:: About the Festival

:: Organizing Committee

:: Advisory Board

:: Sponsors and Partners

ORGANIZER BIOGRAPHIES (alphabetically)

Film Curator and Publicity Coordinator:

Salma Abu Ayyash is a Palestinian born in Jordan. She is co-founder of the Palestinian arts and culture organization Tawassul and the Boston Palestine Film Festival. She is a local Palestinian rights activist. She is an Electrical Engineer by training (MS, Ph.D. ABD). Salma is interested in acting and directing, has been in a couple of small film productions. Salma taught high school math and science and currently is a freelance Arabic-English translations.

Project Manager, Volunteer Coordinator, and Sponsor Liaison:

Emna Ben Salem was born and raised in Tunisia. Emna received her Bachelor degree in International Business management in Tunis and her MBA degree from Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts. Emna has several years of experience in project management, IT strategy consulting and business process redesign in the financial services and pharmaceutical industries in US and Europe. She currently works as Director of project management in a financial company in Boston. Based on her strong belief in the arts and films as genuine vehicles of cultural awareness, social consciousness and human understanding, Emna used her management and organizational skills to help launch this first large-scale Palestinian Film Festival in Boston, hoping to make it - in few years - one of the most prominent events in Boston's cultural scene.

Film Selection Coordinator, Print/Electronic Marketing:

Maha Chourafa is a Palestinian born in Lebanon.  She studied Math and Education at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, then went on to earn her Master’s in educational administration at Boston College.  A long-time foreign-film enthusiast and world traveler, she most values the role of film in social activism and education.  As an educator, this new member of the BPFF organizing committee hopes to bring an educational outreach dimension to the Festival. After her nine years of teaching, Maha is currently an administrator at the Boston Arts Academy, a public high school for the Arts.

Submissions Coordinator and Filmmaker Liaison:

Christine Giraud graduated with her Bachelors from McGill University in Montreal in 1994. From there she lived in Central America, Mexico and Texas working in documentary film. After graduating with a Masters in Communication from the University of Texas at Austin, she worked at the Ford Foundation in New York, recommending and distributing grants to filmmakers and media nonprofits. She followed that by working for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Accra, Ghana. In Ghana she was posted as a lecturer with the National Film and Television Institute teaching documentary film. She co-organized the first annual Environmental Film Festival of Accra (www.effaccra.org). Her writing was recently published as a chapter in the book Africa Through the Eye of the Video Camera (2009). Christine is currently working as a Project Manager for Boston Medical Center by day and by night as an organizer for BPFF.

Film Curator, Venue Coordinator, and Festival Logistics:

Katherine Hanna is a Palestinian-American who has worked for the last 25 years in the US on educational, cultural and women's projects about Palestine. She is a co-founder of the Middle East Cultural and Charitable Society, Inc. (MECCS) and the Boston Palestine Film Festival; a past Massachusetts coordinator of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination (ADC) and a member of Tawassul. She received her BA in Communications/Political Science at the University of San Diego, California where she also produced documentaries and taught video production. Katherine holds an M.S. in Education and is currently a teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Editorial and Development Consultant:

Kate Rouhana is a writer, editor, researcher, and fundraising consultant. A native New Yorker, she has worked for more than 25 years both on the ground in Israel and Palestine and for local and international organizations that focus on Israel/Palestine. She has also edited a number of scholarly works on related topics. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University and is fluent in Arabic, Hebrew, and French. Kate joined the BPFF Organizing Committee in 2008. She also serves on the Board of the Friends of the Institute for Palestine Studies (FIPS).

Festival Accountant and Financial Manager:

Donald Veach is a co-founder of the Middle East Cultural and Charitable Society, Inc. (MECCS). MECCS assists in the annual production of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival. In association with Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies' Arab Education Forum, Mr. Veach produced a series of documentary films on site in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. Donald Veach has a substantial background in accounting and finance and has been very active in issues of human and civil rights concentrating on housing and health care issues.

Past and Adjunct members of the Organizing committee

Nitin Sawhney, Ph.D. Co-Founder of the Boston Palestine Film Festival and adjunct member of the BPFF organizing committee. Nitin Sawhney, Ph.D. is a Research Affiliate with the MIT Visual Arts Program, Dept. of Architecture and a Research Fellow with the Jerusalem 2050 Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Nitin was born in New Delhi, India and lived in the Middle East for over 12 years. Nitin received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from MIT, as well as M.S. and B.E. degrees from Georgia Tech. He has conducted research on interactive video technology, open design collaboration, mobile and wearable computing, speech interfaces and auditory perception at the MIT Media Lab, Mitsubishi Electric Research, Georgia Tech’s GVU Center, and Fuji-Xerox Palo-Alto Labs. Nitin’s current focus is on human rights advocacy through participatory new media technologies. In 2006, he founded Voices Beyond Walls, a nonprofit initiative to conduct digital video and storytelling workshops with youth in refugee camps in the West Bank. He co-founded and organized the annual Boston Palestine Film Festival since 2007. He also established the international Expressions of Nakba Exhibit in 2008. He is currently developing the Media Barrios project to support urban renewal and social empowerment through the media arts, as part of the Just Jerusalem initiative at MIT.