Welcome to our Mentees’ Space!

Date: June 5th, 2021

About the speaker: Yasnaya Aguilar Gil is an Ayutla Mixe linguist and writer from Oaxaca, Mexico. Yasnaya’s most recent work is El Tema, a documentary series made with Gael García Bernal in which they address several key issues of the climate crisis in Mexico. She is part of COLMIX, a collective of young Mixes that perform research and promotion of the Mixe dialect, history and culture. She studied Language and Hispanic Literature and continued on to a Master’s in Linguistics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She has collaborated in diverse projects on the disclosure of linguistic diversity, the development of grammatical content for educational materials in indigenous dialects and documentation projects and attention to indigenous dialects at risk of disappearing. She has involved herself in the development of material written in Mixe and in the promotion of Mixe-speaking readers and other indigenous dialects. She has been involved in activism for the defence of the linguistic rights of the indigenous dialects’ speakers, and for the use of indigenous dialects in the virtual world and in literary translation.

E-mail: [email protected]

Date: September 21st, 2021

About the speaker: Pamela Yates is the co-founder and creative director of Skylight, a non-profit company dedicated to creating feature-length documentary films and digital media tools that advance awareness of human rights and the quest for justice by implementing multi-year outreach campaigns designed to engage, educate and activate social change. She is the Director of the Sundance Special Jury award-winning When the Mountains Tremble; the Executive Producer of the Academy award-winning Witness to War; and the Director of State of Fear: The Truth About Terrorism, which has been translated into 47 languages and broadcast in 154 countries. Her film Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, for which she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, was used as key forensic evidence in the genocide trial against Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala. Her third film in the Guatemalan trilogy, 500 YEARS had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and is currently in wide release. Yates is also a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Writers Guild of America, and the International Documentary Association.

E-mail: [email protected]

Date: July 8th, 2021

About the speaker: Kanakan-Balintagos, also known as Auraeus Solito, is an internationally acclaimed Filmmaker & a Palanca award-winning Playwright. He is one of the pioneers of Independent Cinema in the Philippines. His feature films have been shown in major film festivals around the world including Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Montreal and Berlin. He was included in Phaidon Press’ book «Take 100» which featured 100 New Directors who are the Future of Film. His first film «Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros» ushered in the third Golden Age of Philippine Cinema and inspired a new generation of independent filmmaking. The breakthrough film won 15 international awards including 3 awards at the Berlinale and was the first Philippine film nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards in Hollywood. It was also the first Filipino film at Robert Redford’s SUNDANCE Film Festival.

E-mail: [email protected]

Date: August 26th, 2021

About the speaker: Working as a producer, sound recordist, video editor, photographer and writer, Tim Lewis produces documentary films for a wide range of international charities and government agencies. Tim’s experience also includes broadcast and corporate pieces, ranging from glossy arts and celebrity portraits to feature-length documentaries. His work has taken him to many difficult, challenging and diverse locations. Filming indigenous communities in the rainforests of Indonesia, Brazil, Central America and Africa; interviewing refugees on the Thai-Burma border, survivors in the debris of Tacloban in the Philippines, following civil rights campaigners through war torn Liberia and the Congo, climbing volcanoes and glaciers in Iceland or filming in the cockpit of Concorde. He is a co-director of Handcrafted Films Ltd.

E-mail: [email protected]

Date: December 13th, 2021

About the speaker: Chris Purcell is a director and cinematographer. Seasoned award-winning filmmaker with a 30-year track record in directing broadcast documentaries, short films and factual content. Specializing in music & arts plus science & technology documentaries, Chris has made many films that feature big-name talent. He also occasionally shoots for other directors who value his composition and lighting skills. Recent credits include the RTS winning The Art of Drumming for Sky Arts, Ode to Concorde and Armstrong – First Man on the Moon for the BBC. His previous Beatles-related project, ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’ from 2012, made for Channel Four, won multiple awards including – ‘Best Documentary’ New York Independent Film Festival, The UK Film Festival as well as getting a Vimeo Staff Pick.

E-mail: [email protected]

Date: March 9th and 11h, 2022

About the speaker: Jaye Renold is a filmmaker and visual journalist, with a background in environmental campaigning, anthropology and visual arts. She directs, films and edits documentaries and short films for a variety of media, grassroots activist groups, NGOs and international bodies, specialising in co-creative filmmaking to communicate the many-faceted stories of climate justice, social-ecological crises and their solutions. As director or DP she has filmed in diverse conditions from tropical rainforests, to parliamentary chambers and street protests across 5 continents and her footage has appeared internationally, from Times Square to TV Globo Brasil. At If Not Us Then Who? she works with a network of indigenous emerging filmmakers on film production and distribution.

E-mail: [email protected]

Date: April 21th, 2022

About the speaker: Working as a producer, sound recordist, video editor, photographer and writer, Tim Lewis produces documentary films for a wide range of international charities and government agencies. Tim’s experience also includes broadcast and corporate pieces, ranging from glossy arts and celebrity portraits to feature-length documentaries. His work has taken him to many difficult, challenging and diverse locations. Filming indigenous communities in the rainforests of Indonesia, Brazil, Central America and Africa; interviewing refugees on the Thai-Burma border, survivors in the debris of Tacloban in the Philippines, following civil rights campaigners through war torn Liberia and the Congo, climbing volcanoes and glaciers in Iceland or filming in the cockpit of Concorde. He is a co-director of Handcrafted Films Ltd.

E-mail: [email protected]

Date: May 24th, 2022

About the speaker: Matt Wells is a professional Film and Television Colourist with over a decade of Post Production experience. His weapon of choice is Davinci Resolve. Well versed in ExD, OSD and Adobe (PR,PS,AE), Matt is currently based out of Vancouver B.C Canada. You can get to know more about his work at mattwells.ca

E-mail: [email protected]