FROM ARTIST TO ACTIVIST

A PANEL DISCUSSION WITH RENOWNED LOS ANGELES CREATIVES

MARK JONATHAN HARRIS is an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and Distinguished Professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he heads the documentary program and holds the Mona and Bernard Kantor Chair of Production. Among the many documentaries he has written, produced and/or directed are The Long Way Home and Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, which both won Academy Awards for Best Feature Documentary (1997, 2000). He also executive-produced the documentary Code Black, which won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2013 Los Angeles Film Festival and became the basis for the CBS medical drama series of the same name. His latest film, which he co-wrote and co-directed, is Breaking Point: The War for Democracy in Ukraine.

MARK SCHULMAN has enjoyed an unprecedented career over the last 27 years as a first call drummer for world-class rock and pop artists, including Pink, Foreigner, Cher, Billy Idol, Sheryl Crow and Stevie Nicks. He has been voted ‘Top 3 Pop-Rock Drummers’ in the 2014 Modern Drummer Reader’s Poll. As an active educator, Mark taught at the Los Angeles College of Music, and has hosted clinics worldwide. Schulman is also former chairman of the board of directors of Create Now!, a non-profit organization founded in 1996, to help change troubled children’s lives through creative arts mentoring. A cancer survivor himself, Mark has also motivated children and teens through his work doing seminars with the Ronald McDonald House and benefits for the Teenage Cancer Trust in the UK.

JESSIE KAHNWEILER can’t afford therapy so she makes films. Her work has been featured on New York Times, The Guardian, New York Magazine, LA Weekly and The Huffington Post. After getting dumped, Jessie wrote and co-directed the comedic short Baby Love, costarring alongside Anchorman’s David Koechner. Jessie was selected for the 6 Points Artist Fellowship which inspired her comedic web series entitled Dude, Where’s My Chutzpah? Her short Meet My Rapist, a dark comedy about running into her rapist at the farmers market, debuted at the 2014 Slamdance Film Festival and inspired her live show The Rape Girl. Jessie’s latest project for which she writes, directs, and stars in – The Skinny – premiered Sundance Film Festival, is produced by Refinery29 and Jill Soloway’s Wifey.tv and won a Webby for best dramatic series.

JASON ROSENFIELD  is a three-time Emmy Award-winning film editor and story consultant. His credits include Robert Altman’s Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, the improvisational comedy series Free Ride, Dick Wolf’s Law & Order: Crime & Punishment, RJ Cutler’s American High and HBO documentaries Memphis P.D. and Teen Killers. In 2001, Jason was elected to membership in American Cinema Editors [ACE], an honorary society of distinguished editors. In 2012 he joined the Board of Directors of American Cinema Editors as Associate Director and continues to serve in that capacity. Jason’s documentary work has focused on topics ranging from the life of Eugene O’Neill to navigating high school. His last four – Lost for Life, Swift Current, Resistance is Life and Breaking Point (all in association with Mark Jonathan Harris)  – reflect important social themes: arbitrary justice, recovery from child abuse, the Syrian refugee crisis and Ukraine’s fight for democracy.

DORIT CYPIS is an artist, educator, and mediator with one foot in the studio and one foot in the street. Cypis’s presentations are often immersive laboratories abstracting form and meaning to expose paradox and possibility. Her work has been presented at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, International Center of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Orange County Museum, Walker Art Center, Musee d’Art Contemporain/Montreal, Musee des Beaux Arts/Bruxelles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Orange County Museum of Art. Her essays on aesthetics and conflict have been published by Shifter, ACR Journal, Art21, Journal of Art + Protest and Routledge Press. Born in Tel Aviv, Dorit lives in Los Angeles.