Panel: Filmmaking at Dartmouth and the Upper Valley
Clips & ConversationLocal Dartmouth alumni and current students share clips of new work and discuss the resources and inspiration available for aspiring filmmakers in the area.
DFS 75th Alumni Fest (Nov 7-10)Did you know that there are Dartmouth students, alumni, faculty and staff making movies in the Upper Valley all the time? This is your chance to learn about some of their current projects and find out what networks and resources are available for folks looking to work in film on the local level.
Guests include Signe Taylor (filmmaker, Office of Communications), Jordyn Fitch '20 (UV JAM), Nora Jacobson '74, Ben Silberfarb '90, Harriette Yahr '87 and Dan Maxell-Crosby '02.
Co-sponsored by the Leslie Center for the Humanities, the Department of Film & Media Studies, the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship and the Center for Professional Development.
Jordyn Fitch '20 is a filmmaker, media educator, community organizer, and professional rabble-rouser from South Florida who loves complicated board games and organizing the working class. They are the Production Manager and a producer at Junction Arts & Media. They live in Lebanon, NH with their lovely wife and slightly wilting plants.
Dan Maxell Crosby '02 is a video and film professional with 20+ years of experience in all stages of production. In addition to producing compelling content with Dartmouth's Media Production Group, Dan also serves on the board of JAM (Junction Arts & Media) located in beautiful downtown White River Junction. He can also be found tinkering with printmaking and stop motion animation, running through the VT hills, and reclaiming (rather unsuccessfully) his vintage LEGO® collection from his now fourteen-year-old son. Dan majored in film and television studies and minored in economics, and is married to Sarah Maxell Crosby '04–both of them longtime members of the Dartmouth Film Society.
Nora Jacobson '74 is an award-winning independent filmmaker who works in narrative film as well as documentary. She is devoted to telling stories of women, social justice, cultural diversity and place. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Herb Lockwood Award for Excellence in the Arts, among other awards. Her films have been shown theatrically, on PBS, at Sundance, the New York Film Festival and many other venues and festivals.
Ben Silberfarb '90 is a writer and director as well as director of photography and video editor. His projects range from the production of feature films (Brief Reunion) to television commercials and everything in between. Ben's background in environmental conservation including a Masters of Environmental Studies (Yale University), employment by The Nature Conservancy (1992-97) and The Lyme Timber Company (1999-2006) has fed a special interest in filmmaking about the outdoors. Along with nature, Ben loves bicycles and cosmological ideas of space and time.
Signe Taylor is an experienced documentary filmmaker and media educator, who has worked as a Senior Producer with the Media Production Group at Dartmouth since 2018. Her videos made for Dartmouth have helped garner millions of views and her collaboration with Professor Kimberly Juanita Brown received a Case Award. Prior to Dartmouth, Signe produced and directed It's Criminal, a feature documentary focused on a Dartmouth class, taught by Professors Ivy Schweitzer and Pati Hernandez, which brought students to a local jail to collaborate with incarcerated women on creating and performing a play. She also produced and directed Circus Dreams, a feature documentary about the only traveling youth circus in the United States. She received her BA from Barnard College and her Masters in Communication from the Documentary Film Program at Stanford University.
Harriette Yahr '87 is a filmmaker and educator. Her experience in film is wide-ranging and includes screenwriting, directing, producing, editing, cinematography, and journalism. Her film work has been screened at film festivals internationally, including the Telluride Film Festival. Harriette teaches filmmaking and screenwriting, as well as Oral Histories and Digital Storytelling, a course that merges theory with creative media exploration (video, podcasts, web-based storytelling). She is currently working on an animated short that is taking her down new, expressive roads (including with AI) and is developing a program for Dartmouth students at the Sundance Film Festival, which had its first iteration in 2024. She also enjoys making pop-up books and has been awarded the Dartmouth Book Arts prize.
DFS 75th Alumni Fest
DFS 75th Alumni Fest
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