Juan Mandelbaum

Juan Mandelbaum has been recognized as a documentary filmmaker, and has also worked as teacher, curator and consultant. He is President and Creative Director of Geovision, a Massachusetts multicultural communications agency. Juan's work has been broadcast on a variety of venues, from American Playhouse to Sesame Street, and has won multiple awards, including EMMY awards and nominations, CINE Golden Eagles, Gabriel awards, CHRIS award, and Silver Apple award. Juan was a producer/director at WGBH-Boston on Americas, a 10-part series on Latin America and the Caribbean for PBS and Channel 4-UK, for which he co-produced In Women's Hands and produced Builders of Images. Juan's independent productions have been aired on PBS and in many festivals and are in worldwide distribution. His films have received grants and funding from the Sundance Institute, ITVS, Latino Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts/Massachusetts Cultural Council. These include Caetano in Bahia, Ringl and Pit, A New World of Music, and the Poetry Heaven series, on The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Juan has served as reader and panelist for the Independent Television Service (ITVS), Latino Public Broadcasting, Massachusetts Cultural Council, New Hampshire Council on the Arts and the New England Film and Video Festival. Juan studied sociology in his native Argentina, and worked as a journalist, photographer and educator until he left for the US in 1977 to leave behind the military dictatorship. He holds an MA in Communications from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, which in 1998 gave him the Merrill Panitt Citizenship Award, given every year to a distinguished alumnus. Juan is past president of International Film Seminars, organizers of the Flaherty Film Seminars.