Session VI: Tami Gold, “Reclaim the Media” (Closing Keynote Address)

In her keynote address bringing the two-day conference to a close, Tami Gold delivered a powerful message about the need to actively engage in shaping the media that we are surrounded by on a daily basis and about the key ethical issues we need to keep in mind as both creators and consumers of a range of media. The keynote is followed by a question and answer session moderated by Terry Lawler.

Tami Gold is a filmmaker and Professor in Film and Media Studies at Hunter College. She is the recipient of Rockefeller, Guggenheim and AFI Fellowships. Her work focuses on injustice, the lives of feminists, and address boundaries around gender conformity. Her work has screened at the New York Film Festival, the Tribeca and Sundance Film Festivals, as well as international labor, women’s and LGBT film festivals. Broadcast screenings of her work include: PBS, HBO, The Learning Channel and community- based venues throughout the world. Her recent film, Puzzles: When Hate Came to Town, looks at a hate crime in a gay and lesbian bar. In 2011 she released Passionate Politics a documentary about global lesbian feminist trailblazer Charlotte Bunch, recently aired on PBS. In 2011, Gold directed RFK in the Land of Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope (with Larry Shore), which had a primetime PBS broadcast and televised throughout Africa. In 2004, Tami produced and directed Every Mother’s Son (with Kelly Anderson) winner of the Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award and broadcast on the PBS series POV. Some of her other films include: Another Brother, the story of an African American Vietnam Veteran, aired on PBS; Juggling Gender: Politics, Sex and Identity, screened at the New York Film Festival’s video series; Out at Work: Lesbian and Gay Men on the Job, screened at the Sundance Film Festival and on HBO. To learn more about her films, go to www.andersongoldfilms.com

Terry Lawler has been Executive Director of New York Women in Film & Television since 1997. She is a Vice President of the Board of Directors of the New York Production Alliance and serves on the Board of Directors of the Katahdin Foundation. Prior to joining NYWIFT, Lawler was Director of Development and Production at Women Make Movies and National Director of Film and Videomakers Services at the American Film Institute. She has been a media consultant for foundations and nonprofit groups, including the MacArthur Foundation, the Astraea Foundation, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Goethe Institute, among others. She was a production executive on several network television specials and Executive Producer of Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography (1992), which won Best Documentary awards from the American Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle in 1992, and Hollywood Mavericks, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1990.