| BIOGRAPHY
Yvette Torell began her video
career at the Boston Film/Video Foundation experimenting with linear editing systems, 3-chip cameras, and the Sandin Image processor in 1984. It was around this time that she also began working in documentary film and
PBS distribution at the Newton Television Foundation. Instead of going to art school, Yvette spent 2 years at the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities as a media arts program manager during a generous period of funding for the arts.
Her first film Persephone Dream is a hybrid media piece shot in Super 8mm film and edited on
videotape. Persephone Dream won an award at the San Francisco Video Refusés in
1987.
Some time later, Yvette traveled to China and Tibet to film Y Na Na a short documentary portraying the women of four different indigenous
groups living in southwestern China. Y na na won
the "Grand Prize for Best Documentary" and the "Audience Favorite"
awards at The U.S. Super 8mm Festival and was broadcast on New Jersey Public Television.
In 1995, the director turned
her lens to focus on the intimate lives of five women, producing Just Mom and Me, a documentary feature about the challenges
facing single mothers in America. Just Mom and Me received the "Audience Favorite
Award" at Pacific Northwest Festival of Anthropological and
Fictional Film. It is distributed educationally by Filmmaker's Library in New York, and has been televised on WGBH, KQED, KRON,
KPBS, KTOP, and Free Speech TV.
Among other pursuits, Yvette has acquired a M.A. in Radio and Television from
San Francisco State University, and has a B.A. in Mass Media Communications from Boston College. As a media
scholar, she conducted research and has written about interpersonal online communications, and how synchronous textual messaging has profoundly altered the way people communicate.
Yvette also served as a visiting artist and adjunct professor at the San Francisco Art Institute teaching the Avid and editorial methodologies and aesthetics to students.
Her films have been screened at
Mill Valley Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival,
Film Arts Festival, Athens' International Film Festival, New
Jersey International Film Festival, United States Super 8mm
Film Festival, Women's Film Festival of Montreal, Taos Talking
Pictures, Tahoe International Film Festival, Northwest Film
Center, The Visual Studies Workshop, Works by Women at Barnard
College, Women One World, The Smoky Mountain Media Festival, and the Library of Congress.
Finally, she is the devoted mother of a talented singer, composer, musician and theologian, Abhay, who is currently attending Fordham University.
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