Moderators

• 
  N'Jeri Eaton

  Content Development & Initiative Manager

• 
  Danielle Orange

Participants

• 
  Sabrina S. Gordon

  Panelist

  SABRINA SCHMIDT GORDON has been committed to cultural and social issues documentary filmmaking for over a decade. Her editing debut garnered an Emmy for WGBH's Greater Boston Arts series, and she has continued to distinguish herself as both a producer and editor through her work on numerous award-winning programs for public television and cable. She is the editor and co-producer of DOCUMENTED, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas' story as an undocumented American and his fight for immigration reform. Sabrina is also the co-producer and editor of Mrs. Goundo's Daughter, a Sundance Institute/ ITVS documentary about a young Malian mother's quest to protect her baby daughter from female genital cutting. It premiered nationally at the Silverdocs Film Festival in June 2009, where it was nominated for an award in the Sterling U.S. Competition, and screened at festivals worldwide, including The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Mrs. Goundo's Daughter has been used as a powerful advocacy tool by organizations and was recently shown at a Congressional Hearing on asylum and at the World Economic Forum. She is also the co-producer and editor of Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a groundbreaking PBS documentary about manhood and gender politics in mainstream Hip- Hop. Named in MSNBC's The Griot's "Ten Most Important Black Films of the Decade," and featured on the Chicago Tribune's "Best Documentaries of 2007," the film premiered to rave reviews and sold out shows at the Sundance Film Festival, and continues to be screened in classrooms throughout the country. Projects in development include BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, about the renown poet/activist; and 180 Days, which examines the NYC Teaching Fellows Program through the eyes of three new teachers during their first year in the public school system. Sabrina's commitment to social justice extends to creating video for nonprofits, and fostering partnerships between filmmakers and activists. She is a new media producer and editor on The Masculinity Project—an ambitious web-based initiative of the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) that explores masculine identity in the Black community, and The Haiti Project—NBPC's online portal of stories told by Haitian survivors following the 2010 earthquake. Other organizations she has worked with include The Ford Foundation, Witness, Agricultural Missions, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights, and she is on the board of the Yale Visual Law Project. Sabrina is also a documentary filmmaking instructor, currently teaching Documentary Story Structure at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. She has guest lectured at New York University/Poly, Brooklyn College, New Jersey City University, the Independent Filmmaker Project, Reel Works, and the Jacob Burns Film Center. She is an honors graduate from New York University.