Deepa Dhanraj has been involved with the women’s movement in India since 1980, around the time she started making films. Since, she has directed documentaries that have screened at festivals around the world. Themes have consistently related to women’s status, political participation, education, and health. Dhanraj has a special interest in education; she makes films that enable communities to identify barriers faced by first generation learners from marginal communities, especially girls, with a view to enable access to schooling. She has contributed papers to conferences relating to feminist research and teaches video to women activists from Southeast Asia.

Read Deepa's essay: Word Within the Word

Cornelius Moore is the Co-Director of the 41 year-old San Francisco-based distributor and production company, California Newsreel. His work focuses on the acquisition, promotion, and programming of films on African American life and history as well as films from and about Africa.

Read Cornelius' essay: The Sixties: From 1969 to 2009

Haida Paul has worked in film and television for over 40 years. Her passion for the documentary form was ignited by the early work of Allan King, the Maysles Brothers & Charlotte Zwerin and, perhaps most significantly, Frederick Wiseman. Over the years she has collaborated with independent filmmakers from Canada, India, Britain, the United States, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Her teaching activities include apprenticeship training for Directors’ Guild of Canada, workshops and seminars with Cineworks Canada, sessional lecturer at Simon Fraser University, Emily Carr University, and the University of British Columbia.

Read Haida's essay: Reality Sandwiches