CFF Brings the Filmmakers into Your Home

Up Front and Personal with the Virtual Chesapeake Film Festival

You will have the rare opportunity to meet the directors and producers from some of the films featured in this year’s Chesapeake Film Festival on Facebook LIVE beginning Thursday, September 24. Learn what these filmmakers were most passionate about when making their film and why they decided to make it. Find out what was their biggest challenge in getting their films made and what their upcoming projects are.

On Thursday, September 24 at 1:15 pm, meet the director and producer of The Penny Black. Joe Saunders, director and Alexander Greer, producer, discuss their documentary feature “film noir” The Penny Black. The film looks at the estranged son of a con artist who fights temptation, paranoia, and his own nefarious legacy as he searches for the rightful owner of a mysterious, million-dollar stamp collection.

Joe Saunders is an Emmy Award winning documentary director and producer. His work has appeared on HBO, Netflix, Funny or Die, ABC, NBC, Hulu and includes The Traffic Show, The Penny Black, Coach Snoop, and Billy Mize and the Bakersfield Sound. Saunders received an MFA from Columbia University, and is a Film Independent documentary fellow. He currently lives indoors.

Alexander Greer is an award-winning filmmaker whose work has screened at Tribeca Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, and Los Angeles Film Festival, amongst others. As a freelance producer, he’s created content for MTV, Funny or Die, RedBull TV, Warner Bros. Records, Columbia Records, Gatorade, and New Form Digital. He graduated with honors from the film program at Columbia University, currently lives in Los Angeles, and is a big fan of Oreos.

On Saturday, September 26 at 2 pm, meet Mason Mirabile, emerging filmmaker of Never Too Small. “The Earth is dying. Climate change is the most important issue the world is facing today”. Never Too Small is a short documentary about climate change and how kids can help. Nine-year-old director Mason Mirabile, who filmed, edited and scored the film, asks experts at the World Wildlife Fund to help him tell his story.

On Tuesday, September 29 at 1:30 pm, meet Chantal Potter, Maryland director of Balloon Man. This documentary feature begins where the rubber met the road in the early 1970s for Bill Costen. After being drafted by the Buffalo Bills and later being sent to a Buffalo farm team in Hartford, CT, a life-threatening tragedy forced him to put the pads down. The result was a lark that led to the birth of the first African American Master Hot-Air Balloon Pilot in the nation. Bill is Chantal Potter’s father.

Chantal Potter is an award-winning director, producer and writer with an eye for original content. She graduated from Howard University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts, with a concentration in Television Production and a minor in Business Administration.

Chantal was the creator, Executive Producer, and host of two BET docu-series entitled, The Defining Moment and Turning Point, where she interviewed celebrities and dignitaries on their unique pathways to success. Guests of the shows include Whoopi Goldberg, Michael B. Jordan, Loni Love, Gina Prince Bythewood, Nate Parker, Tessa Thompson and Music Soulchild. Both series won numerous Telly and Communicator Awards.

To see our Facebook LIVE Promos, go to the CFF Homepage (chesapeakefilmfestival.com) and click on the Facebook icon (F) in the upper right-hand corner and the video will automatically pop up on your CFF Facebook screen.

If you can’t tune in when it’s live, that’s okay!  You can still catch the videos by going to the CFF Facebook page and clicking on “Videos” in the left-hand menu.  

Any questions, please call our Executive Director, Nancy Tabor, at 443-955-9144.

The Chesapeake Film Festival is generously supported by the Shared Earth Foundation, Maryland Film Office, Maryland State Arts Council, Talbot County Arts Council, Talbot County Department of Tourism, Artistic Insights Fund, Richard and Beverly Tilghman, Karen and Langley Shook, U.S. Small Business Administration, Talbot CARES Small Business Grant and The Ravenal Foundation. Funding has also been provided to the Chesapeake Film Festival from Maryland Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020.