Join us for a special profile of five decades of Ithaca-based media production, education, and storytelling as we celebrate the impact and legacy of PhotoSynthesis Productions. Guests include PhotoSynthesis president Deborah Hoard who will discuss the role of the moving image in community-oriented filmmaking and outreach that connects the local and the global – with film clips from award-winning projects and productions.
Cinemapolis: Saturday April 4, 3:30pm – Ithaca-based filmmaker Deborah Hoard and PhotoSynthesis collaborators Che Broadnix and Ry Ferro will join us in person for Q&A led by Leah Shafer (FREE EVENT)
Deborah C. Hoard is the longtime President of PhotoSynthesis Productions, based in Ithaca, NY. For 45 years, she has produced and directed award-winning long- and short-form documentaries that reach international audiences with messages of equity and positive social change. Her work has received more than 200 national and international awards and has screened widely at festivals, in theaters, on broadcast outlets, and across digital platforms worldwide. Her feature films Angkor Awakens: A Portrait of Cambodia and They Call It Myanmar: Lifting the Curtain were both named New York Times Critics' Picks; in 2012, Roger Ebert praised They Call It Myanmar as "a thing of beauty… one of the best documentaries of the year." Her recent film Move When the Spirit Says Move: The Legacy of Dorothy Foreman Cotton earned Best Documentary honors at festivals worldwide and received the inaugural Andrew Young Cinema and Social Justice Award at the BronzeLens Film Festival in 2023. Deborah's path to filmmaking was shaped by lived experience. As a student at University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s, she witnessed firsthand the power of protest and collective action. At Cornell University, she deepened her understanding of education and public policy as cornerstones of a just society. At PhotoSynthesis, she learned filmmaking from the ground up – working across decades of technological change, from shooting on 16mm film and editing on a Moviola flatbed to today's digital production and post-production tools. She is currently a founding member of the Media Arts Collective and Resource Exchange (MACRE), a community-centered interdisciplinary arts hub based in her downtown Ithaca studio. Deborah remains deeply grateful for the collaboration and support of the Ithaca community, and for the many colleagues whose contributions have made her work possible.
Che Broadnax is a storyteller, facilitator, filmmaker, emcee, street medic, freedom dreamer, somatic abolitionist, educator, and possibly temporally-displaced griot. His particular passion is for using narrative to engender empathy and inspire personal and political change. With over two decades of professional experience in the ever-evolving field of digital cinema, Che remains excited by the opportunities new and/or ancient technologies offer for telling stories in radical as well as familiar ways. Che believes in the "inescapable network of mutuality," that "the body is not an apology," and that if you wanna know "where hip hop is going, ask yourself 'Where am I going?'" Their work revolves around repairing, restoring, and transforming that network. In facilitation and education, through media arts and performance, and through mutual aid and solidarity actions, they're gonna work to heal and forge connections that circumvent circumscribed relational modalities.
Ry Ferro is an Ithaca-based documentary filmmaker and director with two decades of experience in non-fiction storytelling and community-centered media. Since 2014, she has served as a director and editor at PhotoSynthesis Productions, where she specializes in translating complex social issues into compelling visual narratives. Her extensive body of work focuses on the intersection of civic engagement and participatory media, most notably as the director and editor of the award-winning feature Move When the Spirit Says Move (2023). Other significant projects include the web series Youth to Power and the documentary Re:Thinking. Driven by a commitment to cooperative business models and media equity, Ry is the founder and director of the Media Arts Collective and Resource Exchange (MACRE) pronounced "maker". Launched in 2025, MACRE serves as an interdisciplinary hub and incubator designed to provide underserved communities with access to professional media tools, mentorship, and resource-sharing. Through MACRE, she works to empower local storytellers and nonprofits, viewing the filmmaker not just as an artist, but as a chronicler and facilitator of community impact.
PhotoSynthesis Productions: A Celebration of Five Decades of Storytelling
