In her more than 60 years as a groundbreaking artist, Miriam Beerman has overcome loss and tragedy to inspire friends, family, and fans about how to remain defiant, creative and strong. Miriam Beerman: Expressing the Chaos is the retrospective of a remarkable career and the profile of an artist whose personal demons and empathy for human suffering colored a lifetime of her work.

Jonathan Gruber is the executive producer of Black Eye Productions, where he has been producing and directing award winning documentaries, films, videos and interactive media since 1995. His work has aired on PBS, The History Channel, the National Geographic Channel, and Discovery Channels. He has worked extensively in historical subjects, including Alexander the Great, Leonardo da Vinci, and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. His first feature documentary, Pola’s March, aired on public television stations across the United States, and received a distinguished Crystal Heart Award from the Heartland Film Festival. His second feature documentary film, Life is a Banquet: The Rosalind Russell Story, premiered at film festivals around the U.S. and has aired on PBS stations and on ABC/Australia. He is currently screening two feature documentaries: Jewish Soldiers in Blue & Gray, a first-of-its-kind film on the Jewish experience during the Civil War, as well as the award-winning Follow Me: the Yoni Netanyahu Story.
 
There will be a Q&A with director Jonathan Gruber following the screening.

On Screen/In Person is made possible by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Regional Touring Program.

The Winding Stream tells the story of the American roots music dynasty, the Carters and the Cashes, tracing the influence of their music from the 1920s through the present day, and how a seemingly unlikely young man named Johnny Cash would be the one to lift up the Carter legacy from obscurity. An intimate account of reciprocity and love, The Winding Stream features interviews and performances with roots music practitioners, including one of the last interviews ever granted by Johnny Cash.

Beth Harrington is an independent producer, director and writer, born in Boston and transplanted to the Pacific Northwest.  Harrington’s independent production Welcome to the Club – The Women of Rockabilly was honored with a 2003 Grammy nomination. This and other work reflects a long-standing love of music. She is a singer and guitarist, most noted for her years as a member of Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers on the Warner Brothers Sire Records label. Harrington has also worked with public television stations WGBH in Boston and OPB in Portland producing, researching, and developing shows for both national and local air on series such as NOVA, Frontline, Health Quarterly, History Detectives and Oregon Experience, in addition to numerous one-off specials.  She is active in various film communities, having served on the board of Film Action Oregon as well as the Oregon Media Production Association. She is a past President of Women in Film/New England and a former Vice President of Women in Film/Seattle.

There will be a Q&A with director Beth Harrington following the screening.

On Screen/In Person is made possible by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Regional Touring Program.

One of the thousand women said to have fought in the Civil War, Loreta Janeta Velazquez altered her sex, ethnicity, and identity in order to become a Confederate soldier spy and double agent for the Union, only to be dismissed as a hoax after revealing her story in her scandalous 1876 memoir, The Woman in Battle. REBEL is a detective story about a woman, a myth, and the politics of national memory.  

Maria Agui Carter immigrated to the U.S. from Ecuador, grew up an undocumented “Dreamer,” and graduated from Harvard University.  She been a grantee of, and has served as a panelist and juror for institutions including film festivals and organizations such as ITVS, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has won a George Peabody Gardner, a Warren, a Corporation for Public Broadcasting/PBS fellowship, and a Rockefeller Fellowship, among others, and has served as a visiting scholar/artist at Harvard, Tulane and Brandeis universities.  She is a trustee of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers and on the Advisory Board of the Filmmaker’s Collaborative. Agui Carter has been a working member of the Writer’s Guild since 2000. Her new play 14 Freight Trains opened to excellent reviews at Arena Stage in Washington, DC in fall of 2014.  Her new script about an undocumented teen code-writer enamored of the Monarch butterfly called The Secret Life of La Mariposa, was a Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab finalist.  She is currently developing a documentary on immigration called Mother Land.

There will be a Q&A with director Maria Agui Carter following the screening.

On Screen/In Person is made possible by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Regional Touring Program.

Illuminating the extraordinary power of American Sign Language (ASL) poetry, Deaf Jam is story of Aneta Brodski’s bold journey into the spoken word slam scene. When Aneta, a deaf Israeli immigrant high school student, makes an extraordinary connection with a hearing Palestinian slam poet, they transcend personal and political divisions to generate a new form of poetry that speaks to both the hearing and the deaf.

Judy Lieff is a filmmaker and educator with a background in dance and experimental film. She participated in the American Film Showcase 2013/2014 program with her first feature documentary, Deaf Jam, traveling to South Korea, Zimbabwe, and Turkey.  Judy won a finishing grant from ITVS for the film. She is on faculty at SUNY Purchase teaching film production that explores the intersections of film and dance. Judy earned her M.F.A. in dance & experimental film/video from the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts), following a career as a professional dancer. Her credits include: a Dance On Camera residency with BBC producer Bob Lockyer at the Banff Centre for the Arts, a National Dance/Media fellowship from the Pew Charitable Trusts, and six grants for media projects with youth. Judy has years of experience working in production and post-production on commercials, industrials, shorts, and EPKs for feature films. Additionally, she has worked as a motion capture performer/choreographer, and as a stop-motion performer/choreographer on projects including Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Pat O’Neil’s The Decay of Fiction.

There will be a Q&A with director Judy Lieff following the screening.

On Screen/In Person is made possible by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Regional Touring Program.