Diane Hendrix Director, Producer, Writer, Camera
A veteran PBS and independent documentary producer, Diane won a Massachusetts Artist Fellowship for her first 60 minute documentary, “Looking Homeward,” which explored race, place and growing up female in the South. She was startup production manager at Paul Allen's Vulcan Productions for the 8-hour Evolution series broadcast by NOVA/PBS.
As a media and writing lecturer at Harvard and MIT (7 yr), she was intrigued by students with international ambitions for social change, so in 2011 she packed her camera for East Africa and launched Young World Inventors, a web series about young women and men in Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda, still in production: AfricanMakersMedia.com and YoungWorldInventors.com. Diane continues to follow characters with arduous missions in this first feature film set in historic Lawrence, MA, New England's first Latino city, with insights for activist youth everywhere.
Sabrina Avilés Co-producer
Sabrina Avilés has worked as an independent film and video producer for over 25 years. She has worked on American Experience’s “American Comandante”, An Unexpected History: the Story of Hennessy and African Americans and The Raising of America, a PBS documentary series about early childhood development produced by California Newsreel. In 2012, she worked on the Peabody award-winning PBS series, Latino Americans. That same year, Ms. Avilés received ITVS development funds for a documentary about the sterilization of Puerto Rican women. As an independent producer, Ms. Avilés has also co-produced documentaries such as Mi Puerto Rico (1995), on the history of Puerto Rico. She was also the former Director of the Center for Latino Arts (now Villa Victoria Center for the Arts), the only multi-functional Latin American community arts center in New England. She is a member of the National Association of Independent Producers and is the Executive Director of the Boston Latino International Film Festival. Born in Washington Heights, Ms. Avilés’ family originates from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. She earned a B.S. in Broadcasting/Film from Boston University.
James Rutenbeck Consulting Producer and Editor
James Rutenbeck’s body of work was featured at the 2003 Robert Flaherty International Film Seminar. His feature-length film, Scenes from a Parish, which explores a diverse group of parishioners in a Catholic parish undergoing dramatic demographic change, premiered to critical acclaim at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2009 and later aired on the PBS series Independent Lens.
In January 2009 Rutenbeck was awarded a DuPont Columbia Journalism Award for his work as Producer and Director of “Not Just A Paycheck,” an episode of the PBS series Unnatural Causes, about health disparities in the U.S., which was co-produced by California Newsreel and Vital Pictures. In 2016, James was executive producer of America Reframed’s “Class of ‘27” (PBS), about lives of young children in three economically distressed counties in rural America. James has been awarded grants from Sundance Documentary Fund, and his independent films have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, Cinema du Reel, Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, Lussas International Film Festival and the Independent Film Festival of Boston.
ALLIE HUMENuK Director of Photography
Allie Humenuk is an award-winning filmmaker and Emmy nominated cinematographer whose films have been broadcast nationally and internationally and screened at film festivals, museums and schools. Her feature documentary, “Shadow of the House,” about the photographer Abelardo Morell was heralded as “one of the best films ever made on a artist and the artistic process” by Bo Smith, former curator of the film program at the MFA Boston. Nominated for an Emmy for her camera work on the PBS series “Design Squad,” Allie has also worked with filmmakers such as Anne Makepeace on the PBS-broadcast “Rain in a Dry Land” and “We Still Live Here,” Katrina Browne’s “Traces of the Trade,” and Linda Garmon on the “The Truth About Cancer.”
ANTONIO CISNEROS Camera
Antonio Cisneros is an award winning cinematographer and filmmaker with a passion to create narrative films and social documentaries in both still and motion photography. He has shot films for the BBC, PBS, Hulu, Soul Pancake, The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, and the Center for Investigative Reporting. Recent nonfiction films include the critically acclaimed Kingdom of Shadows, on the history of the drug wars, which was shown at South by Southwest Festival in 2015. Class of ’27 follows the lives of young children in rural Kentucky and premiered on PBS’ America Reframed in 2016 (directed by James Rutenbeck, Editor and Producer of Mi Casita). Originally from San Antonio, Cisneros is an alum of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, the American Film Institute and the Film Independent Project Involve.
DAN ALBRIGHT Assistant Editor
Dan Albright is an award winning documentary filmmaker and freelance video professional based in Boston. He is an alum of Emerson College and Denver Film Society's Young Filmmakers Workshop. His 2016 documentary on the Fight for 15 movement in Massachusetts, A Living Wage, was shortlisted for the BAFTA US Student Film Award and shown at dozens of film festivals internationally as well as local schools, churches and community groups. Dan's web-native and social media video projects have attracted viral viewership organically – shared by thousands of individuals and organizations such as the Climate Disobedience Center, openDemocracy, the Movement Strategy Center and Shaun King's Injustice Boycott.