Workshop Participants
Maria Finitzo
Maria Finitzo has been a filmmaker for 25 years. She has directed and produced projects for network television, public broadcasting and the cable market.
Her work has taken her from the Galapagos Islands to Russia and has involved subjects ranging from the command and control of nuclear weapons to the psychology of adolescent girls.
Maria is a long time associate of the award-winning documentary company Kartemquin Films. Her most recent release with Kartemquin is Mapping Stem Cell research: TERRA INCOGNITA, a feature length documentary that puts a human face on the promising but controversial science of stem cell research was awarded the George Foster Peabody award for Broadcast Excellence. Prior to that project, she completed producing and directing With No Direction Home, a short film produced in conjunction with Public Policy Productions, about young people aging out of foster care.
Her most well-known film, 5 GIRLS, is a feature length documentary film that delves into the hearts and minds of five remarkable young women. The film was a special presentation of the PBS non-fiction series P.O.V. and premiered on national public television in the fall of 2001.
Maria participated in the March 2010 MediaStorm Storytelling Workshop. She had the following to say about her experience:
It was an amazing privilege to be a part of a professional experience that was dominated by a generosity of spirit the likes of which I have rarely experienced. Everyone worked together to make the story a success. There was no ego, no territory, just a desire to tell the best story possible.
Roxanne Pickering is a Brooklyn resident bound by family and economics to live near the Gowanus Canal, a polluted waterway recently declared an EPA superfund site.