AMERICAN EXPERIENCE is proud to present a film preview and discussion of our upcoming film, MR. POLAROID. The event will feature an extended clip from the film and a panel discussion with the filmmakers and special guests.

Click this link to join: https://wgbh.zoom.us/j/97169388775

About the film: Long before the iPhone, another inventive device allowed everyone to instantly chronicle their lives — the Polaroid camera. The product, and the company’s unique culture, would launch not only instant photography mania but also become the model for today’s Silicon Valley tech culture. MR. POLAROID tells the little-known story of the man behind the camera, Edwin Land.

Panelists include:

Amanda Pollak is the producer of MR. POLAROID. She has been directing and producing highly acclaimed documentaries for over two decades, including over a dozen films for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. Pollak was part of the founding team for Retro Report, an online series of investigative pieces featured on the front page of The New York Times digital edition. Her work has been recognized with three Emmy Awards, a Cine Golden Eagle Award and the George Foster Peabody Award.

Ainissa Ramirez, Ph.D., is an award-winning scientist and science communicator, who is the author of The Alchemy of Us (MIT Press). A graduate of Brown University, she earned her doctorate in materials science and engineering from Stanford. Dr. Ramirez began her career as a scientist at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and was later an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Yale. She has written for Forbes, Time, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Nature, and Science and has explained science headlines on CBS, CNN, NPR, and PBS. Ramirez speaks widely on the topics of science and technology and gave a TED talk on the importance of science education. Currently, she is writing a series of children’s science books. (www.ainissaramirez.com).

Christopher Bonanos is the city editor of New York magazine, where he writes about culture and urban affairs. He is the author of INSTANT: THE STORY OF POLAROID, and his most recent book, FLASH: THE MAKING OF WEEGEE THE FAMOUS, about the photographer Arthur (Weegee) Fellig, won the National Book Critics Circle award for the best biography of 2018.

The conversation will be moderated by Cameo George (Executive Producer of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE). George is an Emmy Award-winning producer, writer and journalist with more than 25 years of experience in documentary, broadcast television and digital content production. George has produced, developed and commissioned innovative programming at CNN, NBC News and ABC News. She was the senior producer of CNN’s groundbreaking series Black in America and Latino in America and executive producer of the eight-hour PBS documentary series 16 FOR '16: THE CONTENDERS, which was also broadcast on the BBC. George joined American Experience from ABC News, where she was head of development for long-form projects, responsible for creating a pipeline of docuseries and feature documentary films across Walt Disney Television platforms, including ABC News, Hulu, National Geographic and Disney+. She was recently named to The Root’s list of 2024’s 100 Most Influential Black Americans.

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Major funding for American Experience provided by Liberty Mutual Insurance, Carlisle Companies and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Additional funding for American Experience provided by the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, The American Experience Trust, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and public television viewers. American Experience is produced for PBS by GBH Boston.