Voices of Kalkeri

Anam Abbas is a Pakistan based Pakistani/Canadian filmmaker. She runs Other Memory Media.

As a producer and DOP her first feature Showgirls of Pakistan, premiered in the First appearance
competition” at IDFA 2020 and was released globally by VICE in Feb 2021.

Dagh Dagh Ujala (This Stained Dawn) is her award winning debut feature documentary as a director. It premiered in international Competition at the Sheffield Doc Fest 2021.

Her first fiction feature “In Flames”, Directed by Zarrar Kahn, will have it’s World Premiere at Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival 2023.

Anam is an alumni of Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors Hub 2017, 2018 Berlinale Talents, 2019 Film Independant Global Media Makers, 2020 Berlinale Talents Project Market Fellow and 2020 Cannes Producer’s Network. Anam is also one of the founding members of the Documentary Association of Pakistan (DAP).

Jennifer Abbott is a Canadian filmmaker who has been experimenting with media as a form of intellectual and creative expression and activism for almost 25 years. Abbott is largely self-taught struggling over the course of 5 years to make her first feature documentary, A Cow at My Table. At the time and before she learned the pitfalls of hyperbole, she would often be heard saying that her film meant so much to her that when it was done, she’d feel her life had been worthwhile and could die. Happily she didn’t and went on to make several others. She is best known as the co-director with Mark Achbar and editor of The Corporation, an international hit in festivals, TV and theatres. It garnered 26 awards including the Sundance Audience Award and a Genie and has a 90% rating for both critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. It is also credited as one of the top ten films to inspire the Occupy Movement.

Currently Abbott is in development with the National Film Board of Canada on a feature documentary The Air That Breaths Us about the psychology of climate change. She is also co-writing and editing Sea Blind, a film about the melting Arctic Ocean and the opening of the Northern Shipping Route slated to screen at the Paris Climate Talks, COP 21. Abbott is also finishing co-directing, co-writing and editing the feature documentary Us & Them about homelessness and addiction, slated for release in 2016. In 2013, Abbott made the experimental short Brave New Minds for Amsterdam’s Submarine Channel that premiered at DOK Leipzig and was nominated for Prix Europa. ln 2012, she began developing a documentary with the NFB but emerged having written the first draft of a feature screenplay titled Money and Other Love Stories. 2011 saw the release of I Am, which Abbott edited and executive produced. Her previous work includes the experimental short Skinned exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and editing several other indie-docs. She lives on a permaculture farm with her large blended family on a small Pacific Island on Canada’s west coast.

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A self-taught filmmaker with 12 years of experience, Jean-Marc focuses his energies in documentary productions. His first passion is cinematography to which he offers his services as a director/cinematographer.

He has completed two independent feature documentaries. In “Shugendô Now” he explores our relationship to nature through a Japanese tradition. In “Diversidad” he follows a group of young adults who embark on a journey to discover their relationship to the food they eat.

His niche is the creation of positive and heartfelt films that seek to share solutions to the fundamentals problems of our society. This comes from his conviction to play a part in the creation of a more ecological and just society.

Jean-Marc has travelled around the world with his camera and through his explorations in film discovered a second passion in Permaculture, a science of sustainable design through the study of nature. He is gaining more experience as an educator and facilitator, giving workshops in video making and the Permaculture design process. He practices the Chinese art of Qi Gong and has produced instructional Qi Gong DVDs for two of his teachers.
Past clients include BBC Worldwide, National Geographic, Discovery World HD, Madonna, Moment Factory, Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Éloize, Tourism Québec, TVA, Canal Évasion and more.

Achbar is a graduate of Syracuse University’s Fine Arts Film Program. Achbar interned in Hollywood on the children’s TV programme Bill Daily’s Hocus Pocus Gang, followed by a three year stint in Toronto with Sunrise Films on their documentary series Spread your Wings and the CBC/Disney series Danger Bay. He then teamed up with director Robert Boyd, and received a Gemini nomination for Best Writer on The Canadian Conspiracy, a cultural/political satire for CBC and HBO’s Comedy Experiments which chronicled Canada’s secret takeover of the USA. It won a Gemini for Best Entertainment Special and was nominated for an International Emmy.
Achbar moved into independent media, working in many capacities on films, videos and books on issues ranging from nuclear lunacy, poverty, and East Timor, to the media, U.S. hegemony and corporate power.
With Peter Wintonick, Achbar co-directed and co-produced Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, which was, until the release of The Corporation Canada’s all-time, top-grossing feature documentary. Achbar’s companion book to the film hit the national best-seller list in Canada.
Achbar collaborated with editor Jennifer Abbott to create Two Brides and a Scalpel: Diary of a Lesbian Marriage, a low-budget video diary by the couple known as Canada’s first legally married lesbians. This true story of “boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy becomes girl” received festival invitations from around the globe and was broadcast in Canada on Pridevision and the Knowledge Network.
In 1997, Achbar initiated a project titled The Corporation with author and University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan. Bakan wrote the film and book, while Achbar directed, produced and executive-produced the film. Jennifer Abbott joined the team as editor and co-director in 2000. The documentary compares globalized corporate psychology and practice to formal definitions of psychopathic behaviour, touching on environmental and social issues, as well as historical origins of corporate behaviour.

Celebrated documentary photographer and filmmaker, Nance Ackerman has been making images and film around the world for over 30 years. Her documentary photography work has been featured in Time, Newsweek, Canadian Geographic, New York Times, and Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail and she was the assistant photo editor at the Montreal Gazette for several years before going freelance. Her work has been described as ‘artivism’ – creating art to create change. Striving to build bridges of understanding, common ground and a global awareness of human behaviour on this planet, her work quickly grew too large for the daily news cycle. After being dragged across the barricade while covering/protesting at Oka, she started on a journey of discovery of her Mohawk heritage. The result, her photographs of First Nations women, have been exhibited at the Aperture Foundation in New York and the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. Following that, Ackerman’s book, Womankind: Faces of Change Around the World – a collection of portraits and essays of women activists around the world – was released in 2003.

In 2005 Ackerman turned her eye to directing social documentary films. Her first film, the National Film Board feature documentary Cottonland, brought in numerous awards and three Gemini Nominations, and shone a light on the connection between the world of opioid drug addiction and post industrial malaise. Since then she has made several more award-winning documentaries and an animated short. Her collaborative feature documentary film, Conviction, went inside Canada’s women’s prisons to imagine alternatives to incarceration through art and music and premiered at Hot Docs International Film Festival. Conviction won her, and her co-directors, a National Writer’s Guild Award for Best Documentary script. Her latest film Behind the Bhangra Boys takes an intimate look at joyous activism through five Sikh Bhangra dancers and new Canadians. Ackerman is now developing several projects from Afghanistan to Mexico that explore the power of the human spirit behind many seemingly overwhelming global issues. She has a masters degree in New Media and also taught for seven years at the University of Kings College, in Halifax. She now offers International photography workshops around the world. Ackerman also composes soundtracks with her partner, Jamie Alcorn, at their studio in Halifax, Heartstring Productions.

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David Adkin studied music and theatre in Saskatoon before moving to Toronto to complete a BFA in Creative Writing and a MFA in Film (Screenwriting and Production) at York University.  His first short film The Salesman (1986), a black comedy about consumerism, was shown widely on CBC and Canadian pay television.  Since 1986, Adkin has been actively involved in the Toronto filmmaking scene as a director, producer, writer, editor, and researcher.  He has served on the board of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus (Toronto Chapter) and the Blue Ribbon Jury for Hot Docs.  His films encompass issues of social justice, human rights, history, media, the arts, and many other subjects.

Adkin’s most recent documentary directing and editing credits include Home Safe Hamilton (2010, co-produced and directed with Laura Sky) – part of a series examining the reasons why Canadian families with children are struggling with poverty and the threat of homelessness. Debt Trap (2008), aired on Global Television’s Global Currents series, is an ironic and enlightening look at the bigger economic forces pushing more and more consumers into record levels of personal debt.  Prescription for Addiction (2008) chronicled the growing epidemic of addiction to prescription opiate pain medications.
Adkin’ work as a television director includes acclaimed documentary series Little Miracles chronicling real life cases at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, and Med Students, which follows the training of new doctors at McMaster University. He wrote and directed three episodes of the History Television series A Scattering of Seeds: The Creation of Canada.  First Lady of the Yukon: Martha Black (1999) tells the story of a Chicago woman who abandoned a life of privilege to seek adventure in the Klondike Gold Rush. The Reluctant Politician: The Story of Irene Parlby (2000) profiles an English immigrant who became a leading voice in the co-operative farm movement.  A Farmer from Amber Valley: J. D. Edwards (2001) chronicles the migration of African-American settlers to northern Alberta in 1910.

In 1998, Adkin directed and co-produced the feature documentary/comedy special We’re Funny That Way (1998), a candid look at openly-gay comedians.  The film was a hit at festivals and has been broadcast on HBO’s Cinemax, PBS, Bravo, Viewers Choice, and PrideVision TV.

Adkin produced and directed Jim Loves Jack:  The James Egan Story (1996), a documentary about Canada’s first gay rights activist.  Broadcasts include Vision TV, TVOntario, ORF (Austria), and Planete France/Germany/Italy/Africa.  Jim Loves Jack received its European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival and won the Best Documentary award at the Turin International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Italy.
From 1987 to 1993 Adkin directed, researched, wrote, and/or edited several projects for the Ontario Centre of the National Film Board of Canada.  His debut as a documentary director was the critically-acclaimed NFB feature, Out: Stories of Lesbian and Gay Youth (1993).  Out was invited to major festivals in Montreal, Nyon, and Berlin and has received television, theatrical, and educational distribution worldwide. The film won a Gold Apple Award at the National Educational Film & Video Festival in Oakland, California, and garnered a Cable Ace Award nomination for Best International Documentary Special on American cable television.  Adkin also directed two best-selling educational anthologies for the NFB, Media & Society (1989) and Constructing Reality:  Exploring Media Issues in Documentary (1993), both designed to teach media literacy.
As an editor, Adkin has worked on several documentaries for television broadcast including Debt Trap (2008), Ali Kazimi’s Continuous Journey (2005) and Barry Greenwald’s The Experimental Eskimos (2010). He has also taught courses in documentary directing and writing for L.I.F.T., the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto.

Since 2008, Adkin has worked as a co-producer, director, editor and Program Manager for SkyWorks Charitable Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to using documentary as a community development tool. In his current role as SkyWorks’ Community Development Coordinator, Adkin is developing a new programming stream to train and engage youth to make their own films for social change.