Welcome New IDA Board Members

Robert Bahar (Los Angeles, CA) is co-founder and coordinator of Doculink.org, a grassroots networking organization for documentary filmmakers, with more than 900 members around the world. Doculink began in early 2002 with only 25 members. It now features an active e-mail discussion list (listserv) and monthly meetings in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. Doculink has hosted numerous workshops and guest speakers including current IDA President Richard Propper, former IDA president Michael C. Donaldson, three-time Academy Award winner Mark Jonathan Harris, editor Kate Amend and composer Miriam Cutler. Doculink also co-sponsored a successful proposal writing workshop with Richard Saiz of the Independent Television Service (ITVS). Bahar is currently producing the vérité documentary Made in L.A., which documents the experiences of three Latina immigrants fighting for better working conditions in modern day sweatshops in downtown Los Angeles. He previously produced and directed the award-winning documentary Laid to Waste, which examined environmental justice in Chester, Pennsylvania, aired on several public television stations and is currently in educational distribution. He produced the documentary Meet Joe Gay, which screened at the New York Lesbian and Gay, Mill Valley and Breckenridge Film Festivals, and he is currently finishing another project, Breaking Convention, which looks at the struggle of political protesters in Los Angeles. Bahar holds an MFA from The Peter Stark Program at the USC School of Cinema-Television.

As an Academy Award-nominated producer and 20-year veteran of film and broadcast production, Dianna Costello (Toluca Lake, CA) has been involved in all aspects of the production and post-production industry. She currently heads up business development for L.E.G. Productions, a Los Angeles-based production company that creates DVD content and promotional materials for the major studios and networks. In her previous position, Costello was the director of business development/post-production for Crawford Communications, the Southeast's leading telecommunications and digital post-production company. She served on the boards of both The Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and The Atlanta Ad Club. Prior to Crawford, Costello served as executive director of the Piedmont Triad Film Commission in North Carolina, quadrupling the amount of film production activity during her tenure. Before moving to the Southeast, Costello worked in Los Angeles for 13 years as a freelance producer and production manager for films, television programs and commercials. During that time, she won numerous national and international awards as well as a 1985 Academy Award nomination for her short fiction film, Graffiti. Costello holds an MFA in film from American Film Institute, an MS in television/radio from Syracuse University and a BA in English from the University of Massachusetts.

Paola Freccero (New York, NY) recently stepped down as Sundance Channel's senior vice president, film programming to form her own independent consulting business, retaining Sundance Channel as a client. While at Sundance, she oversaw the acquisition, programming and scheduling of the channel's film line-up, which includes independent American and international features, documentaries and shorts. Freccero supervised the launch of Sundance Channel's weekly documentary destination, DOCday, and she also supervised acquisitions for Sundance Channel Home Entertainment, the home video division of the channel, which launched in 2002. Freccero joined Sundance Channel in 1999 as a publicity consultant. Shortly thereafter, she was appointed vice president, international, spearheading Sundance Channel's business development activities overseas. Prior to joining Sundance Channel, Freccero was artistic director of the Nortel Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival. She was credited with making the former a showcase for the international films submitted for Oscar consideration for Best Foreign Language Film. She also launched Palm Springs' first short film market. Before joining the festival, Freccero spent five years working as a film publicist on such films as The Usual Suspects, Anne Frank Remembered, Before the Rain and Troublesome Creek:  A Midwestern; and with directors such as Allison Anders, Gillian Armstrong, John Badham, Steve Buscemi, Derek Jarman, Roland Joffe, Spike Lee, Mike Leigh, Richard Linklater, DA Pennebaker, Sally Potter, Tim Roth and Ed Zwick, among many others. Her previous television experience includes publicity efforts for ITVS, HBO and Turner Broadcasting.

Cary Jones (Los Angeles, CA) began his motion picture career 25 years ago with 20th Century Fox, working in acquisitions. He subsequently joined Landmark Theatres and most recently worked at First Look Pictures as senior vice president of distribution and marketing, before re-launching Jones Enterprises, a theatrical distribution and marketing consulting firm

John Koch (Los Angeles, CA) has, since 2000, served as an organizer at Writers Guild of America, west, where he has worked to enhance the profile and protect the rights of nonfiction filmmakers. He helped to create the WGA Nonfiction Writers Caucus and has produced day-long events dedicated to the craft of nonfiction filmmaking. Prior to his tenure at the WGA, west, Koch was an advertising rep for The Hollywood Reporter, the assistant director of academy outreach for the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera and the assistant director of the Summer Conservatory at Point Park College. In the mid-1990s, Koch was associate professor of theater arts at University of Pittsburgh. He received his MFA from University of Pittsburgh and his BFA from Jacksonville University.

Bob Niemack (Pasadena, CA) is a multi-award winning producer/writer/director with extensive experience in series producing, budgeting, location and studio production, host shoots and post-production supervision. He began in television as an editor, and cut the Oscar- and Emmy-winning Scared Straight!. He has written and directed dozens of network and cable specials and produced hundreds of hours of reality and vérité television, receiving many honors including seven Emmy awards, two ACE awards and a Peabody. Currently he works as an executive producer at LMNO Productions in Encino, California. 

David Schiff (Sherman Oaks, CA) is head of production at World of Wonder and has since 2002 overseen development, production and delivery of over 40 hours of broadcast quality programming for HBO, Bravo, MTV, VH-1, Court-TV, Trio and Tech TV. Prior to World of Wonder, Schiff produced documentaries for E!'s E! True Hollywood Story series, as well as for Fox Sports Network's Beyond the Glory and VH-1's Behind the Music. He also produced independent documentaries for AMC, Channel 4 and Court TV, among others. Schiff received his BA in cinema production from University of Southern California.