Filmmaker Screening Series
“SAABA”
With Special Guests: Lance Kramer and Philippe Leroux-Martin!
Reserve Tickets Here!
7pm – Thursday, April 5th at the San Francisco Film School
This new six-part digital docu-series explores a community-based attempt to fight violence in Burkina Faso in the Sahel region of West Africa. Each episode profiles a community member in the small town of SAABA: a police officer, a Muslim cleric, a leader of a vigilante security group, a women’s activist, and the tribal chief. The final episode follows everyone as they come together to build security and resilience in a community on the border of Boko Haram and ISIS strongholds in West Africa. The series is an honest, authentic, people-centered view of a peace-building effort in an area drawing increasing international attention for its role in combating violent extremism.
Visit the website and view a trailer for SAABA here
LANCE KRAMER – producer, Meridian Hill Pictures Lance is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and respected arts leader based in Washington, DC.
Lance produced CITY OF TREES (official selection — Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, DC Environmental Film Festival) which had its public broadcast premiere on the PBS series America ReFramed and is currently in educational distribution with Cinema Guild. In addition to CITY OF TREES, Lance is the co-producer of independent feature documentary VOICES FROM WITHIN (2015), associate producer of FLY BY LIGHT (2015), associate field producer of Al Jazeera America documentary series HARD EARNED (2015, winner of Alfred I. duPont Award), co-producer of independent short films DOING IT FOR ME (2013), LIFE AS A COLLAGE (2011), PORCHFEST (2011), COMMUNITY HARVEST (2010).In 2010, with his brother Brandon, Lance co-founded DC-based documentary production company Meridian Hill Pictures. In 2014, Lance received the prestigious DC Mayor’s Arts Award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the highest honor bestowed upon working artists in the city. Lance has served two terms as Board Member of Docs in Progress, and was a DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities Individual Arts Fellow in 2015, and is a current fellow in the Impact Partners Documentary Producers Fellowship. Lance holds a bachelor’s degree in history and film from Dartmouth College.
PHILIPPE LEROUX-MARTIN – director, Rule of Law, Justice and Security at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Before joining 
USIP, Philippe was a fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.Prior to his fellowship, he headed the legal department of the International Civilian Office in Kosovo, the organization responsible to support and supervise Kosovo’s accession to independence. He also headed the public law unit of the Office of the High Representative in Sarajevo and acted as chief legal advisor to former Belgian Prime Minister Wilfried Martens during his tenure as chair of the Police Restructuring Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Philippe is a member of the Québec Bar. He holds a law degree from the Université de Montréal, a master’s degree in public law from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is the author of Diplomatic Counterinsurgency: Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina (Cambridge University press, 2014). He has been a contributor on BBC World News, BBC Radio, CBC Radio, Al Jazeera, Radio-Canada and the New York Times.
7pm – Thursday, April 5th at the San Francisco Film School
Reserve Tickets Here!