VTIFF Program-Guide 2024 - Flipbook - Page 6
MEET THE FILMMAKERS AND OTHER SPECIAL GUESTS
ANGELO MADSEN (FKA
MADSEN MINAX 20052024) is a multi-disciplinary
artist, filmmaker, and
educator. His projects
consider how human
relationships are woven
through personal and
collective histories, cultures,
and kinships, with specific
attention to subcultural
experience, phenomenology,
and the politics of desire.
Madsen’s works have shown at Berlinale, Sundance,
Toronto International, New York Film Festival, Tribeca,
Museum of Moving Image, Anthology Film Archives, British
Film Institute, and dozens of documentary, LGBT, and
experimental film festivals around the world. His film,
North By Current (2021), aired on season 34 of POV (PBS),
was nominated for an Independent Spirit award, and won
the Cinema Eye Honors Spotlight award, Best Writing
award from the IDA and numerous festival jury prizes.
Madsen is currently an Associate Professor of Time-Based
Media at the University of Vermont.
BILL “SPACEMAN” LEE, was
a Major League Baseball
player who pitched for the
Boston Red Sox (1969–
1978) and Montreal Expos
(1979–1982). In 2008, Lee
was inducted into the Red
Sox Hall of Fame as the
team’s record-holder for
most games pitched by a
left-hander (321) and the
third-highest win total by a
Red Sox southpaw (94). In
addition to his statistical baseball accomplishments, Lee is
known for his counterculture behavior, his antics both on
and off the field, and his use of the Leephus pitch. Lee has
co-written four books, and been the subject of a film
(Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey), and a Warren Zevon song
(“Bill Lee”).
VERANDAH PORCHE works
as a poet-in-residence,
performer, and writing
partner. Based in rural
Vermont on the notable
commune Total Loss Farm
since 1968, she has read her
work on NPR stations, in the
Vermont State House, and at
the John Simon Guggenheim
Museum. She initiated and
for almost 30 years taught
the poetry program at
Vermont’s Governor’s Institute on the Arts. The Vermont
Arts Council presented her with its Award of Merit, and its
first Ellen McCollough-Lovell Award. Verandah serves as
Vice Chair of the Select board, exploring the poetics of
civic life, in Guilford, Vermont, a town of 2100 souls.
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Born in 1949 in New York
City, CHARLES LIGHT has
been involved in the film and
video industry since 1973,
when he co-founded Green
Mountain Post Films (GMP
Films), a production and
distribution company. Along
with partner Dan Keller,
Charlie produced and
directed many award-winning
films on nuclear power, the
environment, the Vietnam
War, art and politics, cannabis, peace issues and other
topics. GMP films have been featured at Lincoln Center, as
part of the New York Film Festival, Madison Square Garden
and the Pompidou Center in Paris. They have also been
broadcast nationally and internationally and shown at
theaters, town meetings, colleges, community gatherings,
high schools, boardrooms, churches, museums, and
Congressional and legislative hearing rooms.
XINYAN YU is an awardwinning video journalist and
filmmaker based in
Washington, DC. Born and
raised in Wuhan, China,
Xinyan started her journalism
career in 2012 in Beijing.
Now working as an
independent filmmaker,
Xinyan has directed and
produced for international
broadcasters and programs.
Made in Ethiopia, Xinyan’s
feature documentary debut supported by IDA, Ford
Foundation, Firelight Media and the Danish Film Institute,
premiered at Tribeca Festival, Sheffield DocFest, DC/DOX
and Encounters South Africa International Film Festival in
2024. Xinyan’s storytelling is deeply rooted in her
upbringing within a community of steel factory workers,
where she witnessed firsthand the sweeping
socioeconomic changes in China. Her work bridges two
distinct worlds: documenting the evolving geopolitical
landscapes of the Global South, her place of origin, while
elevating the voices of marginalized communities in the
developed world, where she now lives and works.
Since 2002, SUSAN
BETTMANN has been
making documentary films,
primarily about Vermont
artists and the Vermont
landscape. Her 2004 film,
Beyond 88 Keys: The Music
of Michael Arnowitt won the
Vermont Film Commission’s
Goldstone Award. Prior to
filmmaking, she was a
member of the Bread and
Puppet Theater’s touring
company, and a co-founder of Dragon Dance Theatre. She
is the founder and director of White Rock Productions, Inc.
She lives in Middlesex, Vermont.
ALEX BORTOLOT joined
Dartmouth College’s Hood
Museum staff as Deputy
Director in January 2023.
Bortolot graduated from
Harvard University with a BA
in the history of art and
architecture and holds a PhD
in art history from Columbia
University. An impassioned
champion of museums and
the communities they serve,
Bortolot invests deeply in
understanding audiences and establishing cultures of
transparency, collaboration, and experimentation. He is no
stranger to the Dartmouth community, having worked as a
visiting lecturer on African art in the Art History
Department and as an assistant curator of special projects
at the Hood Museum from 2008 to 2009.
RICHARD H. SAUNDERS is
director of the Middlebury
College Museum of Art and
professor of History of Art
and Architecture. From 2003
until 2013 he was the Walter
Cerf Distinguished College
Professor, a position that was
given to Middlebury in his
honor. He came to
Middlebury in 1985 and
since his arrival the Museum
has presented over 250
exhibits. He has published extensively on American art and
portraiture over the past forty years. More recently he was
co-editor of the Middlebury College Museum of Art,
Handbook of the Collection (2022).
CHRIS DANFORTH is a
Professor of Mathematics
and Statistics at the
University of Vermont, where
he directs the Vermont
Advanced Computing Center,
and along with Peter
Sheridan Dodds runs the
Computational Story Lab
research group at the
Vermont Complex Systems
Center. He is the co-inventor
of the hedonometer, a
socio-technical instrument estimating daily happiness
based on social media, and has also developed algorithms
to identify predictors of depression from Instagram photos.
Danforth has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed
publications applying mathematical techniques to many
fields including atmospheric science, linguistics,
psychology, literature, finance, physics, engineering, and
biochemistry. Descriptions of his projects are available at
his website: http://uvm.edu/~cdanfort
VTIFF.ORG | VERMONT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024
