ABIGAIL CHILD
DIRECTOR/ CO-CAMERA/ CO-EDITOR
has been at the forefront of experimental media since the 1980s, having completed more than thirty film/video works and installations. An acknowledged pioneer in montage, she makes “brilliant exciting work…a vibrant political film that’s attentive to form.” Her major projects address issues of gender, often through sound/image juxtapositions and with a delight in archival materials. She has had many solo shows nationally and internationally, including mid-career retrospectives worldwide, featured exhibitions at MoMA, the Whitney Museum, Harvard Archive and Centre Pompidou among them. She has won Rome, Guggenheim, Radcliffe, and Fulbright Fellowships. She is also a writer with 6 published books and served as senior faculty in Media, from 1999-2016 at the SMFA Boston, now part of Tufts University. Her most recent film, ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES, is available on Apple TV and iTunes.
JENNIFER BURTON
PRODUCER
is a Professor of the Practice in Film at Tufts University. During Covid, in addition to releasing ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES, she produced the short-form comic series Old Guy, on ageism in the media. With her company, Five Sisters Productions, Jennifer has produced seven feature films, including Kings, Queens, & In- Betweens, a documentary on gender and drag, which propelled the opening night event at Radcliffe Institute Gender Conference 2019. Her other films include Manna From Heaven, which screened for the US Congress, was chosen by the Toronto Film Festival Group to open theatrically across Canada on its Circuit Series, and was distributed by MGM. Working with Five Sisters and SMFA/Tufts student filmmakers, she is producing Half the History, a series of short films on women in US history. The latest in the series (“Tapping Into Our Past, Tapping Into Our Future: Ayodele Casel”) amplifies the role of Black women in tap dance, and is executive produced by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
MARY PATIERNO
CO-EDITOR
is a producer, director and editor. She has worked on many award-winning documentaries including Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War, How to Survive a Plague, and most recently Child’s On The Downlow as well as ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES. Her film The Most Unknowable Thing was an IDA nominated film and winner at LA Outfest among other festivals. She edited and was co-producer with Director Harriet Hirshorn on the Ford Foundation project Nothing Without Us: The Women Who Will End AIDS (2017), premiering at DocNYC and an official entry at Hot Docs, Toronto. She teaches at School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and lives in Ashfield, MA.
YAEL BITTON
CONSULTING EDITOR
studied film directing at INSAS in Brussels. In 1994, she began working as a script supervisor on Lisbon Story by Wim Wenders. In 1995, she moved to New York City; her credits there include Girlfight by Karyn Kusama & Hamlet by Michael Almeyreda. She began to work as an editor in 2000 with Child. She works now creating award-winning work for Arte/Canal Plus, teaching at the School of Visual Arts, Geneva & currently is a member of Roughcut Service out of Finland. She edited Rahul Jain’s debut feature, Machines, nominated for an Academy Award in documentary 2018, and The Advocate, which was at Sundance 2019 and released theatrically.
PRECIPICE 