MELISSA HACKER – DIRECTOR/PRODUCER

Melissa is a filmmaker who works with themes of memory, family, war and exile. Melissa made her directing and producing debut with the documentary film My Knees Were Jumping; Remembering The Kindertransports, which was selected for the Documentary Competition of the Sundance Film Festival, named an outstanding documentary by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and screened in film festivals worldwide. My Knees Were Jumping tells the story of the Kindertransports, a rescue mission that saved the lives of nearly 10,000 children in the months before World War II and was released theatrically in New York City, aired on PBS stations across the United States, the IFC channel and Oxygen, in Britain on the Film 4 channel, the Sundance Channel Canada, and in Israel. It was released on dvd by the Independent Film Channel and Docurama and streams on the ifc channel and itunes. Recent projects include Letters Home, a short film that premiered in the Stranger than Fiction screening series at the IFC Center in New York and screened at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival, the Washington Jewish Film Festival.and  the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center. Venus, an experimental video, was included in the group exhibition “Objects of Devotion and Desire: Medieval Relic to Contemporary Art” at the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery. Melissa has received a Fulbright Artist in Residence award in Vienna, and residencies at Yaddo, Millay, Digital Arts Studio Belfast, Playa, VCCA, and was a 2022 LABA Fellow.

Melissa is also a freelance film editor who has edited two Academy Award nominated documentary shorts; Sister Rose’s Passion and The Collector of Bedford Street‘ as well as documentary programs for HBO, MTV, National Geographic Television, and the PBS/BBC American Cinema series.

TANJA MEDING – PRODUCER

Since moving to New York from Germany in 2003, Tanja Meding has worked as a producer for Maysles Films and other independent production companies. Amongst others, she produced SALLY GROSS” THE PLEASURE OF STILLNESS by Albert Maysles and Kristen Nutile which premiered in Locarno, aired on Channel Thirteen and is now available on DVD from REFRAME COLLECTION. Since 2007, Tanja has been producing short films by Rosane Chamecki, Andrea Lerner and Phil Harder. Their latest work JACKIE & JUDY premiered at DANCE ON CAMERA at LINCOLN CENTER earlier this year and was awarded with a PEARL at the POOL 2010 Festival in Berlin. In addition, Tanja is the co-producer of Gabriella Bier’s LOVE DURING WARTIME, a documentary about an Israeli dancer and her Palestinian husband. The film premiered at the 2010 CPH:DOX Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark, was invited to the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival and will be released in the US through 7th Art Releasing. Furthermore, Tanja is the associate producer of Pascale Obolo’s upcoming documentary ROSE, CALYPSO DIVA, about Trinadad’s musical icon, Calypso Rose. Tanja is also co-chair of the documentary committee and serves on the advisory board of the Producers Guild of America East.

KAREN GOLDFEDER – COMPOSER

Karen Goldfeder graduated from the Eastman School of Music in May of 2023 with an M.M. in Film Composition. She is a composer whose work spans genres, attempting to reconcile the sonic experience of the present moment: ears full of wildly divergent influences and input careening up against each other; access to  the written and recorded music which has reflected and shaped human history and culture thus far; conversation and laughter in many languages, the cacophony of industry and motion. Karen’s performance resume as a mezzo-soprano includes touring and recording with many professional choral ensembles (including the Bard Festival Chorale, New York Virtuoso Singers, Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Voices of Ascension, Musica Sacra, and the Gregg Smith Singers), solo roles in Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny Songspeill and the Stravinsky Mass, opera chorus for John Adam’s Death of Klinghoffer, jazz appearances at Seattle’s Bumbershoot and the Edinburgh Fringe, a few years as lead singer for Dave Fiucinski’s Screaming Headless Torsos, premieres for composers including Mary Jane Leach, Pat Zimmerli and Frank London, and a few years of touring with Bobby McFerrin’s Vocabularies project. Her choral and chamber music has been performed by The New York Treble Singers, the Eastman Chorale, the Skyward Singers, the Marble Collegiate Church Sanctuary Choir, and the Todd Reynolds String Quartet. Her ongoing collaboration with the film director Melissa Hacker includes the short films Letters Home (2009) and 256,000 Miles From Home (2023), and the full length animated documentary Ex Libris (fifteen minute excerpt premiered live to picture with the Eastman Film and Media Ensemble in January 2023).