Athena Film Festival

February 29 - March 3, 2024

Below the Line

Cinematography Panel

In the last five years, women accounted for just 3% of the cinematographers among the 250 top-grossing films. No female Director of Photography has ever been nominated for an Academy Award®. Join us for a conversation with several established cinematographers who will talk about the lack of women in their field, and how they broke into the “private club” and became some of the most in-demand names in the game.

Panelists (extended bios below):
Nadia Hallgren, cinematographer (Fahrenheit 9/11, Trouble The Water)
Kirsten Johnson, cinematographer (Derrida, Darfur Now)
Reed Morano, ASC, cinematographer (The Skeleton Twins, And So It Goes)

Moderator: Caryn James, film and television critic at Indiewire

Date: Saturday, February 7, 12PM
Location: James Room, 418 Barnard Hall

Sponsored by:

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Panelist Bios:

Nadia Hallgren is an award-winning cinematographer and filmmaker from the Bronx, NY. Her camera credits include Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, the Academy Award nominated Trouble The Water, HBO’s War Don Don and PBS’s The New Black. Nadia has shot commercially for networks such as Sundance Channel, IFC, MTV, BET, VH1 and OWN. As a director, her first film Sanza Hanza, a short-documentary covering teenage train surfers in Soweto, South Africa premiered at Slamdance was acquired by PBS. Love Lockdown, her followup film, was developed as part of the Cinereach Fellowship, premiered at SXSW and won best short film at HBO’s Urbanworld Film Festival. She holds a BA from the Hunter College CUNY, serves on the board of the Bronx Documentary Center and mentors inner city youth through the Tribeca Film Institute.

KirstenKirsten Johnson is a cinematographer and director. Her most recent camerawork appears in Citizen Four, Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs Gravity, and The Wound and the Gift. Her credits include Academy Award-nominated, The Invisible War and Tribeca Documentary winner, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. She and Laura Poitras shared the 2010 Sundance Cinematography Award for The Oath. Her shooting is featured in Farenheit 9/11, Academy Award-nominated Asylum, Emmy-winning Ladies First, and Sundance premieres: A Place at the Table, This Film is Not Yet Rated, and Derrida. Deadline, (co-directed with Katy Chevigny), premiered at Sundance and won the Thurgood Marshall Award. She is currently editing A Blind Eye, a documentary that investigates her relationship as a cinematographer to those she films.

Reed Morano is the youngest active member in the American Society of Cinematographers and one of only 12 women out of approximately 344 active members in the organization. In 2011, she was the recipient of the Kodak Vision Award for Cinematography at the Women In Film Crystal + Lucy Awards and was recently part of the Kodak OnFilm Series. In 2013, she was also invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Reed’s most recent features that have been released theatrically are The Skeleton Twins, And So It Goes, and Kill Your Darlings. Last year Reed wrapped up the first season of the original HBO series called Looking.  Her earlier work includes Frozen River, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and went on to be nominated for two Academy Awards and seven Independent Spirit Awards.Reed is currently in post production on her first feature as both director and the DP, the dark drama Meadowland.
Moderator:
Caryn James is a film and television critic at Indiewire and a freelance writer who contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal and other publications.