Member Screening Series: My Father’s House and The Checklist Effect 

Member Screening Series: My Father’s House and The Checklist Effect 

Join us for this month’s NYWIFT Member Screening Series featuring My Father’s House, A Journey of Love and Memory by Hannah Reimann (Director/Producer) and Maura Kelly (Advisory Board); and The Checklist Effect by Lauren Anders Brown (Director). The filmmakers will be available for a Q&A immediately following the screening.

The screening series provides members with the opportunity to show their work in a theatrical setting. Screenings take place at Anthology Film Archives, followed by networking at a nearby bar.

My Father’s House, A Journey of Love and Memory
Hannah Reimann (Director/Producer)
2017, 27min

Hannah Reimann’s self-produced film, a love letter to her father, tells the story of her father Dr. Peter Reimann, sister Kim, their devoted Korean housekeeper Mrs. Man Cho Lee, and herself. Their life in suburban New Jersey serves as the backdrop for a universal story about dementia, death and dying, albeit within the context of their unique personal experiences caring for Dr. Reimann in the last three years of his life. My Father’s Housetouches us in the rather deep places we don’t often venture. The film allows caregivers to see that there are others going though similar circumstances and that they are not alone. It assures us that the path of caregiving, however painful and unpredictable, is a worthy one, one that redeems and one that rewards us with the silent, unforeseen promise of comfort and peace at the time of a loved one’s death. My Father’s House shows us that death is not something to be feared, but to be embraced in the context of a fatal illness, empowering both the living and the one who has passed.

Hannah Reimann (Director/Producer) is a singer, pianist, composer, educator and filmmaker born in New York City to German and Korean parents. She has performed classical, singer-songwriter and other musical genres in halls and festivals in the US and abroad for over two decades. Her CD, First Songs, in radio rotation for over 15 years, features her “extraordinary voice” (Sirius/ XM Radio). She is also an actor with roles in over 24 film and theater productions. Reimann’s short films include Destroying Angel (2012) (New Jersey Film Festival, Long Island International Film Expo) and My Father’s House, A Journey of Love and Memory (2017).

Maura Kelly (Advisory Board Member) is an Emmy Award-winning producer and impact marketing executive. Her career spans leadership positions in broadcast television at PBS/ WNET (Executive Producer) where she built successful media franchises and helped raise over $15 million for programming — to working with top-tier media companies, such as The Jim Henson Co, Tribeca Film Institute & PBS Kids — to non-profit work in Ethiopia and Peru. Currently, Kelly is a principle of Purple Mountain Media and helps creators and entrepreneurs with creative and strategic direction, partnership development, and impact marketing plans. She is the lead advisor on the Leadership & Executive Acceleration Program (LEAP)™ @MauraKellyMedia

The Checklist Effect
Lauren Anders Brown (Director)
2016, 45mins

Both scientific and deeply personal, The Checklist Effect is a documentary for anyone who’s ever had surgery, or watched someone they love disappear behind those swinging doors. Inspired by surgeon and author Atul Gawande’s award-winning book The Checklist Manifesto, the film team embedded with communities from Moldova to Mongolia to understand how longer lifespans have led to an urgent increase in the need for surgery – and provoked a deadly safety crisis. Next to the operating room table, one of our most sacred and dramatic spaces, we see a mother cross mountains to risk a better life for her son; feel the daily struggles of culture, politics, economics of a team defying odds to put communities back together; and learn that wherever you are in the world, a simple checklist can make the difference between life and death.

Lauren Anders Brown grew up in the New York City area and has more than ten years of industry experience. In 2007 she joined the International Cinematographer’s Guild, and has worked as a camera assistant on several television shows (Ugly Betty, Royal Pains, Nurse Jackie, The Blacklist, House of Cards) and feature films (Argo, We Need To Talk About Kevin). In 2013, Anders began her independent filmmaking career by shooting documentaries with a focus on international humanitarian issues (The World Cup Project, Power of Play, The Checklist Effect). In the past four years, she has filmed in over 25 countries and edited in ten languages.