Judy Irola
Producer/Director
After serving two years in the Peace
Corps in Niger, Africa (1966-68) Irola returned to San Francisco
where she went to work for KQED-TV in their documentary film unit.
She has worked as a cinematographer for over 30 years and her films
have won numerous awards. Her first feature Northern Lights
won the Camera d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979.
In 1993 An Ambush of Ghosts garnered her the Cinematography
Award, Dramatic Competition, at the Sundance Film Festival. She
has photographed 17 independent feature films (including Working
Girls by Lizzie Borden and The Dead End Kids
by JoAnne Akalaitis) and more than 40 documentaries throughout the
world.
In 1995 Irola was the third woman to
be invited to become a member of the prestigious American Society
of Cinematographers (ASC). In 1997 she was the recipient of Kodak’s
Vision Award. She is a Full Professor and holds the Conrad Hall
Chair in Cinematography (endowed by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg)
at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. She is also the Head of
Cinematography where she designs the curriculum and supervises 26
cinematographers on the faculty. Presently she is the Chair of the
Full Faculty at SCA as well.
In 2005 Irola began producing and directing.
Her first documentary Cine Manifest premiered at the
Mill Valley Film Festival in 2006. In November the film was a finalist
for the Maysles Brothers Documentary Award at the Denver Starz International
Film Festival and in March 2007 Cine Manifest received
the Ruth Landfield Award at the Fargo Film Festival. This award
is for “Films By or About Women of Compassion, Conviction and
Commitment.” In September the film took the prize for Best
Feature Documentary at the Montana Independent Film Festival. The
documentary screened three times in Rio and Sao Paulo at the IT’S
ALL TRUE International Documentary Film Festival and in September
screened numerous times at DOCSDF, an International documentary
film festival in Mexico City, where it was picked as an audience
favorite. In November it was invited to screen in the Political
Cinema Section at the International Independent Film Festival of
Mar del Plata in Buenos Aires and at the Festival de Cine de Granada
in Spain.
Cine Manifest has been
purchased by numerous universities for their libraries—including
Stanford and NYU, and reviewed in fifteen important journals (including
Variety). The film was been picked up for home DVD distribution
by New Video/Docurama in New York City in September 2008, and sold
over 450 copies in it’s first quarter in distribution.
Irola completed principal photography
on her new documentary Niger ’66, A Peace Corps Diary
in late 2008 after videotaping 25 former volunteers in the U.S.
and documenting a three-week trip back to Niger with five volunteers
from her group (1966-68) visiting their former villages.
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Robert Potter
Co-Producer/Cinematographer
Potter served two years (1966-68) in
the Peace Corps in Niger, Africa, where he worked in audio-visual
and textbook production for an adult literacy effort. He returned
to complete his undergraduate degree in Design at the University
of Washington (Seattle). Upon graduation he joined the VISTA program
and was sent to New York City, to work in a counseling program with
the NYC Department of Corrections (1969-70). In Philadelphia, he
worked for four years (1971-75) as a psychiatric social worker for
that City.
In 1977, Potter received a master's degree
from the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), and took a position
in regional planning and community outreach with the Health Systems
Agency. In 1983, he joined the U.S. National Park Service to supervise
media production and manage conservation projects; in all, he worked
there for 23 years (1983-2005). During that time he created Media-Media
Video Productions (1988-96) where he generated more than two-dozen
short and feature length documentaries about leadership issues within
the environmental movement, conservation, and cultural heritage.
In 2005, Potter retired from the Park Service to continue producing
independent film documentaries on ecological and cultural awareness.
Presently Potter lives in Chester, Pennsylvania,
where he produces short subject and promotional documentaries in
HDV for various clients, including the City of Chester, the Chester
Shade Tree Commission, the Borough of Media and the National Park
Service. In 2008 he and a small group of associates created the
Media Film Festival (Media, Pennsylvania). It has been hugely successful
in its first two years, with increasing submissions from local and
national artists, and corporate sponsorship. It will be an annual
event henceforth.
Potter’s films include, Ed
Bacon’s Way: A Walking Interview With the Creator of the First
Greenway (for the National Park Service), The Patapsco
River Corridor Study (for the State of Maryland), Interviews
with Senator Gaylord Nelson (for the National Association
of Recreation Resource Planners), Worcester-Somerset County
Heritage Corridor (for the National Park Service), The
60th Anniversary of the School in Rose Valley (for the School
in Rose Valley), 2008 Arbor Day Celebrations (for
the City of Chester, Pennsylvania), 2008 Bastille Day Celebrations
(for the Media Arts Council, Media, Pennsylvania), The Bronx
River Golden Ball: Celebration of an Urban River Greenway
(for the National Park Service), Visioning the New River,
West Virginia (for WVVA TV, West Virginia and the National
Park Service) and Lackawanna Valley Heritage (for
the National Park Service).
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Professor Pearl Robinson (Peace Corps
Niger 1968-70)
Arts, Science and Engineering, Political Science Department
Comparative Politics, Africa, African-American Politics
Director, Africa in the New World
Tufts University
Professor Robinson is an author of more
than 20 articles and book chapters on African and African American
politics. She is co-author of Stabilizing Nigeria: Sanctions,
Incentives and Support for Civil Society (The Century Foundation
Press) and co-editor and co-author of Transformation and Resiliency
in Africa (Howard University Press) member of the Council
on Foreign Relations and a Senior Advisor to the Boston Pan-African
Forum, she has served on the boards of Oxfam-America and TransAfrica;
as an advisor to the African Academy of Science’s Research
Program on the Education of Women and Girls; as a curriculum consultant
for the PBS/BBC series The Africans: A Triple Heritage;
and as an advisor for Hopes on the Horizon, a 2-hour
documentary film about Africa premiering on PBS. Robinson spent
two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger doing public health
education in a rural Hausa town. A Director of the University’s
International Relations Program, Professor Robinson organized a
symposium on Jazz and International Relations as well as a three-day
conference and film festival around the theme Small States
in a Changing World: Globalization, Regionalism, Culture and Identity.
Robinson is currently launching a Curriculum
Co-Development project that will link students studying African International
Relations at Tufts University, Makerere University (Uganda) and University
of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) through a shared web site.
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Professor Peter Easton (Peace Corps
Niger 1964-1968)
Adult Education and Human Resource Development
Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
College of Education
Florida State University
Peter Easton joined the Florida State University faculty in 1989 after
five years of service on overseas development projects with the University's
Learning Systems Institute. He specializes in adult education and human
resource development in both domestic and international settings. He
holds a Masters in International Education from Stanford University
and a Masters in Economics plus a Doctorate in Educational Foundations
from Florida State University. He worked and resided for ten years in
West Africa, first as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger and then as a
technical assistant in adult literacy and rural development programs.
He currently serves on a periodic basis as educational evaluation and
planning consultant for the UNESCO Institute for Education and the World
Bank.
Dr. Easton is the author of two books in French
and another in English on evaluation of adult and continuing education
and has written numerous articles and studies on the economics of adult
education and on comparative educational policy. He most recently prepared
keynote policy studies for the Biennial Meeting of the Association for
the Development of Africa in Gabon. He has served as coordinator of the
Adult Education graduate program in the Department and helped with the
design of our current online Masters Degree in Human Resource Development.
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