December 2020 Online Workshop
Margaux Mitterrand
Margaux is a French (of Corsican origin) filmmaker based in New York City. Margaux studied classical theater for 9 years in France, before moving to New York City 10 years ago where she integrated a 3 years Acting for Film program at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts. She then studied film production at The New School for four years. There she completed her thesis short film “In the name of Art” which deals with how to heal depression through artistic self-expression. Today Margaux develops her own projects and works as a freelancer. She is fluent in French, Italian and English.
Bianca Malcolm
Untethered writer and director, Bianca Malcolm, hails from St. Louis, Missouri, the murder capital of the U.S. The daughter of average urbanites, she found escape from the crushing violence of early-90’s America through the horror films of Wes Craven and John Carpenter, which inspired her to become a rule-breaking screenwriter. To this end, she earned four degrees, including a Ph.D. in Epidemiology, then took a slave-job as a Statistician at the CDC to repay monumental student loans. Bianca took a hard left into hungry artist territory, and broke her mother’s heart, when she decided that tracking disease wasn’t as sexy as the movies told her it was. Now she uses her Ph.D. degree to prop up her laptop as she pens her own version of the truth and creates cinematic stories of the macabre, fanciful, and adventurous for the big and small screens. She has won numerous awards and recognition, including placing twice in the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards and winning a coveted internship in the Grey’s Anatomy Writers’ Room.
Lorraine O'Connor
Lorraine has spent her professional life as a cultural activist, a producer and promoter of Trinidad and Tobago culture, be it through music, film and fashion. Trinidad born, educated in France and fluent in 4 languages, including Mandarin Chinese, Lorraine has a vivid curiosity that has driven her to explore many areas in the creative and cultural arenas. She has produced numerous documentaries and films and worked on many international productions filmed in Trinidad & Tobago. From the trendy music label, Rituals Music, which she cofounded and managed in the 1990’s to the ownership of the historic Rhyners’ music store at Piarco International Airport, to artist management, production of fashion shows and major events, Lorraine has extensive experience in film production, artist and event management. Lorraine has been involved in the phenomenal success of Calypso music icon, Calypso Rose and works consistently with the team behind Soca music superstar, Machel Montano while she co-manages rising Caribbean artist, Nailah Blackman. In 2016, she was the line producer of the feature film, “Bazodee” that opened in over 130 cinemas across the USA. In 2017, she was the local fixer for the famous CNN TV series Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, Trinidad and Tobago and in 2018, the local facilitator for “Amazing Race” CBS TV series, airing October 2020. In 2019, Lorraine was instrumental in presenting Calypso Rose, Machel Montano and Nailah Blackman at Coachella, one of the world’s top international music festivals. Lorraine worked on the production of major events leading up and during Carnival 2020 in Trinidad: Festival of the Bands 2020, Soaka til Sunrise, The Wedding Machel Monday 2020, Karukera One Love Trinidad, Nicki Minaj documentary. She is also a director on the board of FilmTT (the company responsible for the development of the film industry in Trinidad and Tobago). Lorraine has also trained as a certified aromatherapist and developed her own brand of essential oil blends, Infuse Pure Therapy.
Iliana Sosa
Iliana Sosa is a documentary and narrative fiction filmmaker based in Austin, Texas. She was born and raised in El Paso, Texas by Mexican immigrant parents. A former Bill Gates Millennium Scholar, she holds an MFA in film production and directing from UCLA. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Steven Bochco Fellowship, the Hollywood Foreign Press Award, the Edie and Lew Wasserman Fellowship and the National Hispanic Foundation of the Arts Scholarship, among others. Iliana has directed short documentaries, fiction shorts and a narrative fiction feature, Detained in the Desert, which had its world premiere at the 2012 Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. In 2017, Firelight Media awarded her an Impact Producer Fellowship. In 2018 she was selected at Berlinale Talents and co-directed a short documentary, An Uncertain Future, with Chelsea Hernandez. The short screened at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival and won a Jury Award for Best Texas Short. It also screened at the 2018 Aspen ShortsFest where it won the Youth Jury Award. She was a 2018–2019 Sundance Institute Development Fellow with her first feature documentary, Lo que dejamos atrás. The film has received additional support from the Ford Foundation and participated in the 2019 True/False Catapult Retreat and the 2020 IFP Documentary Lab. Iliana has also participated in the Jacob Burns Residency with the project. She was recently named a 2020 Women at Sundance Adobe Fellow and one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.
Federico Casal
Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Federico made his first short films at the age of 15 as he began writing poetry and fiction more regularly. Between 2009 and 2010 he wrote three feature films in English, two of which were semifinalists in screenplay contests. He then took up writing features again in 2016, when he finished the 60-minute “Long Verse of the Night”. He has studied English-Spanish literary translation and classical piano. Lately, his short film “Wanderer” (2017) was a finalist in the Ryuichi Sakamoto Async International short film competition and was screened on May 31 at the 2019 Nippon Connection festival in Frankfurt, while the sci-fi action satire “Unwelcome” (2017) was announced a finalist in the 12th Annual StoryPros International Screenplay Contest and a semi-finalist in ScreenCraft’s 2018 Action / Thriller Competition, garnering further recognition since then. His latest short film, “Rehearsal”, was part of last year’s Cannes Short Film Corner and has been selected in various other film festivals. He’s currently preparing a feature film where he lives, one of three new feature screenplays written during 2019–2020. He has also completed two Sundance Co-Lab courses: “Directing Actors” and “TV: Writing” levels 1 & 2, the last of which included the writing of a pilot script.
Elettra Fiumi
Elettra is an award-winning Florentine-American director, producer and editor focused on documentaries, often portraits, that explore culture, a sense of place, discovery and our relationship to our environments. She has worked on documentaries for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Tribeca Studios, The New Yorker, BBC and others. She is currently working on Radical Landscapes, a feature documentary on her discovery of the 9999 Group archives. She is a Columbia Journalism School alum and the founder of the Italian chapter of the Video Consortium, a global creative community of the best non-fiction filmmakers.
Alanah Rafferty
Alanah Rafferty is an NYC based actor and filmmaker. Her last film, Mutiny, was a Quarter Finalist in the ScreenCraft Film Fund 2017, and was nominated for Best Writing For A Short at the Nightmares Film Festival in 2019. She’s currently working on multiple screenplays that blend genres and offer a unique perspective on the world we live in.
Anne Alexander Sieder
Originally from Detroit, Anne is an award-winning actress and screenwriter who lives in Munich, Germany with her husband of 25 years. In fact, she’s spent more than half her life in Europe. It’s a long story but, she’d be happy to tell you about it in her native English, German or Italian. Her short film, “Moments,” won numerous awards as it made the festival rounds. Currently, she’s working on several feature-length screenplays as well as a darkly comedic television series all told from the unique perspective gained through years of life as an ex-pat.