At Full Frame, Deirdre implemented free year-round screenings as well as the “Teach the Teachers” program and lending library, “The School of Doc” and the “A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy” venue. Under he...
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At Full Frame, Deirdre implemented free year-round screenings as well as the “Teach the Teachers” program and lending library, “The School of Doc” and the “A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy” venue. Under her leadership the festival is now a PGA qualifying festival for both long and short form documentary films, as well as an Oscar qualifying festival for short form documentary. Both the 2014 and 2015 Full Frame juried short winners became Oscar nominees.
She attracted the creation of the Full Frame Theater and its new offices. She helped found and is Vice President of the Film Festival Alliance, serves on the board of the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce, and has moderated/participated in panel discussions and juries at several universities, film festivals and conferences. She served on POV’s 25th Anniversary Board, and the Advisory Board for the recent report "Dangerous Documentaries: Reducing Risk When Telling Truth to Power" by the Center for Media & Social Impact.
In 2015 she spoke at the International Film Festival Summit about the relationship between filmmakers and festivals, and the IDA’s GETTING REAL conference, wrote an article for Indiewire called “Why Filmmakers need the Festival Forum”, and was published in the online peer reviewed journal Synoptique.
She recently delivered the keynote speech at the Flyway Film Festival, established a new screening series with the Walker Museum (Minneapolis) entitled “Cinema of Urgency” co-presented by Full Frame and running March-October, 2016, and helped adjudicate an NEA grant.
Previously, she consulted for such organizations as the Motion Picture Association of America and Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Her first film, the award-winning 2002 broadcast documentary Scene Smoking, was narrated by Sela Ward and starred Sean Penn, Ted Danson, Rob Reiner and many other Hollywood leaders about onscreen tobacco use. She is a member of Women in Film and the Screen Actors Guild, and earned her BFA at Purchase College
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