Dear NYWIFT Community:
The last few days have been tough given the relentless violence dominating the news cycle, with major tragedies reported at Brown University, Bondi Beach, and the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner.
We originally planned to send you a note of holiday cheer this past Monday, recapping all that NYWIFT has been up to. Of course, we hit pause given the mournful events.
We hope you’ll take a few minutes to review our holiday message below – with an added tribute to the legendary Rob Reiner.
Kindly,
Cynthia
December 15. 2025
Happy Holidays!
I hear the jingle of holiday bells on every door as I enter. Do you? And I think of the line from It’s a Wonderful Life: “Daddy, another angel has its wings.”
The Women’s Film Preservation Fund at MoMA
On December 4th, the Women’s Film Preservation Fund (WFPF), one of NYWIFT’s legacy committees, had a major screening at MOMA of Asylum and The Heart of the Matter, followed by Q&A featuring Gini Reticker, Beatrice von Guggenberg, Sandy McLeod, and Baaba Andoh, moderated by Deborah Shaffer. The conversation was riveting and celebrated the WFPF’s 30-year anniversary.
These films made in the 90s and early 2000s were preserved with the support of the WFPF and resonated with the audience today more than ever. They reflected clearly the social issues we faced back then are still with us today: the lack of proper health care for women, the difficulties of funding for women indie filmmakers, and restrictive immigration policies that had a particularly negative impact on families and women. Yet, the NYWIFT filmmakers persisted in putting these realities on tape and the Preservation Fund ensured we will have these documents of our time.
(WFPF panel at MoMA, photo credit: Catherine Woo/NYWIFT)
A reception was held at Fogo de Chão and it was a real celebration of the look-back and a look forward to the work to be done. We cheered with Brazilian snacks and festive cocktails until 11pm. Thank you Kirsten Larvick, Terry Lawler, Erika Yeomans, Deborah Shaffer, Gini Reticker and the rest of the Preservation Fund for all your tireless work in keeping this agenda alive and thriving. And thank you to all the supporters of this work, over the many years.
Hamptons Doc Fest
Many of us headed to the Hamptons Doc Festival the next morning! In pairs like swans in a pond, but the Long Island Expressway is not so friendly. We persisted like always and got to the destination. This highly celebrated and well-attended festival showcases the best documentaries each year. The dynamic duo Jacqui Lofaro and Karen Arikian and their amazing crew of women including Gillian Coyne and Jamie Coy Wallace make you feel welcome, cared for, and connected to each other. If you have not attended this important festival, you should! If you don’t support it, please consider. And if you are looking for a high-level documentary festival with a small-town feel, this should be your go-to each December.
(Hamptons Doc Fest Founder & Executive Director Jacqui Lofaro, photo credit: hamptonsdocfest.com)
NYWIFT co-presented two screenings to standing room only audiences at the Sag Harbor Cinema: Cover-Up (directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus) and My Underground Mother (directed by Marissa Fox and executive produced by Deborah Shaffer). I moderated a Q&A after each.
I felt so exhilarated by Cover-Up’s intimate yet revelatory investigative approach that depicts government secrecy and the shocking links between the White House and major news agencies – the filmmakers show the trajectory that has always existed. We missed you, Laura, but I was enamored to meet Mark, his impressive list of credits that include: Frontline, American Experience, ABC News, PBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting.
In The Underground Mother, Marisa’s quest to really understand who her mother was leads the audience through a journey like no other… visiting 10 countries and various cities in the United States to discover her life in a Nazi prison factory, to her work as a spy, a military general, and a mother. The filmmaker weaves the archival footage, family photos, artifacts from the Holocaust, and her travel footage together like a tightly woven quilt that was impressive in its feel and how it touched the hearts of the audience.
Finally, Alan Berliner received the Pennebaker Career Achievement Award and festival attendees were treated to a screening of his film Benita. Alan is a long-time friend and POV filmmaker. Benita is an intimate portrait of New York City filmmaker Benita Raphan, who took her life by suicide during the pandemic. Benita made several beautiful short films over the years, exploring the relationship between mental health, innovation, and creativity — including portraits of Emily Dickinson, John Nash, Helen Keller, and Buckminster Fuller.
I wept during the screening because we at NYWIFT have been working with the family and will announce a scholarship in her honor in Winter 2026. I had no idea why she committed suicide and how difficult her life had been but seated there at the Back Bay Theatre I met Benita officially for the first time. For more information about this vital work: please visit https://www.benitafilm.info/.
In Memoriam
Several incredible people from our community have recently passed, but their work remains to teach us what is possible.
They will be missed, terribly, but their legacy remains.
The entertainment community mourns the horrific murder of actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner, who, as many publications reported, “was the son of a comedy giant who became one himself.” Reiner directed such beloved Hollywood classics as This Is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me and When Harry Met Sally after starring in the trailblazing sitcom All in the Family.
The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “The Princess Bride, Misery, the Oscar best picture nominee A Few Good Men, The American President , and The Bucket List also were among Rob Reiner’s 20-plus directing credits.
From the outset of his feature directorial career with This Is Spinal Tap, Reiner seemed to reimagine Hollywood standards, creating and starring in the first mainstream mockumentary. Reiner was also an outspoken political activist who emphasized kindness, fairness, and inclusion above all else, recognizing how his position as a public figure could be wielded to create a positive impact. His warmth was a trademark of his work, and friends, colleagues, and mentees noted his kindness, openness, and desire to raise others up. Learn more.
“Michele Singer Reiner, who was killed along with her husband, filmmaker Rob Reiner, on Sunday at their home in Los Angeles, was a photographer who moved from still images into filmmaking and later into producing, with work that blended performance, politics and persuasion. She was 70.
Singer Reiner was gigging as a set photographer in the late 1980s, including on “When Harry Met Sally …,” the romantic comedy Rob Reiner was directing in New York, a film that would go on to become one of the era’s defining hits. The two married in 1989, months after the film’s release.
After their marriage, Singer Reiner worked on several of Reiner’s films. As Reiner’s career expanded beyond studio films into documentaries and political projects, Singer Reiner — who earlier in her career had photographed the cover of Donald Trump on the photo of his 1987 bestseller “The Art of the Deal” — was closely associated with those efforts, collaborating on films and advocacy campaigns that increasingly overlapped.
In the 1990s, she and Reiner started the I Am Your Child project, an effort aimed at raising awareness about early childhood development and expanding access to support services for parents. In the last decade, Singer Reiner moved more fully into producing.” Learn more.
Barbara Abrash was born on April 23, 1933 in Paterson, New Jersey, USA. Barbara was a director and producer, known for The Molders of Troy (1980), American Experience (1988) and The Brothers of Kappa Pi (2009). Barbara was married to Merritt Abrash. Barbara died on November 30, 2025 in Manhattan.
She was a force in the world, a fierce intellect who lived with intention and precision. Her life had many chapters, and she undertook many roles, always learning and always doing. She was a partner, parent, and friend, a librarian, scholar, restaurateur, teacher, administrator, writer, convener, thinker, provocateur, booster, and film producer, whose primary work focused on the relationship between independent media and social history.
She cared deeply about her work with NYU’s Center for Media, Culture, and History, The Flaherty, the Ford Foundation, Not in Our Town, Women Make Movies and more. Her films, including Margaret Sanger: A Public Nuisance, and Indians, Outlaws and Angie Debo, continue to inform, inspire and instigate. Everything she did, she did superbly.
She is survived by her husband of 73 years, Merritt, her children Michael and Victoria, their spouses Shay and Bruce, her grandchildren Emily, Phoebe, and Corbin, her great-grand- child Miguel Angel, and many devoted friends and relations. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the ACLU or Planned Parenthood – or just find something to do to promote civility, generosity of spirit, and respect and opportunity for all.
Filmmaker Christine Choy was best known for her Oscar-nominated, Peabody-winning documentary that she co-directed with Renee Tajima-Peña, Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987), which had its broadcast premier on PBS’s POV series.
The Museum of Chinese in America writes: “Choy grew up in an eclectic household of women in the French Concession of Shanghai during the 1950s. Just before the Cultural Revolution, her family received permission from the government to leave China and join her father, who had a business in South Korea. At the age of fifteen, she was able to immigrate to the U.S. for study through a Korean Catholic school which had a sister school in New York City. Choy arrived at a time when the country was embroiled in protests for civil rights and demonstrations against the Vietnam War. She credits a film showing the human beings behind the war by Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens for opening her eyes to the power of the medium.
Though formally trained in architecture, Choy decided to make a shift and pursue a career in filmmaking. In 1972, Choy helped found Third World Newsreel, an alternative media arts organization supporting filmmakers who spotlighted voices and issues of communities of color often caricatured or ignored by mainstream media. Believing that a documentary filmmaker must take a position, “even if it might be jeopardizing your family, your fortune,” Choy possessed a fearlessness and activist spirit that clearly manifests in the more than 85 works she has directed, produced or photographed over the course of her long career.
The stories her films have shed light on include a history of Chinese American organizing, from railroad to garment workers; the resettlement of refugees after the Vietnam War; the 1992 L.A. riots, as recounted from the perspective of three Korean women shopkeepers; and of course, the murder and subsequent fight for justice for Vincent Chin.”
NYWIFT was honored to interview Christine as part of our Archive Project, a living history compendium of conversations with influential women in media. https://youtu.be/Smv-KNOZfw0?si=vMNRvx7cLfLKl-up
She also joined us for our virtual 2021 Creative Workforce Summit, discussing the intersection of art and advocacy. You can watch her panel here, starting at around the 46-minute mark.
Blanca I Vázquez was an alumna of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and was the founding editor of CENTRO, the academic journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (1987-1997). She taught in Film and Media Studies at Hunter College, where she was also co-director of the James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism, and received the Isendorf Presidential Award for Excellence in Part-Time Teaching.
Hunter College wrote, “It is difficult to summarize in a few words what Blanca meant to us all, but she was a mentor, educator, activist, advocate, journalist, creative, and so much more. Her impact on students at Hunter College was palpable, as she taught Film & Media studies as a vehicle for critically understanding key social issues and historical events affecting our society. Her thoughtful lessons, unrelenting mentorship, and dedication influenced and awakened a student body that has brought her message forward through their own work.
As the founding editor of the CENTRO Journal—originally called El Boletín—Blanca was also key in opening doors for Puerto Rican academics and researchers focused on illuminating issues affecting the Puerto Rican community. Because of Blanca’s vision, there are now over 35 years and 50+ published issues of the CENTRO Journal by authors who have built incredible pathways in the field of Puerto Rican studies. Not only did Blanca’s work set the stage for Puerto Rican studies, but it also deeply influenced the broader field of ethnic studies and ethnic research centers.
Blanca was also a fierce activist. Her voice shone through all her work, as she fought relentlessly for her coworkers, her students, and her community. As Blanca joins the ancestors, her impact and legacy live on through the CENTRO Journal, through her timeless lessons passed down over generations, and through our loving memories of her as a community.
As we celebrate Blanca’s life, we also share our love and condolences with The Vázquez family, friends, and colleagues. Losing a loved one is never easy, but we hope that the outpouring of love for Blanca sustains you all during this difficult time.”
If you haven’t experienced what NYWIFT has been up-to lately, please check out our map above and join the movement of women making creating and impacting our industry with their voice and talent. To become a member visit www.nywift.org/join.
Lastly, to celebrate the holidays, our last event of the season will be on Friday December 19, 2025 at DGA – a screening of The Family McMullen followed by Q&A with Director/Writer/Star Ed Burns, Producer Ellen H. Schwartz, and Costume Designer and NYWIFT Member Rosemary Lepre Forman, moderated by NYWIFT Board Member Audrey Rosenberg. Then we will have some bites and bubbly together.
If you have not gotten your ticket please do so…Register Here. Proceeds will go to our educational forums and workshops.
Cheers,
Cynthia Lopez and The NYWIFT team!
