LEAH SAPIN
Leah Sapin is the Senior Programmer & NY Festival Manager at Human Rights Watch Film Festival. She has worked in Film Festivals and independent film production as programmer, producer, outreach and grantmaking consultant for 15 years with organizations such as Tribeca FF, POV, Brooklyn FF, Chicken & Egg Pictures and Rooftop Films.
MEREDITH ALLOWAY
Meredith Alloway is a Texas native who currently resides in NYC as a producer, filmmaker and journalist. She's written interviews and feature pieces for Vanity Fair, Playboy, Filmmaker Magazine, Nylon, Indiewire, and Flaunt. She's produced branded content, spots and short films for companies such as Juniper Jones, And/Or Studios and Indigenous Media. She was Senior Editor of The Script Lab where she launched her interview show “All the Way with Alloway.” She's also worked in TV, her pilot “Zoom Out” was in collaboration with Josh Hutcherson’s production company, Turkeyfoot, and she continues to work with them on various projects. "Interior Teresa," her directorial debut, starring Jake Cannavale, Kara Young and Matt Shear just wrapped post production and will begin the festival circuit in 2017. She is in development for two horror series as well.
HEIDI REINBERG
Heidi Reinberg's work spans the breadth of the nonfiction realm, from long-form docs for PBS, HBO and LOGO to directing reality television for HGTV to series development for branded-content powerhouse Cinelan.
She is currently producing ITVS doc 93QUEEN alongside Paula Eiselt, the film's director. Most recently, 93QUEEN was awarded the inaugural first look Pitch Prize at the 2017 Hot Docs Forum.
Prior to partnering with Eiselt, Reinberg worked with some of today’s most talented nonfiction directors. She developed the nonfiction series War Photographers/Exposure with Oscar winner Ross Kauffman for NBCUniversal, and produced Oscar winner Cynthia Wade’s first two films, Grist for the Mill and Shelter Dogs for Cinemax and HBO, respectively. She also served as consulting producer on Mai Iskander’s two feature docs, Garbage Dreams (Independent Lens) and Words of Witness (Al Jazeera America).
In addition to her work in the social-issue doc space, Reinberg has traveled the world directing numerous episodes of the cult favorite HGTV series House Hunters International.
ALISON WILLMORE
Alison Willmore is the critic at BuzzFeed News. In her past life as the TV editor at Indiewire, she helped launch the site's television coverage. Her writing has also appeared in the AV Club, Salon, Time Out New York, and Movieline. Alongside Matt Singer, she hosts the Filmspotting: SVU podcast.
WILLIAM CUSICK
William Cusick is a writer, director and designer based in NYC. Cusick’s second feature film, Pop Meets the Void, premiered in June 2015 at the 5th Lower East Side Film Festival in NYC and was awarded Best Feature Film of the festival. Pop Meets the Void screened at Museum of the Moving Image in March 2016 and was awarded the Best of Fest and Audience Awards at the 2016 Queens World Film Festival. Cusick directed the award-winning experimental film Welcome to Nowhere (Bullet Hole Road). The neo-surrealist road movie premiered as an Official Selection of the 2012 Lower East Side Film Festival in NYC, received the 2013 Founders’ Choice Award at the Queens World Film Festival in NYC and was featured at the Queens Museum of Art. Cusick’s video projection designs have been featured in productions around the world, most recently on Broadway in Sharr White’s The Other Place at Manhattan Theater Club in 2013. Cusick received the 2007 Henry Hewes Design Award for Projection Design for Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia on Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater. As a contributing editor for Chance Magazine, Cusick conducts interviews with directors, video artists and projection designers working in contemporary performance. Cusick is on faculty at The New School in NYC where he leads a collaborative workshop in filmmaking and lectures on creative technology and theatrical design.
