THE HEART OF PUERTO RICO

THE HEART OF PUERTO RICO

FRIDAY AUGUST 23, 2020 @ 6PM

THE HEART OF PUERTO RICO Peter Decherney, Jean Lee • USA • 2019 • VR • 6 minutes

A virtual reality documentary about artists in Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria.

Peter Decherney is an author, filmmaker, and professor. He is Director of the Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and has been an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholar, a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and a U.S. State Department Arts Envoy to Myanmar. He has directed documentary and virtual reality films in Myanmar, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Puerto Rico. He is the author or editor of six books including Hollywood’s Copyright Wars: From Edison to the Internet and Hollywood: A Very Short Introduction. He is also a regular contributor to Forbes and an award-winning teacher, whose open online course on the history of Hollywood is available through the edX platform.

Jean Lee is a Korean American writer/director who loves stories about strength and courage. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania, where she made an investigative documentary about Philadelphia’s sex trafficking industry as her senior honors thesis.

In 2009, Jean moved to Washington, D.C. and interned at International Justice MIssion, a NGO that battles human trafficking, child prostitution, and gender-based violence. In 2010, Jean won the Jacob Javitz Fellowship and moved to Singapore where she got her MFA from NYU Tisch, Asia.

Since then, Jean has worked on film projects spanning five continents and 12 countries, including Iraq, Kenya, Israel, South Africa, and Korea. Jean and her works have been selected by Sundance, Berlin International Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, Film Independent Directors Lab, AFI Directing Workshop for Women, Fox Filmmakers Lab, Ryan Murphy’s Half TV Mentorship Program, and the Black List-Women in Film Episodic Writers Lab. Most recently, Jean was named “2019 Top 25 Writers to Watch” by MovieMaker Magazine.

Currently, Jean is finishing a short, science fiction film called “Strong” which won the 2017 Google Grant, the Panavision New Filmmakers Grant, and the Sundance Institute-Knight Foundation Grant. She is also in post-production on a VR documentary series called “The Heart of Puerto Rico” which explores PR artists’ response to Hurricane Maria through surrealist puppetry, street performance, and drag.