Film Forum

Brandon Kramer is a Washington, DC-based filmmaker and co-founder of Meridian Hill Pictures with his brother Lance. Brandon directed THE FIRST STEP (Tribeca, AFI DOCS); CITY OF TREES (Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, PBS, Netflix); and the Webby Award-winning independent documentary series The Messy Truth (CNN). Brandon is a Film Independent Fellow, a DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities Fellow, a regular collaborator with Kartemquin Films in Chicago, and has served as a media teaching artist for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Brandon holds a bachelor’s degree in film and cultural anthropology from Boston University.

Lance Kramer is a Washington, DC-based filmmaker and co-founder of Meridian Hill Pictures. Lance produced THE FIRST STEP (Tribeca, AFI DOCS); CITY OF TREES (Full Frame, PBS, Netflix) and the Webby Award-winning series The Messy Truth. Lance is a Film Independent Fellow and has been selected to participate in the Film Independent Fast Track program, Sundance Creative Producers Summit, Impact Partners Documentary Producers Fellowship cohort, was named to the DOC NYC “40 Under 40” list, and received the DC Mayor’s Arts Award, the highest honor given to working artists in the Nation’s Capital. Lance is a former Board Member of Docs in Progress, a member of the Documentary Producers Alliance, and currently serves on the board of the Foundation for the Augmentation of African Americans in Film (FAAAF).

Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 1,400 public television and radio stations worldwide. The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard honored Goodman with the 2014 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence Lifetime Achievement Award. She is also the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize' for “developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.” She is the first co-recipient of the Park Center for Independent Media’s Izzy Award, named for the great muckraking journalist I.F. Stone, and was later selected for induction into the Park Center’s I.F. Stone Hall of Fame. Goodman has co-authored six New York Times bestsellers: Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America; The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope and Breaking the Sound Barrier with Denis Moynihan; and, with her brother, journalist David Goodman, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times; Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back; and The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them. She co-writes a weekly column with Denis Moynihan (also produced as an audio podcast) syndicated by King Features, for which she was recognized in 2007 with the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Reporting. Goodman has received the Society for Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for Excellence; American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Award; the Paley Center for Media’s She’s Made It Award; and the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship—as well as the George Polk Award, Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s Meet the Press. PULSE named Goodman one of the 20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009. She has also received awards from the Associated Press, United Press International, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Project Censored. Goodman received the first ever Communication for Peace Award from the World Association for Christian Communication. She was also honored by the National Council of Teachers of English with the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language.

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