Q&A filmmaker John Maggio, Producer Monica Berra, and Program Director at Gordon Parks Foundation Michal Raz Russo
Wednesday, May. 4 2022, 7:00
Monica Berra is a documentary film and television producer currently working with Kunhardt Films. Most recently, she produced the feature documentary A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks (HBO, 2021) which premiered to wide acclaim at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. Other recent credits include the series No Passport Required (PBS, 2019), the Emmy-nominated series Retro Tech (YouTube Originals, 2019), and the feature documentary BOSS: The Black Experience in Business (PBS, 2019). Her short documentaries have been featured in the New York Times Op-Docs, Field of Vision, PBS, WORLD Channel, and The Atlantic. Originally from Miami, Florida, Monica holds an MFA in documentary filmmaking from Wake Forest University and is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Director John Maggio’s work covers topics ranging from political films like The Perfect Weapon (HBO), chronicling America’s ongoing clandestine cyber war, and Panic: The Untold Story of the 2008 Financial Crisis (HBO) to intimate biographies like The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee (HBO) and A Choice of Weapons (HBO), a film on acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks (Tribeca 2021). His most recent film, Mr. Saturday Night (HBO) about legendary music and film impresario Robert Stigwood was in competition at DocNYC 2021. Maggio's films have been honored with Emmy Awards and Writers Guild Awards and have been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, GLAAD Award and Producers Guild of America Award. He’s currently at work on films about the Biden administration, international espionage and Italian fashion.
Michal Raz-Russo is programs director at The Gordon Parks Foundation and editor of Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize publications. She served as visiting curator at the Art Institute of Chicago for the exhibitions Subscribe: Artists and Alternative Magazines, 1970–95 (2021) and Basma al-Sharif: Capital (2022). Previously, she was the David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Associate Curator of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she curated exhibitions such as Never a Lovely So Real: Photography and Film in Chicago, 1950–1980 (2018); Leigh Ledare: The Plot (2017); Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem (2016); Deana Lawson (2015); and The Three Graces (2011). In addition to authoring catalogues accompanying the exhibitions Invisible Man and The Three Graces, Raz-Russo was editor of LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint Is Family In Three Acts (2021), and has contributed scholarship to publications including Icons of Style: A Century of Fashion Photography, 1911–2011 (2018).
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