Staff

Festival Director: Gianna Chachere

A native New Orleanian and filmmaker, Gianna is also Producer of the Hamptons International Film Festival. A film curator for the IFP Market, the Two Boots Pioneer Theater and Howl Film Festival, Gianna is the former Festival Director of the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, where she also served as Director of Screenplays. In 2003, she co-founded the Don’t Knock the Rock Film and Music Festival in Los Angeles with filmmaker Allison Anders. Ms. Chachere is also Co-founder of Righteous Fur, which produces events to protect Louisiana’s wetlands and is the founder of Sprout and Skillet, a children’s gardening and nutrition program in schools for traditionally low-income multi-ethnic communities in Los Angeles and New York.

Publicist: Jewel Bush

is an award-winning journalist and writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, The Times-Picayune and in newspapers throughout the New York Times Regional Media Group. Bush is also communications professional who specializes in nonprofit media relations and marketing.

Festival Coordinator: Taslim van Hattum

is a social worker, professional photographer, and public health professional for the University of California San Francisco’s Institute of Aging who works on late-life recovery/life reorganization post-disaster research in New Orleans.

Board of Directors

Eve Abrams is an independent radio producer, writer, audio documentarian, and educator. Her stories regularly air on New Orleans’ public radio stations, WWNO and WWOZ, as well as on nationally syndicated programs. Her writing has appeared in Fourth Genre, Wesleyan Magazine, and Where We Know: New Orleans as Home.

Jordan Flaherty is a writer and community organizer based in New Orleans. He was the first journalist with a national audience to write about the Jena Six case, and played an important role in bringing the story to national attention. He has worked extensively in film and journalism, editing several feature films, co-producing the award-winning independent feature Chocolate Babies, and working for producers including Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Stipe, Christine Vachon and Bill Cosby. He has reported on arts, culture and politics internationally, from covering the Tehran Film Festival for The Village Voice, to reporting on nightlife in Cuba.

Corlita Mahrspreen is a long-time New Orleans activist and organizer in criminal justice reform and an active participant in the Katrina Information Network.

Emily Ratner is a law student at Loyola University of New Orleans and has studied film production with the New York Film Academy and the Cleveland Film Society. She has trained in social justice organizing and conflict resolution with a number of organizations, including Witness for Peace and the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond. In addition to her work with Patois, she also organizes with several New Orleans social justice organizations, including New Orleans Palestine Solidarity (NOLAPS) and the Organizers’ Roundtable.

Broderick Webb is the Co-director of the award-winning film Cut Off: It’s Not About the Buildings. It’s About the People. Broderick is currently organizing social justice events around public housing in New Orleans and speaking at screenings of Cut Off around the country. He is also an adult advocate of New Orleans’ Fyre Youth Squad.