Board Chairman : Michael Overn
Michael Overn is an attorney with a private practice in Upper Nyack. He is also "of counsel" to a prominent New York entertainment law firm. His practice is primarily concentrated in providing production, financing, corporate, and individual legal services to a variety of clients in the film, television, music, internet, publishing and visual arts fields. He initially moved to Nyack in 1979.

Co-Vice Chairperson: Roger Seiler
Roger Seiler - Graduate of UCLA where he majored in film. Writer/producer/director of over 30 documentary films, mostly for IBM, including "The Inner Eye of Alexander Rutsch" (selected for special screening at Museum of Modern Art), "Challenge Over the Atlantic" (about the first successful Atlantic balloon crossing) and "Frontiers" (Alaskan bush pilot) - all three winners of the CINE Golden Eagle and the Chris Award. Edited "Ayamonn The Terrible" for Francis Ford Coppola. Currently president of Leadership Software Corp., a human resources software company. Locally serves as president of the Nyack Library Board of Trustees and as chairperson of the South Nyack Zoning Board of Appeals. Was raised in Alaska as the son of a bush pilot/sport fishing guide from Brooklyn and a Flamenco dancer from Puerto Rico. Married to Sally Marmion Seiler, the South Nyack Village Clerk, and has lived in Nyack or South Nyack since 1969. They have two grown children, Winston the geologist and Diana the videographer.

Co-Vice Chairperson: Mary Buchbinder
Books and films are my escapes. Until I moved to Rockland Co. 6 years ago I was able to get to a good foreign film or independent film, without hassle, every weekend. That opportunity disappeared with the move and I've been working with RFS since its earliest days trying to re-establish that part of my life and to help give others the very special transcendent experience a night at the movies can offer up.

Secretary: Ric Plaisance
Ric Plaisance, a resident of Nyack since 1997, has been active with the Rivertown Film Society since 2002. Ric has worked in the nonprofit sector for nearly twenty years, first serving as Executive Director of Settlement Health, a family health center located in East Harlem. More recently he has turned his attention to the use of information technologies for the international development sector, currently serving as Director of Information Systems for Helen Keller International, located in New York City.

Treasurer: Mimi Schneider

Gary Blankfort
Along with the challenges of the business world, Gary has managed his son Jase's acting career and assists Debbie wherever necessary. HIs claim to fame is being married to Debbie.

Evelyn Fitzgerald

Betsy Hastedt
Betsy Hastedt has lived in Nyack since 1985. She helped to found the After-School Program at Nyack Center, and has been the coordinator of the Nyack Youth Collaborative for seven years. She also teaches ESL to adults with Rockland BOCES. She has been attending Rivertown Film Society programs since the beginning, enjoying the balance they provide for the action films and comedies that she watches at home with her son.

Sharon Klempner
Sharon Klempner, LCSW, MSW, is a psychotherapist, in private practice, in Ridgewood, N.J., working with
children, adolescents, couples and families. She is also a trained divorce mediator, specializing in
Parenting Plans and Parent Coordination and participates, regularly, in a number of professional
organizations. When not analyzing people, she enjoys experiencing more of the same in films, the characters, the cinematography, other languages. Sharon has participated in the Rivertown Film Society since 2002, after attending one the films and being impressed with the warmth of the group and the discussion after, by Ellen Kuras.

Gerald McCarthy
Gerald McCarthy !s poetry appears in numerous magazines and anthologies including Italian Americana,
Ploughshares, America, Tri Quarterly, The North American Review, Poet Lore, American War Poetry, A New
Geography of Poets, etc. A graduate of the University of Iowa Writ ers! Workshop, his books
include War Story(1977), Shoetown (1992) and the forthcoming The light has no tongue (2007). He lives
in Upper Nyack with his wife Michele and their three sons and is currently Professor of English at St.
Thomas Aquinas College where he directs a reading/lecture series and Cinema Italiano-a film
series of Italian language films. He has lived and traveled widely in Italy and twice been a Visiting
Artist at the American Academy in Rome.

Natasha Rabin
When Natasha lived in Rockland from 1993-1996 she was concerned that there was no independent film available to the community. Upon recently returning to live in Grand View she headed straight to Rivertown Film Society when she learned of their mission. Much of her career as an entrepreneur has been involved with film; from founding a preeminent film competition for young filmmakers for
Nissan Motor Corporation in the '70s to creating national promotion campaigns for such feature films as GLORY, DIRTY DANCING and THE NATURAL in the 80s and 90s. She is currently an
exhibiting artist at the Piermont Flywheel Gallery whose show, LUMINOUS/women, was
reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. She is also writing and illustrating a series of children's books. She has served on the Board of the Children's Aid Society/Philip Coltoff Center in Greenwich VIllage for ten years.

Patricia Schneider
Patricia Schneider is a writer (screenplays, TV, theatre, prose) whose work has been performed at the
Circle East Theater Company, the Circle Repertory Company LAB, New York Stage and Film/Vassar College, the Shooting Gallery Playwrights Lab, the Westbeth Theater Center, the West Bank Cafe and the Tribeca Lab, among other places. her short film, Love Bites, was screened at the Nuyorican Poet s! Cafe as part of the 5th Night Short Film and Screenplay Series, and at both the Santa Fe Film Festival and the Angel Citi Film Festival in February 2001. Pat has worked as a freelance script consultant for independent producer John Lyons, The Shooting Gallery, the Nantucket Film Festival and Avnet-Kerner Productions, and served on the selection committee for the 5th Night Short Film and Screenplay Series for 6 years. In addition, she has written for MTV, VH1 and HBO, and has worked as a director at the Shooting Gallery Playwrights Lab, Chashama, Labyrinth Theater Company and New York Stage
and Film/Vassar. She was a finalist for the 1999 Chesterfield Film Company Writ er!s Film Project. She
is currently working on several screenplays and revising one of her stage plays. Pat received her BFA
from the University of Southern California. Pat moved to New City when she was 13, where her family still lives, and currently resides in Manhattan. She has been the Publicist/Writer for the Rivertown Film Society since 2001. She works in the Business Affairs/Sports Department at HBO, which at the moment helps to support her true passions.