​Spotlight on WWLD Presenters

Women Who Live Their Dreams is the first film festival and conference of its kind in Oxford. It is a new initiative to highlight the powerful contributions of female filmmakers to social cause documentaries, and is, at its base, a celebration of the power and potential of women and girls to enrich the world through media. 

As such, we are honored to announce a week-long line-up of inspired directors, filmmakers, and women advocates. 

Our featured presenters are as follows:

Dr. Halla Diyab: Filmmaker and Director of Step Forward: Tariq Jahan; A Reluctant Hero

Halla Diyab is an award-winning screen-writer, producer, broadcaster, and the Founder and the Director of Liberty Media Productions. She has unparalleled TV experience in working in the Muslim and Middle East region since 2005. She worked as a presenter on the Egyptian talk show Lady of Ladies on Rotana Cinema TV in Egypt, as well as holding a regular guest spot on the Egyptian talk show, "Hala Sarhan Show" on Rotana TV. Dr. Diyab graduated with a PhD in Drama from the University of Leicester, MA and BA in Gender and Women's Studies from the University of Warwick. Dr. Diyab was awarded Best Syrian Drama Script Award for 2010, Artist's Achievement Award for 2011. She is a Vice-Chairman of the Iman Foundation and has spoken in more than 22 conferences in the UK and USA. 

Lisa F. Jackson: Filmmaker and Producer, Director, and Writer of The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo

Lisa F. Jackson has been involved in documentary filmmaking for over 30 years.  Her work has brought her many awards including five Emmy nominations and two Emmy awards. Jackson studied filmmaking at MIT with Richard Leacock and has directed and/or edited dozens of films for PBS including: Voices and Visions: Emily Dickinson, Jackson Pollock: Portrait, Through Madness (1993 NYC Emmy winner), The Creative Spirit, Storytellers, The Van Cliburn Piano Competition; Bill Moyers’ Journal, the prize-winning series The Mind, and segments for Sesame Street and Live from Lincoln Center. Tom Shales of the Washington Post has praised her documentaries as “superb” and “outstanding,” John O’Connor commented in the New York Times that “producer/director Lisa F. Jackson is remarkably adept in getting her subjects to speak frankly and thoughtfully,” and the Christian Science Monitor noted that she takes on difficult subjects “with intelligence and courage.”

Dr. Khin Mar Mar Kyi: Director of Dreams of Dutiful Daughters

Dr Khin Mar Mar Kyi, who is the 2014 Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, received her Ph.D. (‘In Pursuit of Power: Political Power and Gender Relations in New Order Burma/Myanmar’) in the summer of 2013 (ANU, Canberra). She is a social anthropologist, gender specialist, filmmaker and has a background in education. Her research has focused on child protection, trafficking, gender violence, migration and governance issues. She has had many years of experience working with vulnerable Burmese communities in sensitive and complex political environments where violence, poverty, and substance abuse are common. Her current research interests include issues of gender, education and leadership within the framework of a modernizing Burmese society.

Clementine Malpas: Filmmaker, Director of The Parable of Gulnaz

Clementine Malpas is a documentary filmmaker with over nine years of experience in the developing world. A self-shooting director, she was previously based in Kenya and Afghanistan, and has made films for Channel Four, NBC, PBS, Current TV, the United Nations, and the Aga Khan Foundation.

Nikki Van der Gaag: Writer and Women's Rights Activist

Nikki van der Gaag has been writing about development issues for more than 20 years. After leaving Oxford, she went to work in India for Time Out magazine. Since then she has held editorial and communications positions in the charity and not-for-profit sector, including Oxfam. New Internationalist magazine and the Panos Institute, which works with journalists all over the world. 
For the past 10 years she has been an independent consultant and writer, focusing in particular on gender, especially girls and young women, and more recently on men and masculinities around the world.
Books and reports include five of the seven State of the World's Girls reports, published by Plan International, the most recent being In Double Jeopardy: Adolescent girls and disasters; Changing Lives in a Changing World, Young Lives (2012), Speaking Out: Case studies on how poor people influence decision-making, Oxfam/Practical Action 2009; The No-Nonsense Guide to Women's Rights, New Internationalist 2008, and How the World Came to Oxford: refugees past and present, Oxford Literary Festival, March 2007. Nikki is currently working on a book for Zed Press on men and feminism.