It's only a week away...

The Fusion Film Festival is only a week away and we have another programming announcement!

On Saturday February 27th at 5pm in the 721 Broadway building, Theater 006, Fusion will be presenting a panel entitled Double Threats. This panel features many multi-hyphenates: actor-writers, director-producers, writer-directors and so on. It seems some ladies can really do it all.

Our esteemed panelists include:


Paola Mendoza (Actor/Director/Writer)

From her directorial debut Autumn's Eyes, to On the Outs, to her short documentary Still Standing and to her latest film Entre Nos, Ms. Mendoza has continually tackled the effects of poverty on family and children. Her films have been embraced at prestigious festivals such as Toronto, Berlin, South by South West, Full Frame, HotDocs and Tribeca. She was a nominee for the 2008 NALIP Estel Awards, given to Latino filmmakers that show extraordinary promise in the field of directing. As a writer she won the Grand Jury Prize for the Panasonic Digital Filmmakers Award at 2007 IFP Market Award for the script of Entre Nos. She was featured as one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film 2009.



Jennifer Grausman (Director/Producer)

Before beginning production on Pressure Cooker, Jennifer Grausman produced six short films. Dear Lemon Lima premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2007, and Solidarity screened at the New York Film Festival in 2005. In 2006, she was the production supervisor on The Killing Floor, an independent feature film.

A graduate of the MFA film program at Columbia University, Grausman was honored with the 2005 Best Producer Award at the Columbia University Film Festival and the Arthur Krim Memorial Award in 2004. Prior to graduate school, she was the Manager of Exhibition and Film Funding at The Museum of Modern Art. She earned her BFA in Art History at Duke University.



Lena Dunham (Director/Writer/Actress)

Lena graduated from Oberlin College in 2008, where she studied Creative Writing. Her first short film, Dealing, premiered at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival. Her first feature, Creative Nonfiction, premiered at SXSW 2009. She has made two webseries, Tight Shots and Delusional Downtown Divas. In 2009, she was commissioned to make ten more episodes of DDD to project at the Guggenheim's first annual Art Awards, an event which the Divas hosted in character (and Lena co-wrote the teleplay.) In 2009, she was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film". She writes about film and interesting characters for various publications, including Interview Magazine, Onion A/V Club, and HammertoNail.com. Her second feature, Tiny Furniture, will premiere at the 2010 South By Southwest Film Festival



Alana Kearns Green (Writer/Actor)

Alana Kearns-Green has been seen on an actors panel with Michael Keaton, joking with Matthew Modine, and acting alongside Twilight star Jackson Rathbone. Her latest credits include an iPhone commercial for Qualcomm industrials, a music video for Cucu Diamantes, and her first feature film, Mary Marie; co-created with Alexandra Roxo and Rachel Earnest.

Drawing on her multi-lingual skills and interests, Alana has had great success with the short Le Retour, (dir/Rachel Earnest) following the film to over 30 film festivals worldwide. She has been nominated for two Best Actress awards for Le Retour, and gained much praise for the performance. Fluent in French, she has great interest in bridging the gap between cultures and using film to do so.

She has collaborated with filmmaker Alexandra Roxo for over six years now, with one short film, Out of the Blue and one feature screenplay, In Pursuit of the Pomegranate, under their belt. In Pursuit of the Pomegranate drew Alana much attention on YouTube with her intimate improvisations with actor Jackson Rathbone. She now dodges threats from jealous teenage girls.

Presently in post-production for Mary Marie, (Directed by Alexandra Roxo, Written by Alana Kearns-Green and Alexandra Roxo, Produced by Rachel Earnest) Alana looks forward to the inevitable spontaneity of life and to the adventures she will surely encounter in the future.