Date: Sat. Nov. 16, 2024
Time: 2:30 PM
Venue: Cloudland
Cost: FREE
Co-Presented by Film Festival Alliance, FilmNorth, Cloudland Theater, St. Thomas: Music, Film & Creative Enterprise
Kicking off at the 2022 Mill Valley Film Festival (Mill Valley, CA), the MN based documentary FINDING HER BEAT traveled the world playing at over 50 festivals worldwide garnering acclaim and sold out screenings wherever it went in addition to being the Centerpiece Film at the 2022 Sound Unseen Film + Music Festival. Co-Directors Dawn Mikkelson and Keri Pickett sit down with Deirdre Haj to discuss the ups and downs of traveling the world with a documentary film, what advice they would give other filmmakers about trying to secure distribution, the do's and don'ts on releasing your film, and other horror and success stories on creating a female empowered film in a crowded festival field.
Panelists:
Dawn Mikkelson, Co-Director, Producer, Editor
Keri Pickett - Co-Director, Director of Photography, Editor
Moderated by: Deirdre Haj (Producer & Art House Convergence Board Member)
Dawn Mikkelson
Dawn Mikkelson - Emmy Award-winning producer/director and McKnight Filmmaking Fellow. Her work includes “Minnesota Mean” (2023 Florida Film Festival, Amazon, iTunes), “Finding Her Beat” (100% Rotten Tomatoes, Film Threat’s Best Music Documentary 2023, PBS), and “Risking Light” (PBS, Amazon). She has received over 25 film festival awards for her character-driven films, which highlight power and joy in marginalized communities. Mikkelson recently became an Cultural Envoy for the US State Department through their American Film Showcase program with USC.
Keri Pickett
Keri Pickett (Director/DP/Producer) Award-winning artist, producer, director, cinematographer. Pickett’s documentary films FINDING HER BEAT (2022), FIRST DAUGHTER AND THE BLACK SNAKE (2017) and THE FABULOUS ICE AGE (2013) have won multiple awards and screened at festivals around the world, breaking records in attendance, and streamed on Netflix. Her films focus on family and community and she is a cultural envoy for the US State Department with the American Film Showcase program. A well known photographer, Pickett has published multiple photography books, with photographs displayed in international and national museums and have appeared in Life, Time, People, Stern, and Geo magazines, and she has been awarded fellowships from the Bush Foundation, McKnight, Jerome, and Target Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Pickett was awarded the 2018 McKnight Filmmaking Fellowship.
Deirdre Haj
Deirdre Haj is an independent producer and consultant to festivals and art houses throughoutthe US. Haj served as the founding Vice President of the Film Festival Alliance and now on the Art House Convergence Board. She is currently producing Remy Weber’s documentary KISS THE PAST GOODBYE on the life of filmmaker Danny Seymour. Haj served as Executive Director at Film Streams Cinemas, Omaha, where she expanded offices, championed gender parity, improved capital investments, and brought visiting filmmakers and screenings deeper into the community. This followed a decade of leadership at the acclaimed Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Achievements include becoming an Oscar-qualifying festival, creating the renowned School of Doc teen filmmaking course, Teach the Teachers documentary literacy program, and the festival’s celebrated Speakeasy, including an annual panel addressing diversity in the documentary field. Haj built new offices and the Full Frame Theater and left behind one of the most robust filmmaker advisory boards in the field. Haj served as Senior Advisor for Television and Film at Duke University. Prior, she produced docs, consulted for the Motion Picture Association, and served on the FilmNorth board and on the Advisory Board of MSPFF.