing educational rights to the forefront of the distribution conversation. In her current role, Kristin continues to prioritize educational rights, ensuring that impact and engagement efforts lead to robust and long-term educational outcomes and revenue. Kristin has executed impact campaigns and/or managed educational rights for over 200 films, including Picture a Scientist, The Invisible War, Chasing Ice, The Hunting Ground, Inequality for All, Kiss The Ground, The Right To Read, Chasing Childhood, Girl Rising, Miss Representation, Trapped, Life, Animated, Cartel Land, This Changes Everything, Particle Fever, A Place At the Table and Pray the Devil Back to Hell.
Chithra Jeyaram
Filmmaker
Chithra Jeyaram
Filmmaker
Chithra Jeyaram is a physical therapist turned filmmaker with an MFA in Film from the University of Texas in Austin. She specializes in one-person crew independent documentaries. She identifies as Tamil. Her work prioritizes subverting stereotypes by framing narratives that highlight perspectives, and intricacies that are left out. She is the recipient of Visions Du Reel RoughCut Lab [2023], Chicken and (Egg)Celerator Lab [2022], Brown Girls Doc Mafia Artist Fellowship [2021], Gotham Documentary Fellowship [2020], and Jerome Foundation [2019]. Her work has been featured on PBS, CBSN, Apple TV, Revry, Kanopy, SXSW, and DOC NYC. Now Chithra’s finishing, Our Daughters, a feature documentary that examines identity and adoption in America through an immigrant lens. In addition to directing and producing her work, she edits – Look Like You (2022, Short Narrative), an episode for CBSN Speaking Frankly Series: Symbolic Justice (2020), and 9 Degrees (2019, Short Doc). She is an adjunct faculty at NYU and Vassar. She is an active organizer and member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and Bitchitra Collective.
Brittany Quirarte
Educator Development Specialist
Brittany Quirarte
Educator Development Specialist
Brittany Quirarte is an Educator Development Specialist at The New York Public Library’s new initiative The Center for Educators and Schools. This program seeks to use NYPL’s resources and collections to ignite the curiosity, joy, and passion of learning within educators, students, and school communities. CES hosts many film events for teachers including a summer film festival which Brittany helped create and run.
Sean Weiner
Co-director, United Filmmaker Organization
Sean Weiner
Co-director, United Filmmaker Organization
Sean Weiner is a film producer and artist community builder based in the Lower Hudson Valley of New York. Sean is the Co-Director of UFO, a filmmaker support organization built upon a philosophy of inclusion and collaboration that provides short film labs, feature film residencies, and grants opportunities to early career and experienced independent filmmakers. He was the Founding Director of Creative Culture at the Jacob Burns Film Center. Sean is an assistant professor in Film & Media Studies at Purchase College. He has produced, edited, and mentored award-winning films selected by Sundance, Berlinale, and SXSW, and acquired by Criterion, Searchlight, HBOMax, POV, The New Yorker, and New York Times’ Op-Docs.
3:15-4:30PM
Where Will Your Film Be in 20 Years?
Explore the intricate journey of your film’s long-term rights and the preservation of vital materials. Legal experts Susan Bodine and Nancy Wolff from CDAS, alongside filmmakers Shola Lynch (Free Angela and All Political Prisoners), and Susan Margolin (Obsessed with Light) will navigate the nuances of film ownership, distribution, and safeguarding key elements with moderator and producer Ira Deutchman. Join us in uncovering the secrets to preserving your film’s rights/materials over the years. This isn’t just legal talk – it’s empowerment. Untangle complexities and confidently tackle rights and materials challenges. Whether a newcomer or industry pro, join us to transform your film’s rights into a strategic advantage.
Susan Margolin
Producer
Susan Margolin
Producer
Susan Margolin is a pioneer of digital film distribution and a creator of independent films with 25+ years’ experience. Margolin co-founded independent film distributor New Video/Docurama Films in 1992, and ran the company until she sold it to Cinedigm in 2012. As Co-President there she distributed critically acclaimed, award winning films including Destin Daniel Crettin’s Short Term 12 and Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering’s Academy Award nominated The Invisible War. In 2016 Margolin launched St. Marks Productions. She produced Nancy Buirski’s A Crime on the Bayou (Starz) and The Rape of Recy Taylor (Starz), Alexandra Codina’s Paper Children (YouTube Originals), Trish Adlesic’s Tree of Life and Executive Produced Judith Helfand’s upcoming Love and Stuff, Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl’s Obsessed With Light and Cheryl Miller Houser and Cynthia Wade’s Generation Startup (Netflix). Margolin serves on the board of directors of Chicken & Egg Pictures, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, BAFTA NY (emerita), and the Documentary Producers Alliance, and on the advisory boards of Hamptons DocFest and NYWIFT. Margolin is a member of the PGA, BAFTA and AMPAS.
Nancy Wolff
Partner, Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP
Nancy Wolff
Partner, Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP
Nancy Wolff is a partner at the intellectual property, media and entertainment law firm of Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP located in New York, New York and Beverly Hills, CA. She represents a wide range of creative individuals and companies in all areas of media law, art law, licensing and publishing. Nancy is co-chair of the firm’s Litigation Department and co-chair of the firm’s Art Law Group. With her deep knowledge of copyright, trademarks, rights of privacy and publicity, and other third-party rights, she handles pre-pub review of books ,podcasts and documentary films as well as transactional matters involving copyright and licensing. She is a Past President of the Copyright Society of the USA (CSUSA) and a member of the ABA IP Task Force on Copyright Reform as well as the ABA IP AI and ML Task Force.
Susan Bodine
Partner, Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP
Susan Bodine
Partner, Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP
Susan Bodine represents a diverse clientele in the motion picture, television, and digital media industries. Her clients include major and specialty motion picture studios, cable television networks, media lenders, private equity financiers, as well as production and distribution companies, and individual directors, writers, and producers. Sue provides clients with counsel in all phases of development, finance, production, distribution, and rights administration regarding motion pictures, television programming and new media properties. She also handles domestic and international clients’ issues with rights acquisitions, production legal work and film and television sales and licensing. She advises a number of high-profile writers, directors and producers, working with them and their other representatives (agents, managers and business managers) on all aspects of their careers.
Shola Lynch
Director
Shola Lynch
Director
Shola Lynch is an award-winning American Filmmaker best known for the feature documentary Free & All Political Prisoners and the Peabody Award winning documentary Chisolm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed. Her independent film body of work and her other collaborative projects feed her passion to bring history alive with captivating stories of people, places, and events. Since 2013 she has also served as the Curator of the Moving Image & Recorded Sound division of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In 2016, she became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Shola is currently finishing a documentary about the American sprinter, cultural icon and still the current World Record holder, Flo Jo. She is in production on an Apple Original film, Number One on the Call Sheet, which will celebrate Black achievement in the film industry and explore what it takes for Black actresses to find success in Hollywood. She has also been tapped to helm an upcoming documentary on Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Ira Deutchman
Producer
Ira Deutchman
Producer
Ira Deutchman has been making, marketing and distributing films since 1975, having worked on over 150 films including some of the most successful independent films of all time. He was one of the founders of Cinecom and later created Fine Line Features—two companies that were created from scratch and, in their respective times, helped define the independent film business. He was also a co-founder of Emerging Pictures, the first digital projection network in the United States and a pioneer in delivering live cultural events into movie theaters. Currently Deutchman is an independent producer, and a consultant in marketing and distribution of independent films. He is also Professor Emeritus in the School of the Arts at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1987 and was the Chair of the Film Program from 2011-2015. His current projects include serving as director/producer of the feature documentary Searching for Mr. Rugoff (opened in theaters in August, 2021), producer of the stage adaptation of Joan Micklin Silver’s Hester Street (opens April 1, 2024), producer of Nickel & Dimed, based on the book by Barbara Ehrenreich and directed by Debra Granik (in pre-production) and executive producer of the mini-series based on the novel Radio Girls by Sarah-Jane Stratford (in development). In 2017, Deutchman was awarded the Spotlight Lifetime Achievement Award by the Sundance Art House Convergence for his service to independent film marketing and distribution.
Co-presented by Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP
To experience the DOC NYC PRO lineup, purchase an individual PRO Day Pass (via the Buy Ticket button) to hone in on a specific subject, or benefit from discounted pricing when you purchase Multi-Day Pass Packs to an assortment of topics.
DOC NYC PRO is co-presented by:
