Laura Hanna
Laura Hanna is a filmmaker, media activist and organizer. She helped launch Strike Debt's Rolling Jubilee initiative, produced The People's Bailout Telethon at Le Poisson Rouge, and co-founded the Debt Collective, an economic justice organization that advocates for the rights of debtors. She is director of Gattis, James, Hammer, and Williams, four long form clemency films about death row inmates in Indiana, Delaware, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Hanna co-directed the Perpetual Peace Project film series installed in the New Museum, ICA, Goldsmiths, Utrecht University, and the International Peace Institute. She was commissioned to produce short films for The Venice Biennale of Architecture with Kyong Park and Ted Smith. Hanna has directed and produced shorts for The Nation, OR Books, The New Press, MoMA, Creative Time, SEIU, Art Review, The New School and Slought Foundation.
Astra Taylor
Astra Taylor is a writer, documentarian, and organizer. Her films include Zizek!, a feature documentary about the world’s most outrageous philosopher, and Examined Life, a series of excursions with contemporary thinkers including Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler, Cornel West, Peter Singer and others. Both movies premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Taylor’s writing has appeared in The Nation, the London Review of Books, n+1, The Baffler, the New York Times, and elsewhere. She is the editor of Examined Life, a companion volume to the film, and coeditor of Occupy!: Scenes from Occupied America. She helped launch the Rolling Jubilee and co-founded the Debt Collective. Most recently she is the author of the book The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, winner of a 2015 American Book Award. She is a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow.
