San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

Peter L. Stein
Executive Director

Nancy K. Fishman
Program Director

Elizabeth Jouan Greene
Production Manager

Allyson Halpern
Development Director

Leo Wong
Program/Hospitality Coordinator

Grace Lee
Development Associate

Kerri Gawryn
Administrative Coordinator

Christy Applegate
Bookkeeper

Pnina Halfon
Communications Coordinator

Cara Storm/Marketing by Storm
Marketing Consultant

Rebecca Gholdston
Marketing Coordinator

Karen Larsen, Tim Buckwalter, Chris Wiggum/Larsen Associates
Publicist

Abigail Glogower
Publicity Coordinator

Myra Feiger
Community Outreach Coordinator

Cindy Rangel
Ethan Hay
Volunteer Coordinators

Olivia de Santis & Steve Simitzis/Saturn 5
Jason Herring/Ordinary Kids
Website

Lawrence Helman
Events Coordinator

Alex Cantin
Sam Rypinski
Amy Silverman
Print Traffic

Volume Inc
Trailer Design/Production

Philo TV
Gary Coates/SpyPost Trailer Post-production

Dafna Kory
Sponsor Reel Production

Jill Johnson
David Gutierez Hospitality Assistants

Brad Robinson
House Manager

Grace Liu
Assistant Production Manager

Hal Rowland
Technical Director

Gary Hobich
Sound Director

Absolutely Music/Nigel Gilchrist
Instrument Rental

Trilogy Productions
Pamela & Joe Lawrence
Box Office

Rebecca Broder Catering
Catering

Allen Stross
Paul Felder
Photographers

Judy Bloch
Copy Editor

Donna Steger/p.s. PrintSmart
Printing

Ed Baraona
Bonnie Burt
Gail Dolgin
Michael Ehrenzweig
Myra Feiger
Joan Gibson
Debbie Hoffmann
Marcia Jarmel
Vivian Kleiman
Donna Korones
Phil Lane
Moshe Levin
Andrea Michaels
Danny Plotnick
Alon Raab
Steve Rossen
Ian Schneider
Ken Schneider
Jennifer Schwartz
Noa Turgeman
Marlene Velasco-Begue
Leah Wolchok
Diane Wolfe
Screening Committee

Jim Hoberman
Debbie Hoffmann
Annette Insdorf
Deborah Kaufman
Gary Meyer
Janis Plotkin
Ella Shohat
Program Advisors

Nancy K. Fishman
Abigail Glogower
Pnina Halfon
Grace Lee
Peter L. Stein
Leo Wong
Staff Program Notes

Nancy K. Fishman
Mike Silver
Boxing Program Curators

Volume Inc Eric Heiman
Adam Brodsley
Program Design

Nancy K. Fishman
Peter L. Stein
Program Catalog Editors

Year-Round Staff Biographies

Peter L. Stein, Executive Director
Peter L. Stein, who joined SFJFF as Executive Director in 2003, has a producing and management career in the arts that spans theater, television, documentary film and museums. From 1988-1999, Mr. Stein served as Executive Producer at public television station KQED (San Francisco), where he was responsible for developing and producing a wide range of series and programs for American public television. His documentary series Neighborhoods: The Hidden Cities of San Francisco has garnered critical acclaim and numerous prestigious awards, including the George Foster Peabody Award for its episode entitled "The Castro," which Mr. Stein wrote, produced and directed. His series Green Means, short documentary profiles of environmental heroes around the world, ran for four seasons on public television.

In October 1999 he joined The Jewish Museum San Francisco (now The Contemporary Jewish Museum) as Deputy Director for Programming, where he developed the museum's long-range program plan for its planned new facilities (designed by architect Daniel Libeskind) and oversaw ongoing exhibitions and curatorial staff. He was also the primary content developer for the museum's award-winning web site, www.jmsf.org. Among the original exhibitions he curated and/or produced are Hidden in the Walls: The Time Capsule from San Francisco's Lost Sanctuary; Face(t)s of Memory: Found Photographs and Family Albums; and a media-based exhibition focusing on the image of Israelis and Palestinians on film.

He also wrote and produced "The Fillmore," a 90-minute documentary history of San Francisco's premier black neighborhood; it aired on PBS in June 2001, and is now regularly shown during Black History Month. Mr. Stein has also been honored for his culinary productions, including six seasons of programs with renowned chef Jacques Pépin, two-time winner of the James Beard Award for Outstanding National Cooking Series. In the 1980's, Mr. Stein spent several years at KPIX (CBS/San Francisco) where he produced a daily talk show, and worked a brief stint as a free-lance radio journalist in Cambodia.

Mr. Stein is an accomplished public speaker, having been a guest on such programs as NPR's "Fresh Air" and "Weekend Edition" and numerous television news and interview programs. On the other side of the microphone, he frequently moderates public panels and discussions for Bay Area theaters, museums, and media organizations. He co-moderates San Francisco's Key Sunday Cinema Club and has written film-related features for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Mr. Stein is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard University, and a third-generation San Francisco native.

Elizabeth Jouan Greene, Administrative Director
Elizabeth Greene has recently defected from the world of a cappella where she managed The Bobs career for twelve years. She is an outspoken advocate for the importance of the arts in education and for 18 years has been a volunteer in the Berkeley public schools, serving on the Board of the Gilbert and Sullivan Troupe, Berkeley High Parent Arts Committee, the Committee to Save Music in the Public Schools and Berkeley High School Women's Crew. Elizabeth has a degree in Landscape Architecture from UCBerkeley, is a writer and an oral historian, and is passionate about music, art and film. She has one daughter, a recent Vassar film studies graduate.

Nancy K. Fishman, Program Director
Nancy K. Fishman is a film programmer and publicist who has worked with indie filmmakers, festivals and distributors for the last 14 years. Fishman was program advisor for the 2003 SFJFF. Prior to that, she was communications & publicity manager at the Independent Television Service (ITVS), where she oversaw and implemented national broadcast publicity campaigns for 40 films a year, as well as launching ITVS films at Sundance. Fishman was a publicist with the San Francisco PR firm Larsen Associates, where she oversaw PR for the SFJFF (1996-1999) and publicized films released by Sony Pictures Classics, New Yorker Films and Zeitgeist Films as well as other San Francisco-based film festivals. Prior to that, Fishman was the distribution director at Frameline where she tracked and acquired films; released films theatrically and to the educational, home video and broadcast markets; and represented films at festivals. She has served as a programming consultant for the Turin International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival for 10 years, and is currently on the board of directors of the San Francisco based Women's Educational Media. Fishman has served on numerous festival juries and panels, including PR panels at Sundance and the Teddy Jury in Berlin. Originally from New York City, she has lived in the Bay Area since 1987.

Allyson Halpern, Development Director
A native of Newton, Massachusetts, Allyson is the most recent arrival to SFJFF's senior team but brings a long and impressive history as a development professional. She was the first Executive Director of the Pittsburgh Glass Center, where she raised $3 million in less than three years to launch a new building and art center. Before that she spent 10 years in the development office of Carnegie Mellon University in various capacities of fundraising. After moving to the Bay Area in 2002, she launched the development effort at Creative Growth Art Center in the East Bay and has been an executive consultant with Ketchum, Inc., a national fundraising consulting firm. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter.

Leo Wong, Program Coordinator
Long time habitué of film festivals small and large, far and wide, I've been a seasonal Jew for 3 or 4 festivals but am now an official year-round Jew. The thing I thought I loved was the movies, but it turns out I love the filmmakers even more. I work and work and work so that I can talk to filmmakers about their work, and all this has deepened and broadened my love of film even more. It's a great job.

Grace Lee, Development Associate
Grace Lee is a writer with a background in the visual arts and an almost unhealthy appetite for film. Originally from Hawaii, she has lived and worked in New York, Boston, Iowa City, and now San Francisco, a city which somehow reminds her in large and small ways of all the other places she’s ever lived. It’s nice. As a small child her list of possible careers was unreasonably long and a tad unrealistic, yet it is turning out to be strangely prophetic. Her writing can be seen in the Summer/Fall 2005 issue of Fence, the Winter 2006 Free Verse, and in issues 19, 20, and 21 of ReadyMade Magazine. In her spare time she sews and re-arranges her furniture. She is very excited to be joining the Festival.

Kerri Gawryn, Administrative Coordinator
Before joining the SFJFF staff, Kerri Gawryn spent six years as a social advocate for homeless individuals and domestic violence survivors. Her interest in the arts and social policy runs deep: for her masters thesis at San Francisco State University, she created a community organizing photography workshop and directed and produced the accompanying documentary film, “Exposing Homelessness.”

Christy Applegate, Bookkeeper
Christy Applegate is a bookkeeper for various nonprofit organizations including San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, Citizen Film, and Women’s Educational Media (WEM). Previously, she was operations manager at WEM and was on staff at American Society of Aging and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Maryland. Currently, she is persuing an MBA with plans to become an accountant par excellence to the Bay Area filmmaking community.