Film/Video Alumni Panel

When: Feb 4, 2020 5:30- 7:00 pm
Where: Kennedy 406
621 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA

Alumni Panelist

Tara Merenda Nelson (MFA 2011) is a filmmaker, curator, programmer and lecturer working with film and digital media. Her films, videos and installations have been shown at MoMA, Flaherty NYC, Views from the Avant Garde (NYFF), the Dallas Medianale, VideoEx Film Festival (Switzerland), Anthology Film Archives, MONO NO AWARE, the Warhol Museum, and many galleries and festivals throughout the US, Canada and Europe.
As Curator of Moving Image Collections at Visual Studies Workshop,Tara oversees the assessment, cataloging and digitization of nearly 10,000 titles on 16mm and magnetic video. Tara is the Programmer for the VSW Film Series, and has programmed over 70 screenings of film, video, sound and media installation by more than 100 artists since 2015. In addition, she oversees the preservation of significant films and videos in the VSW collection, including original works by filmmaker Robert Frank and video activists Portable Channel.
She presents on the preservation and exhibition of experimental film and video at national and international conferences, including Northeast Historic Film Symposium, the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), Orphans Film Symposium, and Oberhausen Short Film Festival. She has taught Media Production and History courses at Montserrat College, Ithaca College, Cornell University, the University of Rochester and currently teaches in the MFA program in Visual Studies at the State University of New York at Brockport.

Ryan Dight (BFA 2013) is a Director/Animator/Editor based out of Boston. Currently, he works as an Animator for Mullenlowe, where he’s part of a small internal team that creates content for clients including Burger King, E-Trade, JetBlue and US Cellular. Previously he operated his own small production company out of Austin, TX where he collaborated with musicians and nonprofits to make affordable creative content that ranged from music videos to short documentaries. His notable clients included the Austin Film Society, NEA, and No Sleep Records.

Ryan still collaborates with local musicians regularly and his work has been published in Nerdist, MTVu and Alternative press. Additionally he’s worked on a variety of film productions, live events, and film festivals. Recently, he decided to focus primarily on post production and animation, a decision that brought him back to Boston (for the third time), where he can regularly be found at local shows and screenings.

Rick Dorrington (BFA 2013) is a videographer, photographer, and video editor. Since graduating from the Film & Video program, he has worked with clients such as Dell, The New England Patriots, The City of Boston, and Butcher Box. He currently works full-time at LexMedia in Lexington, Massachusetts as their Video Producer, as well as producing videos for several long term clients under his company, Future Ghost. In 2019 he completed his first feature film, The Revelator, which he co-directed, wrote, and edited. Rick is currently working on securing funding for his second feature film.