Event

Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve in conversation with Alicia Sams

Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve

Alicia Sams

Alicia Sams has extensive production experience in both documentary and feature films. Her most recent film as director/producer is By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, a behind-the-scenes look at the journey of Barack Obama and his campaign staff from before the announcement of his Presidential campaign in 2007, all the way to the White House in 2009. Also in 2009, Sams was executive producer of Cherien Dabis' award-winning debut feature Amreeka, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and win on to win the Critics Prize at the Director's Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festical. In 2006, she produced Wanderlust, a feature-length documentary about road movies and the road in American culture directed by the Academy-Award nominated team of Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman, which aired on IFC in May 2006, and was also consulting producer of Buddy, about Buddy Cianci, the notorious (and felonious) mayor of Providence. Prior to that, she produced the Sony Pictures Classics' release Grateful Dawg, the Sundance Channel series Keeping Time: New Music from America's Roots, the independent documentary Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's, and the AMC television special Hello He Lied, and Other Truths from the Hollywood Trenches, Tennessee Williams: Orpheys of the American Stage, among others.

This program was made possible through the generous sponsorship of the Kelly Writers House and the Cinema Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.