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SPEAKERS, FILMMAKERS & PERFORMERS • 2025
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April 29
Dana Frank teaches about labor history and social movements at UC Santa Cruz and is the former director of its Center for Labor Studies. She is the author of several books, including Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America, Local Girl Makes History, and, with Howard Zinn and Robin D.G. Kelley, Three Strikes. She is a member of AFT Local 2199 and the Santa Cruz Faculty Association, and has long been active in labor solidarity work in the U.S. and Central America. Since the 2009 military coup in Honduras, she has written regularly about human rights and U.S. policy in Honduras for a wide range of publications including The Nation. Frank has presented at several Reel Work events over the years.
April 30
Jon Silver is the director and founder of Migrant Media Productions, where he has created numerous documentaries and educational films focused on social and educational issues both in Santa Cruz County and nationally. His work in film and photography is deeply intertwined with his commitment to social justice, bilingual education, and language learning. In the 1980s and 1990s, Jon, alongside other activists in Watsonville, played a pivotal role in fighting against immigration raids and civil rights violations. He was also a co-founder of People’s Immigration Services and the Santa Cruz County Immigration Project. Recently, Jon produced a short film titled Living in Exile, which explores the work of the legendary Nicaraguan poet and musician Carlos Mejía Godoy. He also curated a photo exhibit on the Watsonville Cannery Strike, featuring images from the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian, which is currently on display at the Watsonville Public Library. Jon is currently working on a documentary about Esperanza Del Valle, a local Mexican Folkloric Dance Troupe. He presented Watsonville on Strike in Reel Work’s inaugural 2002 season and again in 2010.
May 1
Randy Sabado is a second-generation Filipino American who was born and raised in Salinas and Soledad California. He graduated from Hartnell Junior College and California State University East Bay with a BA degree in history. During his pre-teen and teenage years, Randy worked in the fields of Monterey County during the weekends and summer months. Randy also worked as a Community Worker/Social Worker for Asian Community Mental Health and Alameda County Social Services. He has been involved in the Asian Community in the Bay Area for many years. More recently he has led the annual Walk of Remembrance in Pacific Grove started by his late wife Gerry Low-Sabado
May 2
Samantha Curley is an award-winning documentary film producer and creative entrepreneur based in Los Angeles. She is the Co-Founder of Level Ground, which is both a 501(c)(3) nonprofit artist collective and production company. Her most recent film UNION (dir. Stephen Maing, Brett Story) won a Special Jury Award for The Art of Change at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. She also produced Framing Agnes (dir. Chase Joynt) which won the NEXT Innovator Award and Audience Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary. She’s held fellowships with the Producers Guild of America (2022), NBCU Original Voices (2022), and Impact Partners (2023). In 2023, she received a Cali Catalyst grant awarded to California changemakers whose bold actions are impacting the arts and culture sector. In 2024, she was named to DOC NYC's 40 Under 40 list which spotlights young creatives that are making an impact on the field of documentary. And in 2025 she won a Cinema Eye Honors award for Outstanding Achievement in Production for her work on UNION.
Keil Orion Troisi (“Jeff Walburn”) has been a core member of the notorious comedy-activism group The Yes Men since 2012, and co-wrote and produced most of their performance-interventions since 2016. He has collaborated with dozens of activist groups all over the world, using humor and mischief to advance environmental and social justice campaigns. He directed the corporate-horror features Human Resources and I Was a Teenage Horror Movie! (which has been an audience favorite across the genre-festival circuit). His films combine humor, horror, and playfulness to antagonize systems of power.
Grechen Purser is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, New York. She is an ethnographer and community-engaged scholar focused on labor, poverty, and housing in the United States. This is her very first documentary film!
May 7
Samuel George is a documentary filmmaker for the Bertelsmann Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC. Samuel’s documentaries bring viewers up close and personal to people and communities facing the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, offering candid perspectives that allow viewers to draw their own conclusions. His films focus on the intersection of politics, economics, social issues, and daily life. Filming on the ground from the Turkish–Syrian border, to the factories of Juarez, Mexico, to elections in West Virginia, the films seek to offer a voice to those impacted by policy and macro trends, but who often are denied a seat at the table where decisions are made. George’s documentaries have screened in festivals and special events in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Africa and Europe. George is a veteran of this festival, having screened his film Local 1196: A Steelworkers Strike at Reel Work 2022.
Sandy Harding is Regional Director for the Maritime Provinces at CUPE SCFP (Canadian Union of Public Employees / Syndicat canadien de la fonction publique) in New Brunswick. A former Provincial President in her union, she studied at the Labour College of Canada.
Michael Plewa lives in Los Angeles with his wife Hayley and sons Jack and Charlie. He was raised in the suburbs of Chicago and moved out west after college. He recently completed an MFA in directing at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
May 9
Miguel Angel Caballero is the son of Mexican immigrant farm workers and an award-winning Queer Mexican-American/Chicano writer, director, and producer. His inspiration for storytelling came at a very young age. Though Miguel’s English was limited, he enjoyed making up storylines in real time as he interpreted reruns of "Little House On The Prairie" for his grandma. Much later, he received his bachelor’s degree in Theater from the School of Theater, Film & Television at UCLA.
Luca Quagliatois a filmmaker and photographer. Since 2014 he has been dealing with environmental issues with the project and photographic book La Terra di Sotto, dealing with environmental pollution in Northern Italy. His works have been published in Libération, Domus, The Washington Post, Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, IRPI Media, and Elle Decor Italia. In 2018 he directed, shot and edited together with Guglielmo Trupia the film Antropia, an experimental short film set inside the Expo 2015 site. In 2023 he directed the documentary Finchè sono al mondo with the authors Mario Calabresi and Silvia Nucini.
Laura Carrer is a freelance journalist and researcher. She mostly deals with technology and surveillance, and the impact these have on society, through investigations, reportage, and longforms. She has also written about climate change and environmental rights, housing policies, and gender issues. Her work has been published mainly in Italy by Irpimedia, Domani, FQ Millennium, Wired Italia, MilanoToday, and L'Espresso.
May 10
David Baconwas for twenty years a labor organizer for unions in which immigrant workers made up a large percentage of the membership. Those include the United Farm Workers, the United Electrical Workers, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers, the Molders Union and others. Those experiences gave him a unique insight into changing conditions in the workforce, the impact of the global economy and migration, and how these factors influence the struggle for workers rights. Bacon, a Senior Fellow at the Oakland Institute, is a writer and photojournalist based in Oakland and Berkeley, California. He is an associate editor at Pacific News Service, and writes for TruthOut, The Nation, The American Prospect, The Progressive, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications.
Elbina Batala Rafizadeh immigrated from the Cordillera region of the Philippines with her family in the mid-1960s. Her grandfather worked in Half Moon Bay as a field worker in the late 1950s. She worked as a public health nurse in Pajaro Valley and Watsonville for Santa Cruz County
Keepers of the Malicgong Rice Terraceswas published In 2024, through Jamii Publishing. She is the co-editor of Portable Peace Poetry, From Iraq to Palestine, with proceeds that are donated towards the needs and healthcare of Palestinian families. She is working on her next anthology of essays and poetry by the descendants of the Manongs from Delano, Central Valley, and Watsonville. See elbinabatalarafizade.com.
May 12
Estelle Freedman is the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in U.S. History (Emerit) at Stanford University, has published ten books, including No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women; the multiple award-winning Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation; and, with John D'Emilio, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. She has taught courses on U.S. women’s history and Social Movements through Song. She knew Faith Petric for over twenty-five years through the S.F. Folk Music Club and conducted both an extensive oral history (1993) and a StoryCorps interview (2008) with her.
Christie Herring is an award-winning filmmaker, producer, and editor who has worked in documentary film for over 25 years. Her work broaches complex political and cultural subjects, reaching national and international audiences through film festivals, public television, and major streaming services. She directed The Campaign which followed California’s battle over queer marriage equality and aired on PBS. Christie received her BA from Duke University and her MA in Documentary Filmmaking from Stanford University. See ChristieHerring.com.
Aileen Vance is a member of American Federation of Musicians, Local 1000. She is a singer, songwriter, song leader and choral director. A long-time Santa Cruz resident, she shares Pete Seeger’s dedication to “thinking globally and singing locally,” which she does masterfully as director of the Santa Cruz Peace Chorale for over 21 years and at her regular community sing-along events. See aileenvance.com.
May 14
Brighid Greene is a film, theater, and dance artist. As a producer, her projects include Yara Travieso's La Medea, an immersive musical and feature film that re-imagines Euripides’ myth into a Latin-disco-pop-womanist variety show; and Sarah Friedland's CROWDS, a three-channel video installation of a durational dance. In film, she has programmed and screened for Cucalorus Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and Dance on Camera Festival, and teaches Super 8mm filmmaking classes with Mono No Aware. Brighid was a long time performer in the Bessie-award winning production of Then She Fell by Third Rail projects, and choreographed for Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline. Her own work, shown at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, reflects the curvatures of reality and its intersection with our inner worlds. Brighid grew up on the Monterey Peninsula, and now lives in Queens, NY. She moved from the west coast to the east coast to attend NYU-Tisch and graduated with a BFA in Dance and Religious Studies.
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