Meet Our Guests 2022
Centre Film
October 31, 2022
https://centrefilm.org/meet-our-guests-2022/
MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2022
Arash Azizi | HOLY SPIDER — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM
Arash Azizi is a writer living in New York City. He is the author of the book, The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US and Iran’s Global Ambitions (Oneworld, 2020.) His writings on cinema, politics and history have also appeared in numerous outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is a regular at film festivals around the world and has covered every Cannes film festival since 2016. He has also written and produced movies which can be found on his IMDB profile. Into Schrodinger’s Box, a film he co-write and co-produced, is available to watch on Fandor via Amazon.
Savita Iyer Ahrestani | Editor of the Penn Stater magazine — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM
Savita Iyer Ahrestani is the senior editor of the Penn Stater magazine, Penn State University’s alumni magazine. Before joining the Penn Stater in 2017, she was a freelance journalist for 14 years, writing on a wide range of topics for magazines and websites including VOGUE India, Teen Vogue, Yahoo Life, SELF.com and Refinery 29’s U.K. edition. Born in Calcutta, India, Savita grew up in Geneva, Switzerland and has been living in State College for 10 years.
Elham Nasr | PSU post-doc, from Iran — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM
Ellie Nasr has overcome lots of barriers to now be an international post-doctoral scholar at Pennsylvania State University. Before coming to the US, despite all limitations for women, she was an independent entrepreneur in Iran, focusing on environmental education and facilitating the relationship between nature and modern society. She has always been interested in empowering young girls through nature-related experiences to make them competent to release from restrictive stereotypes for women in traditional societies.
Maryam Shahri | Instructor & researcher, PSU Dept of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, from Iran — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM
An instructor and researcher with Penn State’s department of agricultural and biological engineering specializing in public sustainable behavior and sustainable governance.
Nargess Kaviani | Endocrinologist with Geisinger, from Iran — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM
My name is Nargess Kaviani. I am born and raised in lran, in a secular family. After graduating from medical school with honors, l moved to US to pursue my postgraduate trainings. I did my residency and fellowship training in NY state and after completing my fellowship moved back to State College with my family and started my new job as an endocrinologist in Geisinger.
I am the CEO and founder of a nonprofit organization called MDSPS, Medical Doctor Suicide Prevention Services. I love art, outdoors, hiking, cooking, socializing with friends and family, as well as reading and writing.
Storai Jalali | Editorial Assistant, PennStater Magazine, from Afghanistan — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM
A women’s rights activist who was working as assistant director for FRDO organization in Kabul, Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover in August 2021, she is a BBA Graduate from RANA university in Kabul, In April 2022 moved to State College with her husband and 2 kids, now working as Editorial Assistant for Penn State university (PennStater Magazine).
Toyosi Olanrewaju | Registered Nurse, from Nigeria — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM
As a Registered Nurse and experienced mental health professional with almost a decade of full-time work for the largest psychiatric hospital in Nigeria, Mrs. Olanrewaju also registered in 2019 to practice as a Mental Health Nurse in United Kingdom. She is currently United States Registered Nurse.
She started her education at the Oyo State College of Nursing and Midwifery, for her professional training in Nursing. Her passion for less privileged and underserved population motivated her to specialize in psychiatry/mental health nursing.
Thus, she chose to specialize in the field of psychiatry, and I proceeded to the School of Psychiatric Nursing, Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Aro-Abeokuta, Nigeria for her training in psychiatric/mental health nursing. Her quest for more knowledge also led her to University of Derby, United Kingdom where she earned a Bachelor of Nursing Sciences {BNSc} degree. She had several professional certificates, and she has attended conferences both at national and international level.
She is happily married with kids.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2022
Byron Hurt | HAZING — TUE, NOV 1, 6:00PM
Byron Hurt is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, writer, lecturer, activist, Emmy-nominated TV show host, and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. Hurt is also a short video content creator for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Forward Promise program.
James Vivenzio | HAZING — TUE, NOV 1, 6:00PM
Dr. Stevan Veldkamp | Penn State’s Timothy J. Piazza Center for Fraternity and Sorority Research and Reform — TUE, NOV 1, 6:00PM
Dr. Stevan Veldkamp leads Penn State’s Timothy J. Piazza Center for Fraternity and Sorority Research and Reform – where he sets and implements a national research agenda collaborating with scholars here and nationwide on studies to eradicate hazing and hazardous behaviors, strengthen leadership education, and monitor the state of Greek life. With a career spanning three decades, Dr. Veldkamp has directly advised students in all Greek life traditions and is a frequent campus and headquarters consultant. A first-generation college student, Steve is a two-time graduate of Grand Valley State University and holds a doctoral degree from Indiana University in Higher Education and Student Affairs.
Tierra Williams | Vice President, State College Chapter, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority — TUE, NOV 1, 6:00PM
Tierra D. Williams is a Mississippi Native hailing from Thee Jackson State University majoring in Speech Communication with a Theatre concentration. Tierra has always had a love for the arts, and throughout high school she participated in Speech & Debate, Poetry Out Loud, and acted in various plays. In college, she landed the lead role in the play RUINED by, Lynn Nottage, and was nominated to go to Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) in Roanoke, Virginia- where she placed as a semi-finalist. In March of 2022 she hosted the “Women’s Voices”, where she sang and danced as the MC. She is a Blacktivst and an Actorvist and is unapologetic about both, and uses her talent to address local and national issues. She moved to State College in 2018, where she got involved with plays written and directed by Charles Dumas. and poetry events led by Cynthia Mazzant or Elaine Medar-Wilgus. She also began her Vegan Bakery and sells goods at Webster’s Bookstore & Cafe. She received a grant from 3 Dots Downtown to start her own show “Black Tea” a community engagement show meant to spark dialogue around difficult conversations. With Pablo Lopez, filmmaker and creator of Dark Mind Productions, Tierra’s dream became reality. She then began hosting events for National Black Poetry Night, Politic & Poetry, and other workshops. Tierra is determined to make a space for Black Art on every stage, “By any means necessary.”
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2022
Bhawin Suchak | OUTTA THE MUCK — WED, NOV 2, 6:00PM
An educator, filmmaker, and founding member/co-executive director of Youth FX, a media arts organization focused on empowering young people of color in Albany, NY and around the world by teaching them creative and technical skills in film and digital media.
Fritz Bitsoie | THE TRAILS BEFORE US — WED, NOV 2, 6:00PM
Fritz Bitsoie is a Diné Director from Gallup, New Mexico and a graduate of the film program at the University of New Mexico. In his first short film, The Trails Before Us, Bitsoie aims to reclaim the Western film genre as a way to share contemporary stories about the Native American experience.
Lynne Sachs | SWERVE — WED, NOV 2, 6:00PM
Sachs is an experimental filmmaker and poet based in Brooklyn. Strongly committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, she searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in each new project.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2022
Art Johnston and Pep Peña | ART AND PEP — THUR, NOV 3, 6:00PM
They are civil rights leaders whose life and love is a force behind LGBTQ+ equality in the heart of the country. Their iconic gay bar, Sidetrack, has helped fuel movements and create community for decades in Chicago. But, behind the business and their historic activism exists a love unlike any other.
Mercedes Kane | ART AND PEP — THUR, NOV 3, 6:00PM
Mercedes Kane is forever fascinated by the human experience and the many ways to explore and express that experience. She most recently directed WHAT REMAINS: THE BURNING DOWN OF BLACK WALL STREET (director, 2021) about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.
Martine N. Granby | NO SIREN LEFT BEHIND — THUR, NOV 3, 6:00PM
Martine N. Granby is a nonfiction filmmaker, producer, video journalist, and an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut. She has worked as a documentarian, producer, editor, video journalist, and educator.
Shirin Barghi | NO SIREN LEFT BEHIND — THUR, NOV 3, 6:00PM
Shirin Barghi is an Iranian journalist, audio producer and documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. She currently works as a Senior Producer for BRIC TV, where she covers issues of social justice, immigration, inequality and more.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2022
Mykyta Kozlov | KLONDIKE — FRI, NOV 4, 6:00PM
After graduating from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Mykyta Kozlov started to work in the cultural industries, from GogolFest Contemporary Art Festival to Molodist Kyiv IFF, Odesa IFF and Toronto IFF. Eventually, he shifted to the production side working as 1st Assistant Director in commercials, TV series and films. In 2021, he started his career as a producer mainly focusing on creative documentaries.
Yuliya V. Ladygina | Assistant Professor of Slavic and Global & International Studies PSU — FRI, NOV 4, 6:00PM
Yuliya V. Ladygina’s research in Eastern European literatures and cultures focuses on questions of cultural memory and cultural exchange. She is the author of Bridging East and West: Ol’ha Kobylians’ka, Ukraine’s Pioneering Modernist (2019), and she is currently working on her second book project, The Reel Story of the EuroMaidan and Russia’s War on Ukraine, which examines the post-2014 cycle of Ukrainian war films and their perspective on the hybrid nature of modern war and its mediatization. Before joining Penn State, Ladygina was a Research Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian at Williams College, and a Teaching Assistant Professor of Russian and Humanities at The University of the South (Sewanee).
Ido Glass | DEAD SEA GUARDIANS — FRI, NOV 4, 8:00PM
Ido Glass is a graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem (1994).He has been creating, editing, writingscripts and working as a freelance director.He specializes in documentaries dealing with social, human and historical issues surrounding Israeli society.
Shaina Feinberg | MY MOM’S EGGPLANT SAUCE — FRI, NOV 4, 8:00PM
Shaina Feinberg is a filmmaker from New York City. She specializes in micro-budget filmmaking. Her first film, The Babymooners, blends documentary and narrative fiction and was picked up for distribution by Screen Media.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2022
Arno Michaelis | REFUGE — SAT, NOV 5, 1:30PM
Arno was a leader of a worldwide racist skinhead group and a lead singer of the hate-metal band Centurion, which is still popular with hate groups today. Single parenthood, love for his daughter, and the forgiveness shown by people he once hated all helped to turn Arno’s life around.
Mubin Shaikh | REFUGE — SAT, NOV 5, 1:30PM
Mubin Shaikh is a deradicalized former extremist turned undercover human source for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and police agent with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET – Toronto).
Tierra Williams | The 3/20 Coalition — SAT, NOV 5, 1:30PM
Tierra D. Williams is a Mississippi Native hailing from Thee Jackson State University majoring in Speech Communication with a Theatre concentration. Tierra has always had a love for the arts, and throughout high school she participated in Speech & Debate, Poetry Out Loud, and acted in various plays. In college, she landed the lead role in the play RUINED by, Lynn Nottage, and was nominated to go to Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) in Roanoke, Virginia- where she placed as a semi-finalist. In March of 2022 she hosted the “Women’s Voices”, where she sang and danced as the MC. She is a Blacktivst and an Actorvist and is unapologetic about both, and uses her talent to address local and national issues. She moved to State College in 2018, where she got involved with plays written and directed by Charles Dumas. and poetry events led by Cynthia Mazzant or Elaine Medar-Wilgus. She also began her Vegan Bakery and sells goods at Webster’s Bookstore & Cafe. She received a grant from 3 Dots Downtown to start her own show “Black Tea” a community engagement show meant to spark dialogue around difficult conversations. With Pablo Lopez, filmmaker and creator of Dark Mind Productions, Tierra’s dream became reality. She then began hosting events for National Black Poetry Night, Politic & Poetry, and other workshops. Tierra is determined to make a space for Black Art on every stage, “By any means necessary.”
Shaheen Pasha | assistant teaching professor of journalism, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications — SAT, NOV 5, 3:30PM
Shaheen Pasha, an assistant teaching professor at Penn State, is a co-founder and co-executive of an initiative called the Prison Journalism Project. The non-profit organization gives a voice to people behind bars who want to learn and share their experiences from inside their cells.
Divine Lipscomb | State College Borough Council member — SAT, NOV 5, 3:30PM
“I am a native New Yorker. Born, bred, fed,” says Divine Lipscomb. Recalling his childhood in Brooklyn, he sees a kid “buried in trauma,” struggling with addiction, and who was a “prime candidate” for gang membership. By age 16, he had two felony arrests for armed robbery and was sentenced to four years in state prison — 15 months of which he spent in solitary confinement. Not surprisingly, reentry into society was difficult: “You come home the same age you were when you went in. So, mentally I was 16 when I came home — in a grown man’s body.”
After his release, despite setbacks and relapses, he found success as an entrepreneur. The self-sufficiency and freedom he felt inspired his vision for Corrective Gentlemen, Divine’s non-profit organization. Its mission is to provide support and mentoring for returned citizens, a term Divine prefers to “former inmate.” He also returned to school. At Penn State, Divine is a rehabilitation and human services major and works as the special projects coordinator for PSU’s Restorative Justice Initiative. In addition, he volunteers at the local drop-in shelter to support returning citizens and is active in organizations that allow his experience to lend a voice to the unheard. In 2020, his academic achievements and advocacy were honored: Divine was awarded PSU’s 2020 “Outstanding Adult Learners Award” and the Rock Ethics Institute’s 2020 “Stand Up Award”.
Today, Divine wears many hats: student, husband, father, advocate, entrepreneur, public speaker, board member, volunteer, teacher, executive director, and returned citizen. He has his eye on law school and hopes to one day sit in public office.
Keith Wasserman | DEAR ANI — SAT, NOV 5, 6:00PM
For twenty years Keith Wasserman has made and delivered elaborate art mail packages-all in the hopes of befriending his muse. Dear Ani explores what can happen when you present your truest self, and risk total failure. It is an intimate account of psychotic mania, personal mastery, and creative triumph.
Micah Levin | DEAR ANI — SAT, NOV 5, 6:00PM
In 2006, Micah founded the creative content studio, Movie Magic Media, where he and Keith have collaborated on dozens of short films, music videos and feature films. Together they made their Tribeca Film Festival debut in 2015 with the climate themed sci-fi short film, Grow.
Emily, Tom, and Kari Whitehead | OF MEDICINE AND MIRACLES — SAT, NOV 5, 6:00PM
Tom Whitehead, Kari Whitehead, and their daughter Emily are founders of the Emily Whitehead Foundation, which raises funds and awareness for pediatric cancer immunotherapy research.
Justin Zimmerman | SOLDIER, NOV 5, 8:00PM
Justin Zimmerman, MFA in Film, is a nationally recognized comic writer, director and professor. His narrative and documentary work has appeared in over 200 film festivals across the globe and has been broadcast on national public television, where he won two international television awards. He’s also been the recipient of multiple grants and fellowships, he contributed a story to the Eisner Award-winning graphic novel Love Is Love, and his script and comic creations have been optioned on multiple occasions. You can see more of Zimmerman’s personal work at his website: www.brickerdown.com.
Tierra Williams | Former US Army Reserver — SAT, NOV 5, 8:00PM
Tierra D. Williams is a Mississippi Native hailing from Thee Jackson State University majoring in Speech Communication with a Theatre concentration. Tierra has always had a love for the arts, and throughout high school she participated in Speech & Debate, Poetry Out Loud, and acted in various plays. In college, she landed the lead role in the play RUINED by, Lynn Nottage, and was nominated to go to Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) in Roanoke, Virginia- where she placed as a semi-finalist. In March of 2022 she hosted the “Women’s Voices”, where she sang and danced as the MC. She is a Blacktivst and an Actorvist and is unapologetic about both, and uses her talent to address local and national issues. She moved to State College in 2018, where she got involved with plays written and directed by Charles Dumas. and poetry events led by Cynthia Mazzant or Elaine Medar-Wilgus. She also began her Vegan Bakery and sells goods at Webster’s Bookstore & Cafe. She received a grant from 3 Dots Downtown to start her own show “Black Tea” a community engagement show meant to spark dialogue around difficult conversations. With Pablo Lopez, filmmaker and creator of Dark Mind Productions, Tierra’s dream became reality. She then began hosting events for National Black Poetry Night, Politic & Poetry, and other workshops. Tierra is determined to make a space for Black Art on every stage, “By any means necessary.”
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2022
Carleen Maur | TRACES — SUN, NOV 6, 11:00AM
Carleen Maur is an experimental filmmaker living and working in Columbia, SC where she teaches at the University of South Carolina. She received her MFA in Cinematic Arts from the University of Iowa in 2017. Her work focuses on hybrid methods of both film and video that examine the intersections between gender, sexuality and camouflage.
Matt Whitman | THAT WAS WHEN I THOUGHT I COULD HEAR YOU — SUN, NOV 6, 11:00AM
Matt Whitman (b. West Chester, PA) works with 16mm and Super8 motion picture film. His work has recently screened at the 60th Ann Arbor Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque’s CROSSROADS 2022, the 2022 Chicago Underground Film Festival, the 2022 Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, the 2022 Prismatic Ground Festival at Maysles Documentary Center, the 2022 Athens International Film and Video Festival, Fracto Experimental Film Encounter in Berlin, the Suspaustas Laikas traveling festival in cities across Lithuania, and at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York.
He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, currently films much of his work in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and has taught at Parsons School of Design since 2014.
Crystal Z Campbell | FLIGHT — SUN, NOV 6, 11:00AM
Crystal Z Campbell (they/them), a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts, is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer of Black, Filipinx, and Chinese descents. Campbell finds complexity in public secrets—fragments of information known by many but undertold or unspoken. Campbell’s recent works use underloved archival material to consider historical gaps in the narrative of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, revisit questions of immortality and medical ethics with Henrietta Lacks’ “immortal” cell line, ponder the role of a political monument and displacement in a Swedish coastal landscape, and salvage a 35mm film from a demolished Black activist theater in Brooklyn as a relic of gentrification.
A featured filmmaker at the 67th Flaherty Film Seminar programmed by Almudena Escobar López and Sky Hopinka. Campbell’s films and art have screened and exhibited internationally: MIT List Visual Arts Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, The Drawing Center, Nest, ICA-Philadelphia, Museum of Modern Art, BLOCK Museum, REDCAT, Artissima, Studio Museum of Harlem, Bemis, Project Row Houses, SculptureCenter, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, amongst others.
Honors and awards include a 2022 Creative Capital Award, Harvard Radcliffe Film Study Center & David and Roberta Logie Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Award, MAP Fund, MacDowell, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Skowhegan, Rijksakademie, Whitney ISP, Franklin Furnace, Tulsa Artist Fellowship, and Black Spatial Relics.
Campbell’s writing is featured in two artist books published by Visual Studies Workshop Press, World Literature Today, Monday Journal, GARAGE, and Hyperallergic. Founder of the virtual programming platform archiveacts.com, Campbell is currently a Visiting Associate Professor in Art and Media Study at the University at Buffalo. Campbell lives and works in New York & Oklahoma.
Berndt Mader | CHOP & STEELE — SUN, NOV 6, 1:00PM
Berndt Mader is an Emmy Award winning film, television and commercial director. He has directed the feature films, Booger Red (2016) and Five Time Champion (2011). In 2021 Mader co-directed a television series for Discovery+ based on his film, Booger Red. In 2022, the comedy documentary he co-directed, Chop & Steele, premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. He is a co-founder of the Austin based production company, The Bear. Xander Chauncey | THE MOLOK — SUN, NOV 6, 1:00PM
Chauncey’s career in the arts has spanned more than 20 years. He works as a writer, director, producer, actor, singer & dancer. No matter his role, Xander is a passionate storyteller and approaches the material from the inside out; connecting the emotional truth of the piece to his audience in every moment. Jorge
Antonio Guerrero | WE ARE LIVING THINGS — SUN, NOV 6, 3:00PM
Jorge Antonio Guerrero (born June 28 1993) is a Mexican actor. He is most noted for his performance as Fermín in the 2018 film Roma, for which he was an Ariel Award nominee for Best Supporting Actor at the 61st Ariel Awards in 2019.
He has also appeared in the television series Luis Miguel: The Series, Narcos: Mexico, Crime Diaries: The Candidate, Sitiados: México and Hernán, and in the film Drunken Birds (Les Oiseaux Ivres). He received a Vancouver Film Critics Circle nomination for Best Actor in a Canadian Film at the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards 2021, and a Prix Iris nomination for Revelation of the Year at the 24th Quebec Cinema Awards in 2022, for Drunken Birds.
Andrew Li | WE ARE LIVING THINGS — SUN, NOV 6, 3:00PM
Andrew K. Li is a filmmaker based in New York. A graduate of the MFA Film Program from Columbia University, his student film was shortlisted for a BAFTA nomination and films he produced have screened at festivals around the world including official selection at Cannes, SXSW, Deauville and Toronto IFF. He and his work have received fellowships from Producers Guild of America, EAVE, and IFP. Currently, he’s in production on Pet Shop Boys and developing feature film projects.
Nic Natalicchio | WATCHING THE WILDS — SUN, NOV 6, 3:00PM
Professional filmmaker with over a decade of hands-on experience across multiple industries. He currently teaches in the Department of Cinema & Television at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. His debut short documentary film, The Tides That Bind, screened at over 25 festivals and won numerous awards.
State College, Pennsylvania
