OUR SPEAKERS: LOIS VOSSEN  

Lois Vossen is the founding executive producer of Independent Lens, a PBS series that each season coproduces 20+ original documentaries, documentary shorts for PBS Voices YouTube Channel, journalism shorts, and docuseries including Philly D.A., A Lion in the House, and Have You Heard From Johannesburg (both Primetime Emmy Award winners). Independent Lens has received 25 Emmy Awards, 23 Peabody Awards, 6 duPont Columbia Journalism Awards, 10 Academy Award nominations, and was honored with the 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017 International Documentary Association (IDA) Best Series Award, with 3 additional nominations. Previously, Lois was Associate Managing Director of the Sundance Film Festival and Sundance Labs. She serves on the Television Academy Board of Governors Executive Committee and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). She’s been a juror for DOC New Zealand, Toronto International Film Festival, Shanghai International Festival, SXSW, Palm Springs International Film Festival, and New Orleans Film Festival. Independent Lens documentaries include Try Harder!, One Child Nation, I Am Not Your Negro, Belly of the Beast, When Claude Got Shot, Always in Season, Bedlam, TOWER, Trapped, (T)ERROR, The Invisible War, The House I Live In, Black Panthers: Vanguard of a Revolution, The Trials of Muhammad Ali, among many others.

SIAN-PIERRE REGIS and REBECCA DANIGELIS 

Sian-Pierre Regis is a filmmaker who directed, produced and self-distributed his debut feature documentary Duty Free. Released in 30 theaters over Mother’s Day 2021, Duty Free was a press magnet garnering coverage from CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, MSNBC, The Tamron Hall Show, AARP; the film was also a #1 Apple News story through the weekend. Prior to filmmaking, Regis was a journalist and on-camera contributor to CNN, HLN, MTV and founded Swagger, an online lifestyle magazine for millennials with over 1.5 million fans. In 2018, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Colgate University.  Photo with his mother, Rebecca Danigelis, the subject of Duty Free 

PATRICK SAMMON 

Patrick Sammon is the Founder and President of Story Center Films, LLC. He is the Co-Director and Co-Producer, with Bennett Singer, of a documentary about the remarkable and little-known story of the LGBT activists who successfully battled the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.  Previously, Sammon was the Creator and Executive Producer of “Codebreaker,” a “superb” (The Telegraph) ), “imaginative” (Sunday Times), award-winning drama-documentary that “artfully explored” (The Mail) the life and legacy of Alan Turing, one of the 20th century’s most important people. Turing helped win World War II through his codebreaking and laid the intellectual foundation for the computer age. Instead of being celebrated, however, he faced brutal persecution from the British government.  Sammon turned his idea for “Codebreaker” into a highly acclaimed film that has reached all corners of the globe. More than three million viewers around the world have seen the film through television broadcasts and a 12-city U.S. theatrical release, film festivals, digital outlets.  Sammon started his career as an award-winning television news reporter at two local CBS affiliates in Northern New York and Northeast Tennessee.

BENNETT SINGER 

Bennett Singer is an award-winning producer/director/writer whose films have been screened at The Kennedy Center, The United Nations, The British Museum, and the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. His latest documentary, CURED, directed with Patrick Sammon, won a $50,000 award in the 2020 Library of Congress Lavine/Burns Prize for Film; it will air nationally on PBS’ Independent Lens series in October 2021 (www.cureddocumentary.com). CURED has been optioned by 20th Television as the basis for a limited series on FX, to be written and executive produced by Steven Canals; Singer is serving as a producer on that project. He previously co-produced and co-directed BROTHER OUTSIDER: THE LIFE OF BAYARD RUSTIN, a “potent and persuasive piece of historical rediscovery” (Los Angeles Times) that premiered at Sundance, aired nationally on PBS and Logo, and won more than 20 international awards (www.brotheroutsider.org); and ELECTORAL DYSFUNCTION, a “frightening and enlightening” (WBEZ Radio) documentary about voting that was hosted by Mo Rocca and won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award (www.electoraldysfunction.org). The former executive editor of TIME Magazine’s education program, Singer is the author or editor of five books, including 42 UP, the companion volume to Michael Apted’s documentary series; LGBTQ STATS, an “indispensable” (Booklist) almanac of facts and figures on the ongoing LGBTQ revolution; (www.lgbtqstats.org); and THE STUDENT BODY, a “wry, insider thriller” (Village Voice) that he wrote with three Harvard classmates.