The USC School of Cinematic Arts and Iron Mountain Media & Archival Services
invite you and guest to attend
 

Working with Archives:
Protection, Preservation, and Storytelling

A panel discussion about the practical and creative uses
of media archives in contemporary cinema

FEATURING:

Andrea Kalas, VP of Media and Archival Services
Iron Mountain Media & Archival Services

SCA Alumnus Ross Dinerstein
Producer: A Glitch in the Matrix, WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, TikTok, Boom

SCA Alumna Leslie Iwerks
Director/Producer: Recycled Life, The Pixar Story, Selling Lies

SCA Alumnus Ben Proudfoot
Director/Producer: The Queen of Basketball, The Last Repair Shop, The Eyes of Ghana

Moderated by SCA Professor Ted Braun
Joseph Campbell Endowed Chair in Cinematic Ethics

7:00 P.M. on Wednesday, December 10th, 2025

The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108
George Lucas Building at the USC School of Cinematic Arts
3507 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90007

FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. RSVPs REQUIRED.
RSVPs ARE NON-TRANSFERABLE.

FOOD AND DRINKS ARE STRICTLY PROHIBITED IN THE AUDITORIUM.
 

CLICK HERE TO RSVP
 

About the Panel Discussion

In an archive, every recording, frame, song, and reel is a story worth retelling. But as formats change and technology evolves, how can you ensure that your archive’s stories are able to be shared long into the future?

Join Andrea Kalas, VP of Media and Archival Services at Iron Mountain Media & Archival Services, and award-winning SCA alumni filmmakers Ross Dinerstein, Leslie Iwerks, and Ben Proudfoot, in conversation with SCA Professor Ted Braun, as they discuss the function and value of media archives both to safeguard the legacy of the past and to inspire stories in the future.

About the Panelists

ANDREA KALAS (VP of Media and Archival Services at Iron Mountain Media & Archival Services)

Andrea Kalas leads Iron Mountain's Media and Archival Services team that provides archival services to entertainment companies, universities, museums, corporations and individuals who entrust Iron Mountain to both preserve and share them with the world. Previously, Andrea managed the Paramount Archives where she combined her preservation expertise with technical innovation to build what is now one of the world’s most valuable film archives. Before joining Paramount, Andrea served as Head of Preservation at the British Film Institute, Digital Studio Director for Discovery Communications, Archivist for Dreamworks SKG, and preservationist and research data expert at UCLA Film and Television Archive. She is former President of the Association of Moving Image Archivists and a current member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences where she founded the Academy Digital Preservation Forum Initiative. Andrea has preserved or restored over 2000 films over her career, and in 2023 she was the recipient of the HPA Outstanding Achievement in Restoration award for the restoration of The Godfather.

ROSS DINERSTEIN (Producer, SCA Alumnus)

Ross Dinerstein (Peter Stark Class of 2005) is the two-time Emmy-winning founder and CEO of Campfire Studios. Over the past 20 years, Dinerstein has produced or executive-produced over 80 series and feature films, premiering projects at the world's most prestigious festivals, including Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, and Toronto, and launching them worldwide on every major streaming platform, including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Max, and Peacock.

Dinerstein and Campfire's most recent projects include Netflix’s Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, American Murder: Laci Peterson, The Menendez Brothers, Amazon Prime’s The Money Game, and Hulu’s Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer. Other projects from Dinerstein and Campfire include Netflix’s Emmy-winning Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food, Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized American Gladiator Story, David Fincher's Voir, Neymar: The Perfect Chaos, and John Grisham's The Innocent Man; Max’s Smartless: on the Road, Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty, The Way Down: God Greed and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin (Part 1 & Part 2), and Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults; Hulu’s Emmy-winning WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn; FX’s Hysterical and The Most Dangerous Animal of All, Magnolia’s A Glitch in the Matrix, CNN’s The Lost Sons, and PBS's Emmy-nominated TikTok, Boom. Dinerstein’s first foray into the podcast space resulted in the Webby award-winning series Abuse of Power, hosted by The Staircase defense attorney David Rudolf and his partner Sonya Pfeiffer.

Dinerstein has also produced nine Netflix Original narrative feature films, including thrillers Rattlesnake and Stephen King's 1922; comedy The Package; the Emmy-nominated multi-season series Special; and the streamer’s 2024 Valentines Day release, Players, starring Gina Rodriguez, Tom Ellis, and Damon Wayans Jr., which quickly became the #1 most-watched film in the world on Netflix.

His credits also include IFC's cult horror movie The Pact and feature documentaries Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Silicon Cowboys, and The Nightmare, among others.

LESLIE IWERKS (Director/Producer, SCA Alumna)

Leslie Iwerks is an Oscar® and Emmy® nominated documentary filmmaker and author who has created critically acclaimed, award-winning documentaries, features and series that celebrate the genius, risks and rewards of creative visionaries, showcase heartfelt human tales from the depths of the Guatemalan garbage dumps to the toxic tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the human stories of innovation and enterprise globally. An adventure and travel enthusiast, Iwerks has filmed on all seven continents around the world.

Her body of work includes the six-part docu series The Imagineering Story for Disney+, the four-part series 100 Years of Warner Bros that debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, and the three-part series Superpowered: The DC Story for MAX. Her feature documentaries include The Pixar Story, Ella Brennan: Commanding the Table, Citizen Hearst, Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible, The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story and League of Legends Origins. Her environmental and social issue short documentaries have been Oscar® nominated, Oscar® shortlisted or have won top film festival awards, including Recycled Life, Pipe Dreams, Downstream, and Selling Lies. Leslie’s upcoming feature documentary Disneyland Handcrafted chronicles the feverish race to build Disneyland in the year leading up to opening day on July 17, 1955. Never-before-seen footage and audio recordings reveal the behind-the-scenes drama of Walt Disney’s nearly implausible dream.

Iwerks’ desire to innovate and push boundaries with her filmmaking has been cultivated and inspired by her family upbringing, as her grandfather, Ub Iwerks, was the original designer and co-creator of Mickey Mouse and a multi Academy Award®-winning visual effects pioneer and her father, Don Iwerks, is an Academy Award® Gordon E. Sawyer Lifetime Achievement recipient. Leslie is a member of the Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Documentary Branch, and has been a juror, panelist and sought after guest speaker at film and book festivals, conferences around the world including Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Hamptons, New Orleans Film Festival, TedX, D23, Comicon, THEA, IAAPA, The Walt Disney Family Museum, the Disney Cruise Lines among many others. Leslie works and resides between Los Angeles, Ojai and New Orleans.

BEN PROUDFOOT (Director/Producer, SCA Alumnus)

Bio coming soon.

TED BRAUN (Moderator, SCA Professor, Joseph Campbell Endowed Chair in Cinematic Ethics)

Writer-Director Ted Braun’s feature documentary, ¡Viva Maestro!, about conductor Gustavo Dudamel, was nominated for the WGA award for best feature documentary of 2022 and is streaming on HBO MAX. Set against violence and unrest in Dudamel’s home of Venezuela the film is an exploration of art in a time of political crisis. It’s his second film with Participant which co-financed his feature debut Darfur Now. Darfur Now was named one of 2007’s top five documentaries by the National Board of Review and the Broadcast Critics and won the NAACP Image Award for best feature documentary and the International Documentary Association’s Emerging Filmmaker Award. His docu-thriller Betting On Zero received a WGA nomination for best feature documentary of 2017 and a special jury mention for investigative work at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. Braun teaches screenwriting at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. In 2008 Movie Maker Magazine named him one of 25 filmmakers whose work has changed the world. In 2018 Variety named him one of the world’s Top Ten Teachers in Film and TV.

About Iron Mountain Media & Archival Services

At Iron Mountain Media & Archival Services, we combine deep expertise with technology solutions to protect what matters to you. We offer consulting and project services, secure physical storage, expert digitization and restoration, and flexible digital storage and access.

Whether your goal for your archive is to ensure continual access to your collection or to prepare your assets for monetization, our team can help. We have deep roots in the Media & Entertainment industry, and we understand that archival media requires highly specialized care. We treat your media as if it were our own.

https://www.ironmountain.com/industries/entertainment

Check-In & Reservations

The USC School of Cinematic Arts operates all of its programs and activities consistent with the University’s Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.

This event is free of charge and open to the public. A reservation confirmation will automatically be sent to your e-mail account upon successfully making an RSVP through this website. Doors will open at 6:30 P.M.

All SCA screenings are OVERBOOKED to ensure seating capacity in the theater, therefore seating is not guaranteed based on RSVPs. The RSVP list will be checked in on a first-come, first-served basis until the theater is full. Once the theater has reached capacity, we will no longer be able to admit guests, regardless of RSVP status.

Accessibility Needs

Individuals with disabilities who need accommodations to attend this event may contact Alessandro Ago, Assistant Dean, Programming and Special Events, at aago@cinema.usc.edu or 213-740-2330. It is requested that individuals requiring accommodations or auxiliary aids such as sign language interpreters and alternative format materials notify us at least seven days prior to the event. Every reasonable effort will be made to provide reasonable accommodations in an effective and timely manner.

Parking

On-campus parking at the University of Southern California is limited. We recommend buying a day pass for the Royal Street Structure, located at the intersection of Royal Street and W. Jefferson Blvd. Parking passes are $20/car. For more information about parking at USC, please visit USC Transportation Website:

https://transnet.usc.edu/index.php/daily-and-hourly-parking/
https://transnet.usc.edu/index.php/about-us/entrance-hours/

Contact Information

Name: Alessandro Ago
Email: aago@cinema.usc.edu