Be the Media NYSCA Bios
Spring 2011
Rediscovering the Everyday with Your Camera
Brenda Ann Kenneally
Award-winning photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally is a mother and an independent journalist whose long-term projects are intimate portraits of social issues that intersect where the personal is political. Born in Albany, she began reporting in 2004 on the lives of five teen girls from north Troy who would come of age in an industrial city in post-industrial America.
She pushes the boundaries of the social document, using the web as a tool to expand and contextualize her immersion style of reporting. Her many awards include the W. Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, a Soros Criminal Justice Fellowship, the Mother Jones Documentary Photography Award, the International Prize for Photojournalism, a Nikon Sabbatical Grant, the National Press Photographers Association’s Best of Photojournalism award, and Cannon Female Photojournalism Grant.
Social Networking and Global Resistance
Franklin López Award-winning filmmaker Franklin López hails from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Selected as Atlanta’s Emerging Artist of the Year in 2003, his work has been featured on Canada’s City TV, GNN, Current, BET, and Democracy Now!
“Join the Resistance! Fall in Love,” López’s breakthough film, reached minor cult status with 30,000 views and screenings around the world. In 2005, López’s post-Katrina video remix “George Bush Don’t Like Black People” reached 1 million people and got a nod from the New York Times, Washington Post and BET. Wired Magazine picked subMedia.TV for its list of top ten online video sites in 2006. The same year, López was hired to produce Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! In 2007, López unleashed “It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine.” The online TV news series is watched by tens of thousands of loyal fanatics.
NY Youth Shout Out Media Production Workshop
Our Be the Media! youth educator team includes artist/educators:
Victoria Kereszi is a media artist, educator and curator. She received an M.A. in Documentary Film & Gender Studies, NYU, and is founder/director of Eyebeam: Women Behind the Lens video series. She was Director of Programming at MNN, and is currently in RPI’s MFA program.
Andrew Lynn is a media worker (producer, shooter, editor, graphic design) and artist based in Troy, NY. He co-directed the documentary Still We Ride, and has produced several short documentaries and animations. Andrew holds an MFA from RPI and is an adjunct professor at Hudson Valley Community College. He received an MFA in Electronic Arts from iEAR Studios at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2002 where he began teaching video and multimedia as a teacher’s assistant and instructor. Andrew began working with youth and media in 2000 at The Ark in Troy, NY where he helped to develop a video-making program in an after school center. Since then, he has taught video production, digital imaging, stop-motion animation, and media literacy at The Ark Community Charter School, Hudson Valley Community College, Children’s’ Media Project, and Eyebeam. Andrew is also the creator of Whirl-Mart and Troy Bike Rescue, and has co-directed documentaries including Still We Ride and Independent Media in A Time of War, among other short videos and animations. He is a past Education and Development Manager for the Youth Channel at the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, where he taught workshops, developed curriculum, coordinated community media trainings, and supervised a teams of peer educators.
Ellie Markovitch is a photo-journalist and artist. Born in Brazil, she has worked in France and the U.S She is currently in the MFA program at the Arts Department.
Branda Miller is artist and media maker, and Professor of Media Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She has developed numerous media literacy/community education projects using electronic arts production. She has produced several models for media activism, including Witness to the Future and Art of the State/State of the Art? (Deep Dish TV). She is also an Emmy award-winning editor who has worked extensively in the media industry of Los Angeles and New York City. She is the Arts and Education Coordinator at the Sanctuary.
Bhawin Suchak is an educator, filmmaker and multimedia producer who works with emerging technologies as tools to further expression, communication, and connection especially for communities of the margins. He has been a teacher at The Albany Free School for 10 years, and is the founder and project director of Youth FX, a summer filmmaking program for teens based out of Grand Street Community Arts, a neighborhood based non-profit art center in the South End of Albany, NY. He has worked with youth in digital film production and multimedia at several locations including: The Albany Free School, 1skate media arts in Albany and with the Museum Club afterschool program at The New York State Museum.
Documentary: in Production
Jim DeSeve is an award-winning documentary producer and director. He teaches film production classes at Union College. He has taught Be the Media! workshps each semester, and his workshops are always in great demand!
Be the Media! Facilitators
Abby Lublin is the Be the Media! Coordinator, and an educator who comes to us from NYC and now resides in Troy, NY.
Steve Pierce, Executive Director of New York Media Alliance, is a media activist and multi-media producer with extensive experience in media reform and sound production, and current He teaches Radio Production and Ethics of Technology at RPI, where he received a PhD from the Department of Science and Technology Studies. His past jobs experiences in media reform include: Executive Director, Deep Dish TV Network, New York NY, 1989-92, Assistant Manager, Pacifica Radio WBAI, New York NY, 1988-89, Program Director, WWOZ Radio, New Orleans, LA, 1987-88, and Journalist, New Orleans LA, 1980-87.