Filmmakers

Erika Cohn is an Emmy award winning director/producer who Variety recognized as one of 2017’s top ten documentary filmmakers. Most recently, Erika completed The Judge, a film about the first woman judge to be appointed to the Middle East’s Shari’a courts, which premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival and will be broadcast on PBS’ 2018 Independent Lens… Show more series. Erika co-directed/produced, In Football We Trust, an Emmy award-winning, feature documentary about the unique faith and culture that ultimately drives young Pacific Islander men into the NFL, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS’ 2016 Independent Lens series. Her work has been supported by IFP, the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Institute, Hot Docs, Sheffield, ITVS, Women in Film, BAVC and the CPB Producer’s Academy among others. In 2013, Erika founded Idle Wild Films, Inc., which has released three feature documentaries and produced numerous branded content and commercial spots, including Gatorade’s Win from Within series, for which she received a 2016 Webby award nomination. Erika is also an avid photographer and served as a U.S. Ambassadorial Film Scholar to Israel/Palestine. Show less

Peter Nicks is an Emmy Award-winning shooter/director known for his courageous cinema vérité style. He directed/produced The Waiting Room, which was released theatrically in 2012 to critical acclaim, shortlisted for an Oscar and won numerous awards including the Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit award. Nicks is a 2015 United States Artist Fellow… Show more in the midst of his trilogy of timely, immersive films exploring the interconnected narratives of health care, criminal justice and education in Oakland, CA. Show less

Bing Liu moved from China to Alabama to California to Illinois before he was eight. He received a B.A. in English literature from UIC in May of 2011. Since July 2011, Bing has been a member of the International Cinematographer's Guild, working on projects including Shameless, Empire, and Chiraq to fund his documentaries. In 2015, his short film about two… Show more Vietnamese immigrants, Nuoc, won Best Directed Documentary at the Collected Voices Film Festival. Since September 2015, Bing has been a Story Director and DP for a documentary mini-series on race and education directed by Steve James. He has taken his directorial feature, Minding the Gap, through Kartemquin’s Diverse Voices in Documentary, Tribeca All Access, Firelight Media’s Producer Lab, and Chicago Media Project’s DOC10 pitch session. Show less

Stephanie Wang-Breal has been producing and directing commercials, television shows, and documentaries for the past 10 years. She directed the award-winning feature-length documentary, Wo Ai Ni Mommy (I Love You, Mommy). The film was nominated for an Emmy, and was the recipient of a 2011 CINE Special Jury Award, as well as three Grand Jury Best… Show more Documentary Awards: at the AFI/ Discovery Silverdocs Film Festival, the Asian American International Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. The film had its national television broadcast in 2010 on the award-winning PBS series P.O.V. Wang-Breal has also recently directed commercial doc pieces for Tiffany’s, Apple, Goldman Sachs, as well as a television episode for Nickelodeon's NickMom. She resides in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, son and daughter. Show less

Kim A. Snyder’s film Welcome To Shelbyville was a recipient of a Gucci-Tribeca Documentary Fund grant, an official selection of the US State Department's American Documentary Showcase, and was nationally broadcast on PBS's Independent Lens in 2011. In 2007, Snyder co-founded the BeCause Foundation to direct and produce a series of socially conscious… Show more documentaries, which have won numerous awards with campaigns furthering the work of the social innovators they highlight. She directed and produced the award-winning documentary feature I Remember Me, which was theatrically distributed by Zeitgeist Films. In 1994, Kim associate produced the Academy Award-winning short film Trevor which became the cornerstone of The Trevor Project, a national organization dedicated to suicide prevention among gay youth. She has served on the admissions review committee for NYU’s Graduate Film Program and graduated with a Masters in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Show less

S. Leo CHIANG (Producer) is a documentarian based in Taipei & San Francisco. His Emmy-nominated film, A Village Called Versailles, picked up eight film festival awards and aired on PBS’ Independent Lens series. Out Run, his recently completed film, received support from ITVS, Sundance, and Tribeca. His other films include Mr. Cao Goes To Washington… Show more (Inspiration Award, Full Frame 2012) and To You Sweetheart, Aloha (PBS broadcast 2006). Leo received his MFA from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is currently the co-chair of New Day Films, a 45-year-old co-op of social-issue documentarians. He is also a consulting producer for CNEX, the Chinese documentary foundation. Show less