Liza Donnelly
Director / Producer

Liza Donnelly is a writer and cartoonist for The New Yorker Magazine, where she has been drawing cartoons and writing about culture for forty years. She has been a contributor to CBS News and CNN, creating political cartoons and animation, as well as live-drawing special cultural and political events. Donnelly writes and draws for publications including The New York Times and CNN Opinion pages and The Washington Post.

Donnelly’s popular TED talk was translated into 42 languages and viewed over 1.5 million times. She has delivered talks at the United Nations in New York and Geneva; The New Yorker Festival; SXSW; five TEDx’s, universities, NGOs and corporate venues in the US and abroad. Donnelly was a Cultural Envoy for the US State Department, traveling around the world to speak about freedom of speech, cartoons and women’s rights.

Donnelly is the innovator of a new digital visual journalism called live-drawing. For CBS News, CNN and The New Yorker, she covered the DNC in 2016, and the 2017 Inauguration, a White House Press conference, and political protest marches. In 2016, Donnelly was the first cartoonist to be granted access on location to live draw the Academy Awards and has covered it for seven years.  Both on location and remotely, she covered presidential debates, State of The Union, The Impeachment Trial, election returns, the Emmys, the Golden Globes, the Grammys, the BET Awards, the Tonys, the Olympics, World Cup, literary events, and more.  Her innovative approach to reporting and commenting on events with live drawing has been covered in various publications and video profiles in Time, BBC, CBSNews.com, NBC News.com, Ad Week, USA Today, CNET, and People Magazine. 

Donnelly is the author/editor of eighteen books for adults and children, most notably Very Funny Ladies, a history of women cartoonists of The New Yorker. Donnelly is a member of the international project Cartooning for Peace, helping to promote understanding through humor. Her work has been in numerous exhibitions globally, and she has curated exhibits of international cartoonists, here and abroad. Donnelly taught at Vassar College for four years as adjunct professor of Women’s Studies and Cartoon History. Her solo exhibition, Comic Relief, was held at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts in 2020.

Donnelly was recently appointed Visiting Scholar at Vassar College, 2023-2024. Also a  Distinguished Athena Leadership Fellow at Barnard College, Donnelly is a recipient of an honorary PhD from University of Connecticut and delivered the Graduate School Commencement address, was a Thurber Prize finalist, the award for written humor in the United States, and is a recipient of a Reuben Award, the Salon St. Just International Prize, France, the AAUW Women of Distinction Award, and the Forte Dei Marmi, Italy, Satire Award. Her cartoons are in the Library of Congress Prints Collection, The Museum of Illustration and in private collections, and her cartoons are collected in numerous books around the world. Donnelly is a member of PEN America and the National Press Club, Authors Guild, the Society of Illustrators, and the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists.

Kathleen Hughes
Director

Kathleen Hughes is an award-winning director, producer and writer of documentary film and other media. Most recently, she directed and produced the feature documentary, THE AMERICAN DREAM AND OTHER FAIRY TALES with Abigail Disney, which launched at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. She also produced and co-directed the Emmy-award winning documentary, THE ARMOR OF LIGHT, with Disney, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2015. With director Tom Casciato and PBS host Bill Moyers, Kathleen is currently directing a new episode of the longitudinal documentary series TWO AMERICAN FAMILIES for PBS Frontline.  The series has been following the fortunes of two working families from Milwaukee, Wisconsin since 1991. Over the years Kathleen’s films have garnered three national Emmys, the duPont-Columbia Gold Baton, the Gracie Award, the Sidney Hillman Prize, the Dateline Club’s Society of Professional Journalists’ First Amendment Award, the Harry Chapin Media Award, the Christopher Award, and honorable mention for the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.

Judith Mizrachy
Producer

Judith Mizrachy is a New York City-based independent producer. In 2022, her film THE MARTHA MITCHELL EFFECT (directors Anne Alvergue & Debra McClutchy/ producing partner Beth Levison) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released globally on Netflix on the 50th anniversary of Watergate. The film was nominated for a 2023 Academy Award® for Best Short Documentary. Her previous film THE BOOKSELLERS (director D.W. Young), a behind-the-scenes look at the rare book world, premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2019 and was released in the U.S. by Greenwich Entertainment and sold internationally by Magnolia Pictures. Most recently, her film UNCROPPED (director D.W. Young), about the great Village Voice photographer James Hamilton, premiered as the 2023 Centerpiece at DOC NYC.

Her films have screened at festivals including Sundance, NYFF, Hot Docs and SXSW. Her work has been shown on big screens around the world including Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Bertha DocHouse London, and Tokyo Shinjuku Cinemas, and on small screens via Netflix, The Criterion Channel, The New Yorker and more.

Nathalie Seaver
Producer

While Nathalie Seaver has a long history in film, starting in France with Francois Truffaut and other stints in French production, her first paying job was as a pen and ink illustrator, which makes WOMEN LAUGHING an especially resonant project. Seaver began her film career as a photo researcher for Terrence Malick and then moved on to positions in creative development for film and television at Universal Pictures and MGM in New York. After moving to Los Angeles, she continued as a creative executive at Warner Brothers and Showtime, as a development and production VP. Her current role is as Executive Vice President at Foothill Productions. Their robust slate of films have premiered at Sundance, TIFF, Tribeca, Hot Docs, and the Venice Biennale and include Oscar-nominated, THE MARTHA MITCHELL EFFECT, LEAD ME HOME, as well as the short listed, DESPERATE SOULS, DARK CITY THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY. Foothill’s most recent titles include CARVILLE: WINNING IS EVERYTHING, STUPID, FOOD AND COUNTRY, ART SPIEGELMAN: DISASTER IS MY MUSE and MAESTRA, which premieres on Netflix in October 2024.

Andrew Fredericks
Editor

Andrew Fredericks has been a documentary filmmaker for more than thirty years. He has collaborated with preeminent journalist Bill Moyers on a host of documentaries and conversations. His body of work also includes work as Director, Cinematographer, Editor and Writer on projects with filmmakers Alex Gibney, Gini Reticker, Kathleen Hughes and Abigail Disney. He edited the co-wrote the award winning, I CAME TO TESTIFY, the premier film in the highly acclaimed PBS Women War and Peace series and LOOKS LIKE LAURY, SOUNDS LIKE LAURY, named one of the top ten television documentaries of 2015 by the New York Times.

More recently, Andrew edited the Emmy Award winning ARMOR OF LIGHT and JOHN LEGUIZAMO’S ROAD TO BROADWAY for the Great Performances series. He Produced and Edited the Emmy nominated Hulu documentary, 3212 UN-REDACTED as well as producing and photographing the award-winning, LOVE, JAMIE, scheduled to debut on PBS’s inaugural season of American Masters shorts. 

His current independent projects include UNORTHODOX BOYS, which profiles the life of renegade gay artist, Bernard Perlin.

In Association With

The Harnisch Foundation

Executive Producers

Melony Lewis
Lauren Lexton
Claire F. Newman