KEY CREATIVE PERSONNEL
YONI GOLDSTEIN (Director, Writer) MEREDITH ZIELKE (Co-director) are award-winning international filmmakers, cinematographers, and editors. Goldstein and Zielke work collaboratively on social documentary projects: from examining hybridized healing practices in the Northern Andes (LA CURACIÓN), to children in American prisons (NATURAL LIFE), to critical explorations of history and somatic memory (THE JETTISONED). Their films have been presented internationally across several major festivals, conferences, and fora. Goldstein and Zielke’s work as directors and cinematographers have been selected and awarded at the Cannes Film Festival, South by Southwest, The Whitney Biennial, Oslo Architecture Triennale, Filmstruck (the Criterion online collection), and are collected in the US National Library of Science. In 2018, Goldstein and Zielke were named Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces” of independent cinema. Yoni Goldstein is the co-founder of MASS ORNAMENT FILMS, an international collaborative of award-winning filmmakers and visual artists. MASS ORNAMENT FILMS premiered the fiction feature, THEY, at Cannes Film Festival 2017, and released its latest short film, NEEDLE, on Filmstruck. Their most recent narrative feature, HOUSE OF HUMMINGBIRD was awarded the Grand Prix at the Berlin Film Festival in 2019.
ANDREW BENZ (Director of Photography, Executive Producer) is a cinematographer, producer, RED digital cinema brand ambassador. His award-winning works have featured on The BBC, CNN, ESPN, ABC, Discovery Channel, and The History Channel. Benz specializes in independent film, web, broadcast, and short-form, with emphasis on aerial, motion control, and documentary cinema. Recently, Andrew Benz produced the feature-length ZEN DOG by Richard G. Darge, which premiered at Raindance, winning the “Film of the Fest” award in 2018.
MAIDA LYNN, (Executive Producer) founder of Genuine Article Pictures, supports non-fiction filmmakers with unique visions who push the form into new directions, with the potential to create works that stand the test of time. She executive produced THE SEND-OFF (Sundance ‘16, SFIFF, SXSW, AFI Fest), and co-produced THE RABBIT HUNT (Sundance ‘17 and Berlinale) and ROADSIDE ATTRACTION (TIFF, SXSW). Maida is the producer of the short film SKIP DAY, which premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight and was released by The Guardian. Her credits as Executive Producer include Sam Green’s live documentary, A THOUSAND THOUGHTS (Sundance 2017) and THE HOTTEST AUGUST (dir. Brett Story). The feature documentary Maida produced, PAHOKEE, premiered at Sundance 2019.
SEBASTIAN ALVAREZ (Producer, Co-Writer) is a San Francisco Bay Area-based interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and experiential educator. Working across diverse media, including film, audio, performance, and installation, his practice highlights the interrelation of disparate infrastructures and the uncanniness of designed systems. He received an MFA (2011) in Performance Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has performed, curated, and presented work internationally at such venues and institutions as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago Cultural Center, South Side Community Art Center, Whitney Biennial (NYC), Postgarage (Graz, Austria), Townhouse Gallery (Cairo, Egypt), the Festival Internacional de Cine de Barichara (Barichara, Colombia), the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art Bourges (Bourges, France), and Wiener Festwochen (Vienna, Austria).
IVA RADIVOJEVIC (Editor) is a Brooklyn based filmmaker, writer/editor (and most recently Arctic explorer) who spent her early years in Yugoslavia and Cyprus. Her films have screened at NYFF, SXSW, Rotterdam IFF, HotDocs, Museum of Modern Art (NYC), PBS, New York Times Op-Docs. She is the recipient of the 2017 Sundance Art of Non-Fiction Fellowship, 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2011, 12, 17 Princess Grace Special Project Award and Film Fellowship and was named one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine. Her debut feature-length documentary EVAPORATING BORDERS screened in over 70 festivals and received numerous awards worldwide. Her film NOTES FROM THE BORDER was commissioned for the launch of Field of Vision, a documentary unit headed by Laura Poitras and Charlotte Cook. Her work MA premiered at the Venice Film Festival and Five Star, a film she co-edited won the Best Editing Award at the Tribeca Film Festival. ALL THAT PASSES BY THROUGH A WINDOW THAT DOESN’T OPEN, a film she co-wrote and edited, won the Regard Neuf Award at its premiere at Visions Du Reel and went on to win more prizes worldwide. She’s currently working on her new film ALEPH, inspired by Jorge Luis Borges.
STEFAN OLIVEIRA-PITA (Editor) is an editor and lecturer based in Berlin. Oliveira-Pita has carried out numerous collaborations on award-winning international features, documentaries and art installations. His work has been shown at Berlinale, Viennale, DOK Leipzig, Visions du Réel Nyon, CPH:DOX, BAFICI, Mostra São Paulo, Indie Lisboa, IFF Torino, on cinema as well as on TV (Arte, ARD, ZDF). He holds a diploma from Film University Konrad Wolf and was awarded the Best Editing award for his work on Lamento (Berlinale) at IFF Sehsüchte in 2014. Since 2014, he has been a lecturer at dffb, Bauhaus Uni Weimar, HS Mainz, and HS Wiesbaden. He is a member of the German Society of Film Editors (BFS) and alumni of the Berlinale Talents 2016. His selections include Atlas (German Film Award Nominee ´19), Furusato (Golden Dove ´16), Lamento (First Steps Award ´13), Portraits of German Alcoholics (Prix Dialogue Berlinale ´10), Civil Servants (Grimme Award Nominee ´18), Only a Day (German Film Critics Award ´18), Family Business (NRW Film Award ´16). Oliveira-Pita is currently working on Beginning and Ending by Martin Gressmann and on the immersive video installation Chronicle Of A Fall by Tirtza Even and Nadav Assor.
JULIAN FLAVIN (Sound designer) (b. 1990, Kingston, ON) is a Canadian artist and educator currently living in Chicago, Illinois. His work employs film/video, installation, writing, and sound to think through such ideas as: the glorification of work-related exhaustion, the mitigation of social pain with dystopian irony, class inequality, the ideological applications of music, and the meritocratic unconscious. His work has been featured as part of SXSW, Osheaga Music Festival, McGill University’s Moving Image Research Lab, NYU’s Gallatin Galleries, SAIC’s Sullivan Galleries, Art of The Real, Harun Farocki’s Labor In A Single Shot, and the Cannes Film Festival amongst others. He has worked as the assistant to artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles and is currently a lecturer at Northwestern University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.