Monteith McCollum is an independent filmmaker and educator who has taught at various schools in Chicago, Illinois and upstate New York such as Columbia College, Broome Community College and Ithaca College. He has been a visiting artist at colleges including Boston Museum School, Art Institute of Chicago and University of Iowa As director of the feature documentary "Hybrid", Monteith has traveled extensively showing his work and speaking about film.. In 2002 he was selected to tour on the Southern Circuit where he showed work to students at Universities and high schools in throughout the South. Monteith has served as a juror at various film festivals including the Bermuda International Film Festival, Slamdance, Ann Arbor, and Big Muddy at the University of Illinois. Since 2002 he has serve d as an advisory board member on film for the New York Foundation for the Arts. Monteith McCollum's films have received much recognition. Hybrid was shown nationally on PBS and Arte in France. It also garnered many awards, in 2003 it received the IFP/Direct TV truer than fiction Spirit Award in Los Angeles Ca, and in 2002 he received the prestigious NYFA prize. Other honors include over a dozen best of festival awards at San Francisco International, Amsterdam Documentary Festival, Slamdance, Ann Arbor, Bermuda, Nashville, South by Southwest, and Amsterdam International Documentary Festival to name just a few. Recently his new short Lawn was shown in the Museum of Modern Arts Premieres series, as well others including Black Maria, Ann Arbor and the European Media Arts Festival. Monteith is currently working on a documentary feature in collaboration with Ariana Gerstein. This work in progress has received much support from NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, New York State council on the Arts, and Kodak. http://www.thirtymilesfromanywhere.com