BIOGRAPHY
Yvette Torell began her media career at the Boston Film/Video Foundation experimenting with video technology using linear editing systems and the Sandin Image processor in 1984. She worked in documentary film and PBS distribution at the Newton Television Foundation in 1985. Her first film Persephone Dream, a hybrid media piece shot in super 8mm film and edited in video, won an award at the San Francisco Video Refuses in 1987. She traveled to China and Tibet to shoot Y Na Na, a film portraying the women of four indigenous groups living in southwestern China, in 1988. Y na na won the Grand Prize for Best Documentary and the Audience Favorite awards at The U.S. Super 8mm Festival.

In 1994, Yvette co-produced and edited William Stafford and Robert Bly: A Literary Friendship, which was shown widely on PBS stations.

In 1995-2000 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 and has been televised on WGBH, KQED, KRON, KPBS, KTOP, and Free Speech TV from 2000 until 2004.

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, Visual Studies Workshop, and Works by Women at Barnard College in New York City.

From 2000 to 2002, Yvette served as a visiting artist and adjunct faculty member at The San Francisco Art Institute. She has a M.A. in Media Studies from San Francisco State University and a B.A. from Boston College in Literature and Mass Media Communications.