docSHIFT Steering Committee
Nina Beveridge: Producer / Director / Creative Director
Beevision Productions
Nina Beveridge is the President and co-owner of Beevision Productions, a post-production and multimedia company that she founded in 1993. Currently she is busy developing a number of projects including series, documentaries and multi-platform projects. Definitely an innovator, she likes to approach every project with a fresh eye, always considering the audience perspective. Through Beevision, Nina has provided animation and broadcast design to many networks and broadcasters in Canada and the USA, seeking to create unique, original content, derived from the wealth of creative experience that the Beevision team has amassed. Her clients have included: ABC, CBC, CTV, IOC, NBA, the Toronto Raptors, NHL, TSN, TVO, W, Alliance-Atlantis, Olympic Spirit and a wide range of premium ad agencies and corporate clients. In 1998 on behalf of Beevision Nina received a special Gemini Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement for their work on the development of the Puppetworks digital motion-capture system.
Blake Fitzpatrick, PhD: Documentary Media Graduate Program Director
Ryerson University
Blake Fitzpatrick holds the positions of Professor and Graduate Program Director, Documentary Media (MFA) Program, School of Image Arts, at Ryerson University. He is an active photographer, curator and writer. His research interests include contemporary documentary theory and practice, the representation of the nuclear era, war and disaster in contemporary photography. He has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions in Canada and the United States and his recent curatorial initiatives include War at a Distance (Co-curated with Karyn Sandlos & Roger I. Simon), Disaster Topographics and the highly acclaimed traveling exhibition, The Atomic Photographers Guild: Visibility and Invisibility in the Nuclear Era. He has held a number of senior academic positions including the position of Dean, Faculty of Art, at the Ontario College of Art & Design.
Gerry Flahive: Senior Producer
National Film Board of Canada
In a career spanning almost 30 years with the internationally-acclaimed National Film Board of Canada, Gerry Flahive has produced more than 50 films and new-media projects on a wide range of subjects, including health care, cultural diversity, criminal justice, national identity, history, communications, diplomacy, globalization and racism. He has produced such hits as Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the 70s Generation, winner of a Genie along with the award for Best Canadian First Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival, and, as Executive Producer, Project Grizzly, winner of multiple international awards – and inspiration for an episode of The Simpsons. Flahive has been at the forefront of the NFB’s innovative work with digital media, producing the groundbreaking multi-platform Filmmaker-in-Residence project at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, winner of the 2008 Webby Award for Best Documentary Series, against such competitors as MIT Media Lab, PBS and National Public Radio. He is currently producing Highrise, a multi-year many-media documentary project looking at global sub/urbanization. His most recent projects include the international co-production Paris 1919 (inspired by Margaret MacMillan’s best-selling popular history of the post-WWI conference that shaped the modern world); Fierce Light (about spiritual activism around the world); A Short History of Progress, Waterlife (about the Great Lakes; includes an acclaimed web documentary waterlife.nfb.ca); I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, Invisible City (winner of the Best Canadian Feature Award at the 2009 Hot Docs Festival), and Cold Morning, three short films that were selected for the 2009 Venice Biennale. He has most recently been nominated for an Emmy Award for the nature documentary Four Wings and A Prayer. Flahive is a frequent contributor to the Toronto Globe and Mail, and has been published in Time, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Toronto Star, Playback, Realscreen, Montage, P.O.V. and The Los Angeles Times.
Mark Greenspan: Achilles Media
Mark Greenspan is a new media producer and educator with a decade’s worth of experience in the field. During this time he has taught and designed new media curriculum in Singapore, Philippines and India. He worked for Razorfish Inc in London, England and Milan, Italy. He produced MTV Asia's first web cast, set up a boutique design and branding firm called methodgroup and produced a 12-series alternative travel show entitled Above the Clouds. Most recently Mark Greenspan was employed as Training Programmes Manager at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab where he oversaw the quality of the curriculum design and delivery of the TELUS Interactive Art and Entertainment Programme. Currently, Mark Greenspan is Director of Digital Media for Achilles Media. Where he is Executive Producer of two digital media events - NATPE Mobile++ and nextMEDIA.
Lalita Krishna, In Sync Video
DOC Toronto Co-Chair
Lalita is a multiple award winning filmmaker whose work has been broadcast nationally on all major networks, and featured at film festivals around the world. Her documentaries on kids who change the world have had successful sales in the Canadian and international educational market. Lalita has been awarded the DreamCatcher Award for using her craft to better humanity and her film “Jambo Kenya” is the first selection for TIFFG’S John Van Duzer Children’s Film Collection. Her company, In Sync Video, incorporated Breakout Media (2008) which specializes in new media production in partnership with award winning game producers, designers and developers. The In Sync Video group has multiple productions in the pipeline: documentaries, television series, and cross platform interactive documentary projects.
Richard Lachman: Creative Consultant & Assistant Professor of Digital Media
Ryerson University
Richard Lachman is an Assistant Professor, Digital Media in the School of Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson University, and a Technology and Creative Consultant for entertainment and software-development projects. A Gemini-award-winning member of the Canadian new media scene, Richard has worked on some of the highest-profile Canadian interactive and convergent-media projects in the industry. Richard is a computer-science graduate of MIT, and holds a masters degree from the MIT Media Lab’s “Interactive Cinema” group. While at the Media Lab, he worked on networked collaborative entertainment environments and ambient/character-based interfaces, and has published and presented his work in Canada, Japan, Australia, Europe, and across the US. Lachman has served as Tech Lead and part of the creative team on the Gemini-award winning “Degrassi.tv” project with Snap Media, Epitome Pictures and CTV. Degrassi boasts a vibrant community of 600,000 users who have collectively posted some 3 million message-board posts to the site. In the past, he has also served as Technical Director for the CNMA-nominated “Be The Creature” ITV project with Decode Entertainment and Videotron Quebec; Technical Director for the Interactive Genie Awards ITV/Web project with Xenophile Media; and Technical Director for “Code Zebra” with Sara Diamond at the Banff Centre for the Arts.
David Oppenheim: Head of Development / Producer, Interactive
Kensington Communications Inc.
David leads the development of Kensington’s documentary film and television projects and the production of its multiplatform projects. Prior to joining Kensington, David was Co-Producer and Content Lead for Kensington's award-winning interactive documentary, Diamond Road Online. He has worked as a Producer for CBC Newsworld, TVOntario, and the Discovery Health Channel, and as a story researcher for a number of leading independent documentary production companies. David recently edited the documentary Gore Vidal: History of the National Security State, and directed a short documentary for the National Film Board of Canada. He is a past resident of the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab.
Ramona Pringle: Media Director
PeakMedia Collective
Ramona is an interactive media producer and interdisciplinary artist. As writer, editor, director and actor, she identifies herself as a storyteller, integrating new tools and platforms including social media and participatory user-generated content to evolve the way stories are both shared and experienced. As an Interactive Media Producer, she recently created Your Digital Nation -the participatory story-sharing element of the PBS Frontline documentary Digital Nation. She contributed research to the Douglas Rushkoff book Life, Inc and is working with Rushkoff again on Digital Nation.
As a media designer, her recent projects with the Peak Media Collective include Ballerina Remix at the New York Hall of Science, The Media Tree at Casino Niagara and Winter Sky at Sherway Gardens. Ramona is currently developing Emotional Perception in the Interactive Cinematic Experience with the PeakMedia Collective Research Lab, which ogininated in her ITP/NYU Thesis project. Ramona was a host and entertainment reporter for CBC's The X and has acted in productions including Shoot 'Em Up for New Line Cinema, Disney, Columbia, Fox and Lionsgate studios. Ramona holds a Masters Degree in Interactive Media from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program at The Tisch School of the Arts, and has a BFA in Film and Video from York University. As an Adjunct Professor in the Film and Television Department, Ramona has taught Acting and Directing at NYU.
You can follow Ramona on Twitter at @ramonapringle
Elizabeth Radshaw, Director, Toronto Documentary Forum
Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
Elizabeth Radshaw is the Director of the Toronto Documentary Forum at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. She curates the Forum, International Co-Production Day and Rendezvous during Hot Docs' industry conference and market. In 2009, at the 10th edition of the TDF, Elizabeth introduced the first North American edition of Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program's Good Pitch, an innovative documentary pitching forum which provides a unique opportunity to pitch social issue documentary projects with associated campaign strategies to NGOs, charities, foundations, campaigners, advertising agencies, brands and media. Prior to this appointment, she was the Head of Acquisitions at TVF International. She was a member of Pact Council 2007. She joined TVF from the National Film Board of Canada and has a history of dramatic and factual production of film and TV in North America. She directed the Brooklyn based Rooftop Short Film festival at its Montreal premiere in 2005.
Ana Serrano, Director
CFC Media Lab
Ana is the Director of CFC Media Lab, a world-renowned new media research, training and production facility created in 1997 by the Canadian Film Centre (CFC). As director of CFC Media Lab, she provides strategic leadership, fiscal development, program design and creative direction for all of the Centre’s new media initiatives, including the development and production of a diverse range of critically acclaimed interactive narrative prototypes. In 2003, Ana was recognized for her contribution to Canada’s new media industry with three Canadian New Media Awards including Industry Advocate of the Year, New Media Educator of the Year and New Media Visionary. In addition, she was selected to be the sole Canadian expert panel member for the 2003 and 2005, World Summit Awards, part of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society. She has also co-developed the Bell Globemedia Content Innovation Network, a partnership with the Banff Centre for the Arts and L’INIS, thus founding the Interactive Project Lab, a unique alliance of knowledge, resources and funding fostering the creation of innovative projects and viable start-up new media companies. In 2000, Ana produced the Great Canadian Story Engine Project, a national tour and bilingual website that serves as an interactive storytelling community where all Canadians can share personal stories about their experiences in Canada. Named one of Canada’s 100 Canadians to watch in Maclean’s Magazine, Ana is active on the boards of Artscape, Laidlaw Foundation, M3F, and several start-up companies focused on interactive entertainment and adjudicates awards for the Webby, Resfest, CNMA, and others. She teaches at York University’s Communication Studies Department and frequently speaks at new media and film festivals throughout the world about the emerging realms of interactive art and entertainment.
