About Us

Journeys in Film ("Journeys") was founded in 2003 to promote international education, cultural understanding, media literacy, and basic core subject skills among middle-school students. Our program combines the viewing of foreign language films with innovative lesson plans and facilitated, interactive discussion that creates an immersive, high-impact experience for students. This approach helps school systems enrich their social studies offerings without increasing personnel or operating costs while meeting their federal and state educational performance mandates.

Biographical Information

Joanne Ashe

Journeys in Film reflects Joanne Ashe's lifelong commitment to education and cross-cultural concerns. She holds a master's degree in education and has been involved in many successful educational and social initiatives. Joanne has been influential in bringing to light the plight of orphaned children from around the world as a social worker and activist, including organizing special programming and panels on adoption, working with adoptive parents of international children and co-producing the documentary film The Waiting Children, a cross-cultural evaluation and training film for adoptive parents that premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. Joanne is also engaged in many cross-cultural initiatives in her home state of New Mexico focusing on diversity, including assisting in organizing the internationally acclaimed exhibit Anne Frank In The World (over 80,000 attendance.) She has worked in collaboration with members of the Russian Olympic Committee to establish a cross cultural physical education program and curated two statewide exhibits on racism and children's mental health issues. She has also dedicated energy to helping ease the trauma of survivors of the Holocaust, founding and co-facilitating a therapy group for survivors. Joanne was instrumental in organizing guest speakers on the Holocaust in schools throughout New Mexico and speaks to students, herself, about her parents experiences in concentration camps. She served on the Board of New Day Runaway Shelters and worked with teens to film a short documentary on the positive experiences of living in the shelter.

Eileen Mattingly

Ms. Mattingly graduated from Georgetown University in 1967 with a bachelor's degree in International Studies and holds two master's degrees, from St. John's University in New York and the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.  During a career in teaching that has lasted more than 30 years, she has taught in many different locations: a Department of Defense high school in the Philippines; a junior high in Manhattan; a high school for gifted children in Brooklyn Heights; college teaching in Baltimore; and several middle and high schools in Maryland. She has earned advanced professional certification in English, History and Social Studies. The National Endowment for the Humanities has twice selected Mrs. Mattingly for fellowships, at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas at Arlington.

Eileen has written curriculum, including an A.P. Language and Composition course and a pilot program in American Ethnic Minority Literature, for her Maryland school district.  She has published two teaching guides to multicultural novels for the Center for Learning and is currently working on a guide for Forster's A Passage to India. As a curriculum consultant for PBS, she has written lesson plans and developed resources for Frontline and Bill Moyers NOW. She has presented workshops on curriculum for the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Council for the Social Studies, and other professional organizations.

In recent years, Ms. Mattingly has served as Director of Coverdell World Wise Schools, the National Peace Corps program for k-12 cross-cultural education, and as Acting Director of Domestic Programs for the Peace Corps. She is currently working to create a high school near Annapolis, Maryland, which will provide students with a global studies curriculum focus.

As curriculum content specialist and editor for the Journeys in Film curriculum series, Eileen is heading a creative team of teachers from Canada and the United States who are preparing lessons in social studies, language arts, math, science, and other disciplines.  She is strongly committed to an interdisciplinary cross-cultural curriculum to help students understand and appreciate people from cultures other than their own.  

Anna Mara Rutins

Anna Mara Rutins has over 15 years of international professional experience including 6 years working overseas with various development and government agencies. She specializes in the development of international youth programs as well as business trainings for expatriates relocating to countries world-wide, including United States in-coming programs. Anna's experience includes positions with the Open Society Institute / Soros Foundation, Berlitz International and United States Peace Corps-Baltics Region, where she served as the Training Coordinator, in language, technical skills training and cultural adjustment program planning and facilitation. She is multilingual (Latvian and French), has worked in 9 countries and traveled to 25 world-wide, and continues to apply her BA in Cross-Cultural Communication from American University, with a concentration in Applied Cultural Anthropology, to all aspects of life. Since 2004, Anna has devoted her professional life to the growing of Journeys in Film as the Director of Programs.

Ethan Silverman

Ethan Silverman is a filmmaker and theatre director based in New York City. His work has appeared at various theatres and film festivals around the world including the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. the Aspen Comedy Arts Festival and the Sundance Film Festival. He is currently in pre-production on two films that he has written and is producing: MY ITALIAN STORY (director, Barry Levinson) and THE BOY GEORGE PROJECT (VH1 Television). Mr. Silverman attended Oberlin College and The Drama Studio in London. He teaches Fundamentals of Screenwriting at HB Studios in New York City.    

Amy Shea

Amy Shea brings an extensive background in research, writing, and media to her work with Journeys in Film. In her current position, she works on the global planning and analysis of the television and print advertising research for one of the world's largest technology companies. Her background includes owning her own production company where she functioned as both CEO and creative director; television sales, media buying and video production; as well as a teacher of literary theory and creative writing. She is a published poet and recipient of the Dylan Thomas Poetry Fellowship from the Paris Writers Guild, as well as a poetry fellowship from Wesleyan University and a residency at the MacDowell Artists Colony. In addition to her work with Journeys in Film, she is currently writing and presenting on the role of emotion in film, and working on a screenplay.