With roots in Miami, Austin and New York City, Joel Fendelman is an award-winning filmmaker dedicated to telling stories that reveal the underlying connections between us all. His documentary Man on Fire received an IDA Documentary Award and premiered nationally on PBS’s Independent Lens (2018–19 season). He went on to direct North Putnam, which won the Indiana Spotlight Award at the Heartland International Film Festival, and Finding Lucinda, currently being distributed by Freestyle Digital Media.

For this presentation on OVID, Joel discusses three films: his feature-length doc North Putnam, which depicts a year in the life of a rural Indiana school district and the community it serves; plus two shorts, Auction, an eight-minute portrait of a cattle auction in Gonzales, Texas; and Band of Sisters, a seven-minute look at one of the largest marches for women’s rights in the U.S. as they march through the Streets of Washington D.C.