This program is part of the Night Flights series, presented by the ICP Lab. The ICP Lab is a new home for visual storytellers to experiment with technology and create interactive and immersive experiences.
Creativity doesn’t discriminate. So why do the creative industries? This evening features a conversation with Oscar-winning screenwriter and director Geoffrey S. Fletcher, Vice President of Motion Picture at Kodak Anne Hubbell, Vice’s Photo Editor Elizabeth Renstrom, and NYC-based photographer Micaiah Carter, moderated by Joanna Della-Ragione, Creative Producer at Kodak. Through visual and literary references past and present, the panel will address the enduring lack of diversity across the creative industries and how we can work towards closing the gap.
Speakers
Geoffrey Fletcher, an Oscar-winning screenwriter and director, initially working with a video camera and cast of action figures, began making films as a child. A graduate of Harvard University and NYU’s Tisch Graduate Film Program, Geoffrey Fletcher is the first African American to win an Academy Award® in the category of writing, directing or producing for his screenplay, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire. While earning his M.F.A. in directing at NYU, Geoffrey’s work won numerous awards, including one from the Directors Guild of America.
Anne Hubbell, Vice President Motion Picture at Kodak, is a respected film industry veteran with 20+ years of extensive corporate, not-for-profit and production experience. As Vice President of Motion Picture at Kodak, she negotiates contracts and consults on studio and independent movies, episodic content, short films, commercials and music videos, and is a liaison to the film community at large. In 2012 she co-founded Tangerine Entertainment, the first production company and community builder focused exclusively on media by women directors. Her credits include The Second, Keep The Change, The Last Laugh, Paint It Black, Gayby, Lipstick & Dynamite, plus shorts, television and web content. She began her career in not for profit programming as Managing Director of The Theater Offensive in Boston and Executive Director of IMAGE Film and Video Center in Atlanta, and has consulted for dozens of domestic and international film festivals and events. She serves on the boards of NY Women in Film & Television, the NY Production Alliance and Rooftop Films, and is a member of the Producer's Guild of America and TIME'S UP.
Elizabeth Renstrom, VICE’s Senior Photo editor, oversees all the production and editorial of the publication’s striking, and often provocative, images for the magazine and vice.com. A photographer herself, she’s has shot for clients like the New Yorker, Refinery 29, TIME, Nylon and Bloomberg Business Week.
Micaiah Carter, a NYC-based photographer, creates images that capture the beauty of blackness that blends the African diaspora together. “I want to create a new perspective while reaching in the past for inspiration and guidance; by creating images that compel black stories and ‘stereotypes’ while creating moods and environments that are almost unseen within the context of blackness. The perspective that I’m bringing isn’t focused on denouncing the stereotype, instead it’s embracing it and taking it back to be culturally accepted in our own words.”