Collective, the Oscar-nominated feature documentary, follows a crack team of investigators at the Romanian newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor as they uncover a vast healthcare fraud that enriched moguls and politicians and led to the death of innocent citizens. Join this panel of journalists (Tina Susman, Senior Editor at Time; Mona Nicoară, Romanian journalist and filmmaker; Sara Solovitch, of Searchlight NM) as they discuss the vital importance of the free press, photojournalism, and exposing the injustices of our time.
Speakers
Tina Susman is an American journalist and editor. Currently a senior editor at Time, she was previously the national editor for BuzzFeed News and while at the Los Angeles Times had multiple roles, starting as Baghdad bureau chief. Prior to that she oversaw and contributed coverage from at least 15 countries in Africa for the Associated Press and Newsday. Susman has said about her coverage of conflict zones “I want people to understand terrible things are happening and ignoring them does no good.”
Mona Nicoară is a filmmaker, curator, writer, and educator. She is credited as an editing consultant on Collective. She started working in film in 1997 as an Associate Producer for Children Underground, which received the Special Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary. Her directorial debut, Our School, premiered in the US at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, went on to over 70 festivals worldwide, was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Best US Feature at AFI SilverDocs. Nicoară also works as a festival programmer and has been teaching film, writing, and literature at Columbia University, the Cooper Union, New York University, and Rutgers.
Sara Solovitch guides and edits the work of Searchlight New Mexico. She supervised its launch in January 2018 with the Child Well-Being Project, an investigation into the plight of children and families in New Mexico. Before coming to Searchlight, she published investigative and long-form stories in Esquire, Wired, Politico, and The Washington Post. As a staff reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer, she covered education, courts, and special projects. A former health columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, Solovitch also has traveled throughout New Mexico and Alaska while reporting for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on health care in under-served areas. Her book Playing Scared: A History and Memoir of Stage Fright was published by Bloomsbury in 2015
Jacqueline Frank, Moderator
