KEEPERS OF THE GAME

Filmmaker: Judd Ehrlich

Festivals: Tribeca
Runtime: 82 minutes

Synopsis:
Lacrosse was born in Akwesasne Mohawk Territory as a
sacred game, traditionally reserved for men. Just off the
reservation at Salmon River High in Fort Covington, NY an
all-Native girls lacrosse team comes together, seeking to
be the first Native womens team to bring home a Section
Championship. But first, they will have to overcome their
crosstown rivals, Massena High. As the season comes to a
head, the team is faced with increasing ambivalence in
their own community and the girls must prove that the
game of lacrosse is their rightful inheritance. With more
than just the championship on the line, the girls fight to
blaze a new path for the next generation of Native
women, while still honoring their peoples tradition in a
changing world.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER

Judd Ehrlich is a Grand Clio and Emmy Award-winning

director and producer who clearly knows his craft (The
New York Times) and has mastered the art of exposing
compelling and honest stories (AOL). The son of an
architect and schoolteacher, he grew up in lower
Manhattan and, at fourteen, was the youngest feature
reporter at a New York newspaper.

Ehrlichs recent documentaries KEEPERS OF THE GAME

and WE COULD BE KING, produced with Tribeca Studios
and The Dicks Sporting Goods Foundation, forged a new
model for documentary production and premiered at the
Tribeca Film Festival and on ABC television. KEEPERS was
a New York Times Critics Pick and nominated for a Critics
Choice Award and KING won an Emmy and Grand Clio
Award.

Before film, Ehrlich was a caseworker in NYC for Project

Renewal, Homes for the Homeless and YAI. He lives with
his wife and two children in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where his
family lived for five generations. Ehrlich is a Vassar
College graduate and teaches filmmaking.
DEBRA ZIMMERMAN

Debra Zimmerman has been the Executive Director

of WOMEN MAKE MOVIES, a non-profit NY based film
organization that supports women filmmakers, since 1983.
During her tenure it has grown into the largest distributor
of films by and about women in the world and our
internationally recognized Production Assistance Program
has helped hundreds of women get their films made. Films
from WMM programs win prizes regularly at the Sundance
Film Festivals and been nominated or won Academy
Awards for the last eight years in a row. She is in great
demand around the world as a speaker on independent
film distribution, marketing and financing as well as on
womens film. She has keynoted conferences and spoken
on panels, including the Womens Film History Conference
at the University of Sunderland in 2011 and at the 2011
Visible Evidence Conference at NYU and the 2012 Society
for Cinema and Media Studies Conference at Boston
University. She lectures regularly at universities across
the United States, including Harvard, Smith College, Bryn
Mawr, Vassar, UCLA and others. Zimmerman has
moderated panels and given master classes at the
Sundance Film Festival, MIPDOC and Reel Screen as well
as film festivals in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America.
Zimmerman has been closely affiliated with the
International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA) as the co-
host of the Talk of the Day and as a tutor for their Summer
Film Academy. In addition, she has mentored filmmakers
at the Ex-Oriente Film Workshop in Vienna and for many
years at the National Alliance of Latino Independent
Producers (NALIP) Academy. She was the co-curator of
the 2011 Documentary Fortnight at the Museum of
Modern Art in NYC and is the recipient of the 2012 Loren
Arbus Award for Those Who Take Action & Effact Change,
the IMPACT Award from the Sarasota Film Festival and is
the 2103 Doc Mogul from the Hot Docs International Film
Festival in Toronto, Canada