Guests
       
Enrique (Henry) Oliu   Ethan Vogt   Mat Fraser   Jonah Bossewitch
ENRIQUE (HENRY) OLIU   ETHAN VOGT   MAT FRASER   JONAH BOSSEWITCH
       
George Kachadorian   Courtney Bent   Cara Readle   Ashley McNamara
GEORGE KACHADORIAN   COURTNEY BENT   CARA READLE   ASHLEY MCNAMARA
       
Annie Robinson   Heidi Latsky   Anne Catherine Denning   Allan Goldstein
ANNIE ROBINSON   HEIDI LATSKY   ANNE CATHERINE DENNING   ALLAN GOLDSTEIN
       
Toni Iacolucci   Alexis Kashar   Lilit Marcus   Mary McHugh
TONI IACOLUCCI   ALEXIS KASHAR   LILIT MARCUS   MARY McHUGH
       
Paul Hardart
PAUL HARDART
       



 
ENRIQUE (HENRY) OLIU

Protagonist, Henry O!

Oliu has been blind since his birth in Nicaragua in 1962. He was 10 when his parents sent him to the United States to attend the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine. Oliu quickly showed interest in sports and later majored in communications at the University of South Florida.
His first job doing professional commentary was with a minor league affiliate of the Montreal Expos in 1989 in Jacksonville, Fla.
In 1998 Oliu became an analyst for Tampa Bay Devil Rays' Spanish-language radio broadcasts.

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ETHAN VOGT

Producer, Beeswax

Ethan Vogt is an American photographer and filmmaker based in New York City.
Ethan is perhaps best known as the frequent collaborator of writer / director Andrew Bujalski, having produced his three feature films "Funny Ha Ha" (2003), "Mutual Appreciation" (2005), and "Beeswax" (2009). Ethan's photographs from those films, "Set Stills," have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines including the New York Times and Esquire, and will be published in upcoming book by Phaidon Press (Spring 2010) entitled "Take 100" featuring the best emerging film directors from around the world.
Ethan earned a magna cum laude degree in Visual Studies at Harvard University where he studied with Frank Gohlke, John Szarkowski, and received a teaching fellowship to work with Chris Killip.
Over the past several years, Ethan has been developing real-time, audio-visual events and has performed with musicians and bands that include: Franz Ferdinand, The Fiery Furnaces, Guster, Summer Lawns, and The Lovely Sparrows at the SXSW festival.

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MAT FRASER

Protagonist, NoBody's Perfect

Mat Fraser (born 1962) is a rock musician, actor and performance artist. As a live artist he was a member of the performance art group The DHSS in the early 1990s. He was included in Manuel Vason's book "Exposures" and has performed at numerous internationally renowned venues. He received considerable critical acclaim for his one-man show "Seal Boy". As an actor he has performed with the "Graeae Theatre Company," Europe's leading disability theatre company. He is the creator and main performer in a new play called Thalidomide!! A Musical, and has appeared on television both as a presenter and as an actor, in a variety of productions, among them EVERY TIME YOU LOOK AT ME which was presented at the 1st Annual ReelAbilities Film Festival.

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GEORGE KACHADORIAN

Director, Shooting Beauty

George is an Emmy nominated documentary filmmaker and television producer. His first film, an investigation into his mother's purported paranormal abilities titled "Divining Mom," enjoyed critical acclaim and an award winning festival run before its national broadcast premiere in 2005. George has worked on numerous projects for ABC News' long form documentary unit as well as other non-fiction programmers including PBS, Discovery, Bravo, and the Travel Channel. In 2006 he received an Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Documentary About a Business Topic" for a documentary he produced and edited about Wall Street (titled "Wall Street") for the Discovery Times Channel.
In 2008 he PBS' Frontline World released "A Family Erased" — George's account of his family's search for answers at the epicenter of the Armenian Genocide.
He currently lives in New Hampshire with his wife, two kids and one cat.

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COURTNEY BENT

Protagonist, Shooting Beauty

Courtney is an award winning photographer whose work has taken her from tent revivals in Maine to Masaii Camps in East Africa. When not taking pictures, Courtney teaches photography and produces documentaries, her first being Divining Mom which was quoted in Variety as being "An impressive non-fiction debut". Courtney currently lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two kids and one cat.

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CARA READLE

Actress, Zig Zag Love

Born in 1991, Cara Readle is a British actress known mainly for her role in The Story of Tracy Beaker (TV series). Readle has cerebral palsy, and the characters she played in Zig Zag Love and The Story of Tracy Beaker also have this condition.

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JONAH BOSSEWITCH

Speaker, Crooked Beauty

Jonah Bossewitch is a technical architect for Columbia's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning and a doctoral candidate in Communications at Columbia's School of Journalism. He is investigating the politics of memory, surveillance, and transparency and their intersection with corruption in psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. He is a longtime Icarus organizer and a vocal advocate for free culture, mad pride, and social justice. He blogs at http://alchemicalmusings.org.

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ASHLEY McNAMARA

Director, Crooked Beauty

Ashley McNamara is an artist, activist, writer, and gardener diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD. Ashley is the subject of the film Crooked Beauty, and co-founder of The Icarus Project and the Bay Area Radical Mental Health Collective. She has facilitated workshops on mental health in a mad world across America and the UK, and in 2004 co-authored Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is at work on a new publication titled Scarsongs: An Anthology on Trauma and Resilience.

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ANNIE ROBINSON

Moderator, Crooked Beauty

Annie Robinson is a 2009 graduate of NYU's Gallitin School and is the outreach coordinator for The Icarus Project, She was involved in launching the project's initiative for students, Campus Icarus, which last year received the NYU President's Service Award. In addition to her radical mental health organizing, Annie is a labor doula, supporting and empowering women throughout their birth experience.

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HEIDI LATSKY

Speaker, NOBODY'S PERFECT

HEIDI LATSKY has been a choreographer for stage, theater and film for many years. Originally from Montreal, Latsky received recognition as a principal dancer for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance (1987-1993). Her work and company (in existence since 2001) have toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe, performing at preeminent venues and festivals like The Kennedy Center, Central Park Summerstage, Dance Theater Workshop, the Duke on 42nd Street in NYC, Jacobs Pillow, Boston's ICA, Brooklyn Academy of Music and Festivals in Isareal, France, Canada, Croatia and Slovenia.

Latsky has received many distinguished choreographic commissions including Cannes International Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, the Joyce Theater, Danspace Project, The Whitney Museum of American Art and the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Project. Recent commissions have included Li Chaio Ping Dance, Point Park College, Hofstra University, Infinity Dance Theater and the AIDS Service Center of New York City.

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ANNE CATHERINE DENNING

Speaker, COMING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN

ANNE DENNING is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and the Training Director for Quality Services for the Autism Community (QSAC). Ms. Denning obtained her Master's degree in psychology from Queens College in 1994, receiving the prestigious CUNY award for Exceptional Research and Achievement in the Social Sciences. Ms. Denning has developed and taught several college courses at Queens College and has two papers published from her research there. Anne has been working for QSAC since 1999. She has contributed to the development and implementation of QSAC's training curriculum based on the principles of ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis). Anne has had the opportunity to develop, write and implement staff training protocols, develop staff training evaluations and assessment procedures and organize and collect data for the individual trainees who go through QSAC's training series. Anne co-created and runs a sibling support group at QSAC for siblings of children with autism. She provides trainings on autism and ABA for schools and various agencies throughout the tri-state area. Anne also oversees the Parent Training department which provides both in-home sessions and lecture trainings free of charge for parents of children with autism.

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ALLAN GOLDSTEIN

Speaker, COMING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN

ALLAN B. GOLDSTEIN is an essayist, memoir writer, and Assistant Director of the Writing Program at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU where he specializes in instructing international students. He is very pleased to have been invited to contribute to Don Meyer’s Thicker Than Water (2009). "Death and Ice Cream," the first chapter of Finding Fred, his memoir-in-progress about two brothers, (http://FindingFred.blogspot.com) appears in Lost and Found, Stories from New York edited by Thomas Beller and published by Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood Books, distributed by WW Norton (2009). Fred now lives in Manhattan’s financial district. At his neighborhood Day Program, he loves doing industrial piecework to earn money, using the computer to learn letters and numbers, and volunteering to deliver meals to the elderly.

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TONI IACOLUCCI

Speaker, WHITE BALANCE

TONI IACOLUCCI is chair of the Advocacy Committee and a member of the Planning Committee of the Manhattan Chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA). She is co-chair of the 2009 and 2010 NYC Walk4Hearing. She holds a master's degree in social work from Hunter College and is a graduate of the Peer Mentoring Program at Gallaudet University. She most recently helped to make NYC summer film festivals in Central Park and Riverside Park accessible to people with hearing loss. After gradually losing her hearing, Ms. Iacolucci became profoundly deaf in 2006. She is currently employed at the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.

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ALEXIS KASHAR

Speaker, WHITE BALANCE

ALEXIS KASHAR received her B.A. in Finance and her J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. After receiving her J.D. in 1992, she practiced civil rights and special education law until 2004 in Los Angeles, California. During that time, she represented deaf individuals and individuals with disabilities in obtaining access to public places under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She represented hundreds of children with special needs in obtaining free and appropriate public education.

Ms. Kashar relocated to New York in 2004 with her family and is currently involved with several community boards and activities. Ms. Kashar, through her volunteer work with The Jewish Deaf Resource Center (JDRC), inspired the creation of the UJA-Federation of NY's first ever Jewish Community Deaf Interpreting Fund. She is also the current chairperson of the Scarsdale Village Council on Persons with Disabilities, and vice president of the Board of Trustees for the New York School for the Deaf. In addition, she chairs the National Association for the Deaf (NAD)'s Civil Rights Subcommittee and is a member of the NAD's Bioethics committee. Ms. Kashar also has presented on laws providing for access for people who are deaf or have disabilities, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the new United Nations Convention on the Disabled.

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LILIT MARCUS

Speaker, WHITE BALANCE

LILIT MARCUS is a CODA (child of deaf adults) originally from North Carolina who now lives in Brooklyn. She considers both American Sign Language and English to be her native languages. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), Lilit wrote an award-winning English department honors thesis, "Permanent Adolescents and Premature Adults: Identity and Language in Deaf and CODA Memoir." She is currently the editor of Jewcy.com, an online Jewish arts, culture, politics, and religion magazine.

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MARY McHUGH

Speaker, COMING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN

MARY McHUGH is the author of 16 books, including "Special Siblings: Growing Up with Someone with a Disability", the story of her life growing up with her brother Jack, who had cerebral palsy and developmental delay. Her book was awarded a prize for Special Recognition of a National Project by The Arc of New Jersey. She served as President of the Board of the Center for Exceptional Families in Madison, NJ for eight years. She has written about siblings of people with disabilities as well as her own story for "The New York Times," "Good Housekeeping" and "Family Circle."

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PAUL HARDART

Producer, MARY & MAX

PAUL HARDART is President of Adirondack Pictures, an Associate Professor of Media Studies at The New School and the former head of Universal Focus.Adirondack has produced/financed the following films: Mary and Max; Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens; Beyond the Gates; Before the Rains; The Night of the White Pants, and the PBS series Uncorked! In 2008, he wrote Santosh Sivan’s Tahaan, which won the UNICEF Best Picture award.Prior to forming Adirondack Pictures, he created and ran Universal Focus, the specialty film division of Universal Pictures from 1999-2002. During his tenure, he oversaw the release of such films as Being John Malkovich (nominated for 3 Academy Awards), Pitch Black, Nurse Betty (Golden Globe Winner) and Billy Elliot (nominated for 3 Academy Awards, BAFTA award for Best Picture). He also created Universal Pictures' library management program, overseeing the restoration and re-issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.

He began his career at ABC Sports, CNBC and as a producer at CNBC and as a reporter for The Newark Star-Ledger.

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