Astoria Film Festival Inc, in Astoria NY, is a 501c3 non-profit organization and an official NYC DOE VENDOR. Astoria Film Festival is devoted to increasing the representation of under-represented people in media and film by providing them with the skills, experiences, and connections needed to obtain jobs in the media industry. Each year, we produce a main festival and a Youth Festival; organize a Career Fair; teach filmmaking workshops to ages 8adult in schools, after schools, and community centers; provide virtual and in-person internships for high-school and college students interested in media careers; train high-school and college age youth in media production and give them real-world production experience working on media projects with various industry professionals and local businesses. Astoria Film Festival is especially focused on supporting groups typically ignored and/or oppressed in society – Disabled people, women, FLI (First-Gen/Low-Income/Immigrants), BBIA (Black/Brown/Indigenous/Asian), LGBTQIA+ people. We also connect our younger students to our older students and to our festival filmmakers and industry professionals who work with us, thus creating a multi-generational, diverse, local filmmaking community and network.
Nina Fiore is the disabled first-gen Founder and Executive Director of Astoria Film Festival, an Advisory Board Member and Partner for the CTE Film Program at the High School of Art and Design in NYC, and an Advisor for the RespectAbility/Netflix Disabled Media Writers Lab. Nina has a BA and EdM from Harvard University and has long been involved with content production (for digital media, tv, and film), afterschool education, and nonprofit management. Nina managed the team at Viacom that created and launched the Noggin Channel and also created and produced content for MTV, Comedy Central, PBS, Sesame Street, Paramount TV, Nickelodeon, VH1, Comedy Central, Sesame Workshop, Merrill Lynch, & Sundance Film Festival. Nina also has over 25 years experience in Education. She managed an After School Program in the Mission Hill Housing Complex in Roxbury, MA, created a Digital After School program at the Children’s Aid Society in Harlem, NYC, that served as a pilot program for Intel’s Computer Classrooms, and, after graduate school at Harvard, served as Communications Director and Grants Manager for an Educational Research Group at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School that worked with struggling Boston Public Schools. Nina also served as Director of Education at Variety Boys & Girls Club of Queens, where she conceived of creating the Astoria Film Festival, to connect local youth with the filmmakers in the community and with industry professionals. Nina is a disabled woman who homeschools her disabled son, advocates for disability rights, and resides in her hometown of Astoria, NY.
MEET AFF TEAM
Board Treasurer – Slavko Bogdanov PhD (he/him) is an Astrophysicist at Columbia University where he conducts research on high-energy astrophysical phenomena utilizing space-based NASA observatories. Previously, he was a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Global Fellow at McGill University in Montreal, QC, and a research fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA. Slavko holds a PhD and MA from Harvard University and a BS with Honors and Distinction from Penn State University. He resides in Astoria, NY and is a member of our Finance and Executive committees.
Board Secretary – Dauna Williams JD (she/her) is a global attorney, an expert in leading and managing legal teams and operations, and devising cutting-edge, legal solutions and cost-saving, process improvements. Dauna has practiced intellectual property, technology, outsourcing, privacy, marketing/advertising, entertainment, new media and general corporate law for over 25 years. As in-house counsel, she managed these legal practices and related global teams for corporations in the financial and insurance industries, namely Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and MetLife. She is currently the Founder/Director of LexROI LLC, a legal and business consulting firm. Additionally, Dauna is a writer, producer and director of independent film and theatre, often with a focus on interactive storytelling. She founded an interactive digital marketing company in 1999 called Content360 and was one of the producers for the Tony-nominated, Broadway production of The Scottsboro Boys. Dauna has a JD from Harvard Law School and a BA from Brown University. She resides in Brooklyn, NY, and is a member of our Finance and Executive committees.
Ruth Fernandez (she/her) is a NYC-born artist who is a member of IATSE Local 798 as a HMU (Hair and MakeUp Artist and Groomer) for the film/tv industry. While working in a salon in Chelsea in the early 2000’s, she was introduced to her future mentor, who took her to assist on an independent film. Soon after, she found herself working on “Making the Band” with Danity Kane on MTV and was then asked to work on the group’s first video shoot in Los Angeles, which paved the way to her current career. Today, Ruth is the go-to to many, both on and off the red carpet. Among the stars Fernandez has worked with are Selita Ebanks, Brian Tyree Henry, Kane Brown, Laila Ali, Sterling K. Brown, Marlee Matlin, Brooke Shields, Miriam Shor, Gaten Matarazzo and Niki Taylor among many more! Ruth also has extensive experience with editorial, commercial work and high-profile advertising campaigns, including Ray-Ban, Bon Appétit, Interview Magazine Germany, Nylon, GQ, Weight Watchers, Welch’s and Verizon. In 2017, she became a member of IATSE Local 798. This was a long time dream of hers, to be able to lend her talents and continue to learn and grow as an artist by working along side the best of the best in the TV/Film world.
