GLIMMERGLASS FILM DAYS STAFF

Margaret “Peggy” Parsons, Founder and Artistic Director
Ellen Pope, Executive Director, Otsego 2000
Jennifer Armstrong, Finance and Operations Manager, Otsego 2000
Peg Odell, Program and Communications Manager, Otsego 2000
Joey Katz, Programmer
Xander Moffat, Technical Director/Programmer
Micaela Wallace, Cooperstown Graduate Program ‘25, Film Days Intern
Joslyn Sperry, Cooperstown Graduate Program ‘26, Film Days Intern

GLIMMERGLASS FILM DAYS STEERING COMMITTEE

JoAnn Gardner is a strong advocate for the importance of film in the classroom. Prior to moving to Otsego County a decade ago to raise a family and try her hand at farming, JoAnn split time between New York City and Los Angeles working on a number of commercials, movies, and television shows.  Most recently she helped organize the first Women in Film Weekend sponsored by FilmCoop and was the academic advisor to the award-winning Cooperstown Central School Media Club.

Joey Katz, Film Days programmer, has been a part of the Glimmerglass Film Days team since 2016, where he started as an intern, doing everything from acquiring films to driving festival guests to screenings. He’s devoted to showing unique and eye-opening films wherever and whenever he can. While at SUNY Purchase (where he graduated in January 2018 with a BA in Cinema Studies) he organized and moderated special screenings. After college, he went right to work and created and programmed the Film Society of Cooperstown early in 2018, soon after moving to the Boston area to work in distribution. Currently residing in the Buffalo area, he serves as the Director of Special Programming  for Boston Jewish Film, assisting in the programming and operations for the Boston Jewish Film Festival — one of the largest film festivals in New England — and other year round programs.

Jim LaCava is a sportsman, artist, physician and cinephile long committed to preserving the unique and historic natural beauty of Otsego County and its environs. He has faith in the power of films to foster productive discourse through the insights and emotions they engender.

Xander Moffat, Film Days technical director/programmer, is an independent film producer. Through his production company, LunaSea Pictures, he produces narrative and documentary projects along with commissioned commercial work. Moffat studied film at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Though he spends time in Los Angeles and New York City for work, Cooperstown continues to serve as his home base.

Margaret (Peggy) Parsons, Film Days founder and Artistic Director,  founded the film program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, an exhibition program and archival collection. She has served as board member for major film organizations including the Robert Flaherty Seminar and Washington Environmental Film Festival and has been on the editorial boards for The Moving Image and the Getty Trust’s Program for Art on Film. She has been a judge for international film festivals including Syracuse, Nashville, Turin, and Poznań, and her work in film preservation has earned her awards from the governments of France, Czech Republic, Italy, Romania, and Georgia. Other interests include folk and self-taught art, and her articles have appeared in Raw Vision, Folk Art, Folk Art Messenger, New York Folklore, Curator, and The Moving Image.

Ellen Pope is executive director of Otsego 2000, a small non-profit dedicated to preserving the historical, cultural, agricultural, and environmental assets of the Otsego Lake region surrounding Cooperstown, New York. She is responsible for the overall management and direction of the organization and its programs including efforts to protect the region from shale gas extraction and other industrial threats, preserve its rich historical buildings, hamlets and landscapes, and promote local sustainability primarily through the Cooperstown Farmers’ Market and other economic development initiatives like the Film Days.  Prior to joining Otsego 2000, she spent 17 years in transatlantic exchange and policy, five of those at the French-American Foundation in New York, and twelve at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, D.C., where she managed the Marshall Memorial Fellowship leadership program for seven years before launching the Comparative Domestic Policy program, a major initiative focused on transatlantic exchange of best practices in urban and regional policy.

Van Broughton Ramsey received six prime time Emmy nominations for costume design and two Emmy wins for the miniseries, “Lonesome Dove” and “The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.” He was awarded the Costume Designers Guild Career Achievement Award and three nominations for outstanding costume design for television. Van is a graduate of Baylor University and the University of Texas.

Professor Peter Rutkoff, Chair, Department of American Studies, Kenyon College. Peter Rutkoff chairs the Department of American Studies at Kenyon College in Ohio. He is the author of recent non-fiction works that examine African-American art and culture, as well as two novels, most recently Irish Eyes. He is a regular summer visitor to Cooperstown, which is also the setting of his book of short stories, Cooperstown Chronicles.

Inspired by Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Erik Stengler became an astrophysicist before pursuing a career in science communication, specializing in science centers and science in film. He worked in science centers in Spain for 12 years and in parallel took courses in film analysis, screenwriting, and film music, and collaborated with the early years of the international festival of film music Fimucité. Before coming to Cooperstown, he taught on a science communication master’s degree in Bristol (UK), for 10 years, including courses on science museums as well as documentary and wildlife filmmaking. He has published articles on science communication through online video and on Michael Crichton’s work, of which he is a collector. Erik now teaches on science museums at the Cooperstown Graduate Program and looks forward to continuing to cultivate his passion for the audiovisual language with Glimmerglass Film Days.

Sydney L. Waller, independent consulting curator and private gallerist, currently focuses on projects where agriculture and culture converge. She manages the estate of farmer/self-taught artist Lavern Kelley (1928-98), whose art stems from an era of sustainable farm practice, and a family tree farm near Cherry Valley.  Ms. Waller has initiated many successful cultural programs, alternative art spaces and community events over several decades. She first brought the Black Maria Film Festival to town in a film series she spearheaded in the 1990s for Gallery 53 Artworks, an alternative art space she co-founded. While at Gallery 53, she also launched popular annual community events like Upstate Chic, ‘the show that showed you could stay warm and still be cool. ’ While leading other Upstate non-profits, she championed, among other programs, the Greater Adirondack Poetry Festival for children and co-established Griffiss International Sculpture Garden in Rome NY on a former military base. Also experienced in fund development and non-profit management, Ms. Waller serves on the Otsego 2000 board.

Madeleine Zenir is the founder and owner of Cooperstown Composting. She is a member of the board of Otsego 2000.

SPECIAL THANKS TO

The Cooperstown Graduate Program-SUNY Oneonta