Event
Penn Film & Media Pioneers IV
Learn about cutting edge research.
See examples of student and faculty films.
Hear from recent graduates who are pursuing media careers.
Discuss the current state of the film and media industry with filmmakers, producers, and other industry leaders.
The symposium is free and open to the public. No registration required.
8:30-9:15am | Breakfast
9:30-11am | Investigating | Moderator: William Schemenner
Kate Newbold | C'07
Kate Newbold graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007 with a B.A. in English and Cinema Studies. She earned her M.A. at Northwestern University in the Radio/Television/Film department, and she is currently a doctoral candidate in Northwestern’s Screen Cultures program. Her dissertation, entitled Archiving Liveness: Televisual Flow, Materiality, and Early Television Historiography, examines the postwar use of surrogate media technologies to store, remember, preserve, and historicize television long before analog and digital recording devices popularized such practices. In addition, Kate has published work in journals such as Spectator and Afterimage on gender and technology. Her latest article will appear in the March 2013 issue of the Velvet Light Trap on the subject of postwar TV photography.
Meta Mazaj | English & Cinema Studies
Meta Mazaj is a Senior Lecturer in Cinema Studies at Penn. She has published on critical theory, Balkan cinema, new European cinema, film and nationalism. She is the author of National and Cynicism in Post 1990s Balkan Cinema (VDM Verlag, 2008), which examines the relationship between film and nationalism in contemporary Balkan cinema, and co-author, with Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, of Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2011). She is currently working on a book about contemporary world cinema. Her teaching and research interests include film theory and history, film and nationalism, film and philosophy, and world cinema. Her recent courses include: Film History, Film Methods and Analysis, Film Theory, Contemporary Transnational Cinema, Cinema of the Balkans, Cinema and Popular Memory, Masters of European Cinema, American Independent Cinema, Film Festivals.
Karen Beckman | History of Art & Cinema Studies
Karen Beckman is the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Professor of Cinema and Modern Media in the department of the History of Art. She is the author of Vanishing Women: Magic, Film and Feminism (Duke UP, 2003); Crash: Cinema and the Politics of Speed and Stasis (Duke UP, 2010), and is now working on a new book, Animation and the Contemporary Art of War. She is co-editor of two volumes: Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography with Jean Ma (Duke UP, September 2008) and On Writing With Photography (forthcoming, Minnesota UP) with Liliane Weissberg, and is currently editing a book entitled Animating Film Theory, which explores the marginalization of animation in film theoretical discussions. She has published articles on a range of subjects, including feminism and terrorism, death penalty photography, the animated documentary, and the relationship between cinema and contemporary art. She is a senior editor of the journal Grey Room. Courses taught include: Introduction to Film Theory (CINE 103), Film Theory (ARTH 593), Cinema and Photography (ARTH 793; CINE 392), Race, Sex and Gender in Early Cinema (ARTH 793), Women and Film (CINE 208), FIlm History (CINE 101), The Road Movie (ARTH 291), Paul Strand (ARTH 301), and The Art of Animation (ARTH 793). She is a member of graduate groups in the departments of German and English, and a faculty affiliate of the LGBT center.
11am-12:30pm | Making | Moderator: Deirdre Bullard
Jason Jadick & Dylan Hansen-Fliedner | C'14
Jason Jadick and Dylan Hansen-Fliedner, C’14 in Cinema Studies and Creative Writing, combine theory and practice when making films under the alias Lunar Circle Productions. They engage with cinema critically when developing a project and approach the form as a collaborative medium, frequently drawing on friends and shared locations. Dylan and Jason are working as Associate Producers on the upcoming feature-length documentary, Finding Babel, directed by Penn alum and professor, David Novack. They have also worked closely with Cinema Studies professor Meta Mazaj as research assistants on an upcoming book on world cinema. Their Lunar Circle projects range from music videography to narrative shorts to archival documentation. Artists including Tycho and Portugal. The Man have featured Lunar Circle Productions’ music videography on their websites and social media pages. A short film, Exalted, received second place at the 2012 Penn Student Film Festival. Their work can be seen at lunarcircleproductions.com
Michael Kleiman | C'06
Michael Kleiman graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006 with a B.A. in Cinema Studies. Since graduating, he has focused his career on producing and directing documentary films that tackle critical social issues. His first documentary feature, The Last Survivor, follows the lives of survivors of four different genocides and mass atrocity crimes - the Holocaust, Rwanda, Darfur and Congo. The film premiered at the 2010 Oxford Film Festival where it received the Jury Prize for Best Documentary and the Audience Award for Best Film. It went on to win the Special Jury Prize in Documentary at the 2010 Dallas International Film Festival and the 2010 Indie Memphis Film Festival. The film was an official selection at over 20 film festivals around the world and played in over 125 cities across the country. In 2009, Kleiman received a Fulbright scholarship from the U.S. State Department to begin work on his second feature documentary, Web. For 10 months, Kleiman lived in two small villages in Peru's Andes Mountains and Amazon Jungle as children there used laptops and the Internet for the very first time. The film, slated to hit the festival circuit in 2013, focuses on the enormous effects we are beginning to see play out as the Internet spreads to the furthest corners of the globe. In the realm of fiction, Kleiman has produced and directed several short films that have played at festivals in New York and Philadelphia. He is a five-time (and current) finalist to the Sundance Screenwriting Labs. Kleiman has worked with renowned directors Andrew Bujalski and Albert Maysles (who was the subject of his senior thesis at Penn) and in the documentary department at HBO.
Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve | CW'88
Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve is a novelist, screenwriter, film producer and teacher. Her screenplay, Fugly, co-written with John Leguizamo, and starring Leguizamo, Rosie Perez, Griffin Dunne and Radha Mitchell, finished filming early October 2010 in New York City. Her most recent novel, Drizzle, was published in March 2010 under her married name, Kathleen Van Cleve, and received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and The Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books, and was named to Indiebound's KidsNext Spring 2010 list. She has produced the films Joe the King, (winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival), Pinero (a Miramax release starring Benjamin Bratt) and Undefeated (an HBO film starring Leguizamo). Her other novels are Cranberry Queen (optioned by Miramax Films) and The Difference Between You and Me. She graduated with a dual degree from the Wharton School and the College of Arts & Sciences in 1988. She has been a consultant for NYU's Tisch School of the Arts M.F.A. dramatic writing program as well as for Tisch's undergraduate dramatic writing candidates. She lives with her husband and two young sons in Philadelphia.
12:30-2pm | Lunch Break
2-3:30pm | Industry | Moderator: Gary Kafer
Peter Decherney | English & Cinema Studies
Peter Decherney is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies, English, and Communication and the Director of the Cinema Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Hollywood’s Copyright Wars: from Edison to the Internet (Columbia, 2012) and Hollywood and the Culture Elite: How the Movies Became American (Columbia, 2005). He regularly testifies before the Copyright Office of the United States, and in 2011 he filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court Case of Golan v. Holder. Prof. Decherney has been an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholar and a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies.
Bing Chen | C'09
Bing Chen is the YouTube Global Creator Development & Management Lead at Google. In this role, he is responsible for generating and aligning the strategic vision for initiatives that identify, develop, and distribute the next generation of premier channels and creators--from musicians to filmmakers, chefs to beauty gurus. In addition, he oversees several special company projects that engage more than 100 million content creators worldwide. Bing co-founded and co-leads several initiatives at YouTube, such as the expansion of the YouTube Partner Program globally, the company's talent incubation program, the YouTube Creator Institute, YouTube's presence at major industry events and talent engagements, and other strategic projects. Prior to joining YouTube, Bing led Google's global green energy marketing efforts, launched the company's digital artifacts initiative, and was a founding member of the Google Crisis Response team. He has also spent time at the Walt Disney Company and Johnson & Johnson. Bing graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing. He is also a Director of the Board of the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment and the Ivy Council.
Gregory Quinn | C'07
Gregory Quinn graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in International Relations in 2007. He started his professional career as an investment-banking analyst in the Media & Telecom group at Merrill Lynch in New York City. In 2009, Greg continued his career as an investment banker when joining Financo, a boutique investment bank located in New York City. At Financo, Greg specialized on Mergers & Acquisition in the Retail & Apparel industries. In 2011, having received his finance fix, Greg joined his family’s business, Caribbean Cinemas, where he has assisted in the areas of Corporate Development and overseeing the Company’s holdings in the Dominican Republic. Greg spends his time between the Caribbean and New York City.
3:30-5pm | Keynote Panel | Moderator: Peter Decherney
Mark Waters | C'86
Mark Waters graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Economics and a minor in Theater Arts, then went on to get an M.F.A. in Directing from the American Film Institute. He made his feature film directorial debut with the dark comedy indie hit The House of Yes, which premiered at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, where Parker Posey won a Special Jury Prize for her performance. He then scored with the back-to-back hit comedies Freaky Friday and Mean Girls. Freaky Friday, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, earned a 2004 Critic's Choice Award nomination for Best Family Film and brought a Golden Globe Award nomination to Jamie Lee Curtis. Mean Girls, written by Tina Fey, won three MTV Movie Awards, including one for Lindsay Lohan as Best Actress. Waters followed in 2005 with the fantasy comedy romance Just Like Heaven, starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo. And, in 2008, he directed the acclaimed family adventure The Spiderwick Chronicles, adapted from the popular book series. In 2009, directed Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and produced (500) Days Of Summer – nominated for two Golden Globes. His most recent feature was 2011’s Mr. Popper’s Penguins, based on the classic children’s book, with Jim Carrey in the role of Popper.
Doug Belgrad | C'87
Doug Belgrad has served as President of Columbia Pictures since 2008 and President of Production, prior to that dating back to January, 2003. Belgrad oversees Columbia’s slate of films – and more than 100 films in various stages of development – and manages the creative staff at the studio. During his tenure, Belgrad has overseen a string of projects that includes such blockbuster hit films as The Amazing Spider-Man™, Men in Black™ 3, The Social Network, Moneyball, The Karate Kid, Grown Ups, The Ugly Truth, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Hancock, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, 21 and Hitch, among many others. He is currently overseeing the production of Skyfall, starring Daniel Craig as James Bond 007, Captain Phillips, directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Tom Hanks, After Earth, starring Jaden Smith and Will Smith, and White House Down, directed by Roland Emmerich, among many other projects. Belgrad graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1987 with a B.A. in history. He began his career at Kidder, Peabody as a securities analyst, specializing in media and entertainment companies. He joined Sony Pictures in 1989 as a management associate, an executive training program where he worked primarily in strategic planning and business development.
Penn Film & Media Pioneers IV is made possible through the generous sponsorship and support of Lorraine Carrady Quinn, CW'73, to the Cinema Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.