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 Emily
Kunstler
graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in
Film and Video in 2000. Emily worked as a video producer for
Democracy Now!, an independent national television
and radio news program that broadcasts on the Pacifica Radio
Network, and on public access and satellite television. She
was a studio art fellow with the Independent Study Program
of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2004. Along with
Sarah Kunstler she is a co-founder of Off Center Media. With
Off Center Media, Emily has co-produced, directed and edited
a number of short documentaries, including “Tulia, Texas:
Scenes from the Drug War” (2003), which won Best Documentary
Short at the Woodstock Film Festival, and was instrumental
in winning exoneration for 35 wrongfully-convicted people,
and “Getting Through to the President” (2004), which won the
audience award at the Portland International Short Film Festival. |
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 Sarah
Kunstler graduated from Yale University with a BA
in photography in 1998 and from Columbia Law School with a
JD in 2004. She has worked as a photographer for the New York
City Department of Parks & Recreation, freelance photojournalist,
and media director for the William
Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. She is currently
a criminal defense attorney practicing in the Southern District
of New York. Along with Emily Kunstler she is a co-founder
of Off Center Media, and has co-produced and directed a number
of short documentaries. |
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 Billy
Sothern
graduated from NYU Law School in 2001 and is an attorney with
The Justice Center, a non-profit law office located in New
Orleans, Louisiana that provides representation to indigent
defendants across the Deep South. Mr. Sothern works primarily
on capital appeals in Louisiana. He was the attorney for Ryan
Matthews, and worked successfully to get Ryan off of death
row and back home with his family. Subsequently, Mr. Sothern
has written about race, poverty and the criminal justice system
in national magazines and publications. Mr. Sothern is the
director of Reprieve U.S., a Louisiana-based charity dedicated
to assisting in the provision of effective legal representation
and humanitarian assistance to impoverished people facing
the death penalty. |
 Vanita
Gupta joined the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) as a Soros Justice
Fellow in September 2001. She is now an Assistant Counsel
at LDF where her work centers on civil rights litigation that
promotes systemic reform of the criminal justice system. Ms.
Gupta successfully led the effort to overturn the convictions
of 38 defendants in Tulia, Texas, organizing over a dozen
national law firms in this fight and coordinating the legal
and media strategy. Working with co-counsel, she also recently
settled the civil rights cases filed on behalf of the wrongfully
convicted Tulia residents for $6 million. The settlement disbanded
the narcotics task force responsible for the drug sting and
resulted in the early retirement of two key officers involved
in overseeing the sting operation. Ms. Gupta worked with Off
Center on “"Tulia, Texas: Scenes from the Drug
War." |
 Lazar
Bloch
is a social justice activist. He co-produced "Tulia,
Texas: Scenes from the Drug War" and is currently a law
student at Columbia, where he coordinates the National Lawyers
Guild and the Outlaws chapters. He spent the summer of '05
working on indigent defense reform legislation and monitoring
conditions of confinement in youth prisons with the Juvenile
Justice Project of Louisiana. He is currently a law clerk
at the ACLU Gay and Lesbian Rights Project, working on issues
affecting queer young people.” |
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