Advisory Committee

Pam Nice

(consultant): An independent filmmaker and theater director from St. Paul, Minnesota whose recent documentaries have focused on increasing understanding between Americans and Arabs. In Letters from Cairo(2003), which won the Worldfest Houston Bronze Award for international documentaries, she interviewed Egyptian artists and intellectuals about their views of the U.S. and their own culture. Dreaming in Morocco (2007) interviewed Moroccans aged 18-30 about their hopes and dreams. Both were intended for American audiences, and have been shown at film festivals in Montreal, Toronto, Washington, DC, Houston and Orlando, among others; at educational conferences such as the Middle Eastern Studies.

Kitty Aal

(Screen writer): Kitty is a film programmer and photographer. A graduate of the Film Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison she has served as coordinator of various film series and festivals. She held internships at the Walker Art Center’s Film and Video Department (1998) and the Minnesota Film and T.V. Board (2001). In conjunction with Cinema Revolution, Kitty curated Cinema des Artistes, a monthly film and discussion series at the Varsity Theater (2005-2007). She has been a regular guest on TPT’s Bel-Ahdan discussing film from the Middle East. She also served on Mizna’s Fourth Arab Film Festival Selection and Planning Committee and was Co-Organizer of the Cinema and Society in the Arab World Conference at the University of Minnesota (2006).  She was Associate Producer/Casting Director on the Minnesota-made feature “Triumph ’67”.  She currently co-programs the Carbon Arc Cinema in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Jeff Strate,  (editing consultant)

Mr. Strate has been a television writer/producer fore more than 15 years, he is now producing a progressive weekly TV show, Democratic Vision. He was one of the War on Poverty’s first “soldiers” serving as a teacher in rural Alabama in 1965. He was also a Peace Corps teacher in Uganda just prior to outbreaks of genocide and has a graduate degree in African studies.  Mr. Strate began his televison career at University Community Video and KTCA-TV.