Murray Center/Method M Films Team
Robert Greene is an associate professor and the Filmmaker-in-Chief for the Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri. his latest film PROCESSION will premiere in 2021. Robert’s previous film BISBEE ’17 premiered at Sundance, aired on PBS’s P.O.V. and was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2018 Gotham Awards. His films include the Sundance award winning KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE (2016), the Gotham Awards nominated ACTRESS (2014) and the Gotham Awards nominated KATI WITH AN I (2010). Robert has edited over a dozen features, including HER SMELL (2018), GOLDEN EXITS (2017), QUEEN OF EARTH (2015) and LISTEN UP PHILIP (2014) by Alex Ross Perry, Nick Berardini’s KILLING THEM SAFELY (2015), Amanda Rose Wilder’s award winning APPROACHING THE ELEPHANT (2014) and Charles Poekel’s Spirit Awards-nominated CHRISTMAS, AGAIN. He has served as a Sundance Edit Lab Advisor and was on the U.S. Documentary Jury for Sundance 2017. Robert writes about documentary for outlets such as Sight & Sound and Hyperallergic.
Greene was an inaugural Sundance Art of Nonfiction fellow in 2015 and is a three-time nominee for Best Director at the Cinema Eye Honors. The Independent named Greene one of its 10 Filmmakers to Watch in 2014 and he received the 2014 Vanguard Artist Award from the San Francisco DocFest. His first documentary, OWNING THE WEATHER, was screened at the COP15 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
Robert Greene, Assoc. Professor and Filmmaker-in-Chief
Co-Founder of the Murray Center and Method M Films
Sebastián Martínez Valdivia is an assistant professor and the supervising producer at the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri. He is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, whose previous work has focused on access to healthcare, as well as immigrant and refugee life in the rural Midwest. Martínez is a product of the Murray Center, having received his master’s degree in documentary journalism in 2017. He won the Best International Short prize for his film ‘Local Monuments’ at the 2018 British Film Institute Future Film Festival.
Before joining the Murray Center, he reported for KBIA, NPR and Kaiser Health News, covering the COVID-19 pandemic, Medicaid expansion, and other public health issues. His reporting on working conditions in meat processing plants and the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines appeared in national outlets, including PBS and MSNBC, and he has received national awards from the Public Media Journalists Association and the Radio Television Digital News Association. Martínez has served on the board of directors for the Association of Health Care Journalists, as well as the Boone County Children’s Services board. A native Spanish speaker and lifelong Missouri resident, Martínez is interested in the often overlooked and under-covered world of immigrant life in rural parts of the state.
Sebastián Martínez Valdivia, Assistant Professor and Supervising Producer
of the Murray Center and Method M Films
Stacey Woelfel is a professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and the director of the Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the school. Woelfel has enjoyed more than 35 years of teaching and leading journalism students to become the best storytellers they can be. After managing the newsroom at Mizzou’s KOMU-TV for 28 years, in 2014 he became the architect of the Missouri School of Journalism’s innovative documentary center, writing its curriculum and building its infrastructure. As an FAA-certified commercial drone pilot, he also leads the school’s Drone Journalism program.
Woelfel has served the television news industry as national chairman of the Radio Television Digital News Association, national president of the Carole Kneeland Project for Responsible Journalism and national trustee and regional president of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He currently serves the documentary world as a screener for Columbia’s beloved True/False Film Fest, a screener for the St. Louis International Film Festival and a member of the board of the Kansas City Film Fest International.
Woelfel is a winner of the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism, multiple Emmy and Edward R. Murrow awards and numerous regional and local awards. He has received the University of Missouri’s highest teaching honor, the William T. Kemper Fellowship, as well as the Mizzou Alumni Association’s Faculty-Alumni Award. Woelfel is the producer of more than 50 documentary shorts for students in his Documentary Journalism program. He was an associate producer on the documentary BISBEE ’17, which premiered at Sundance in 2018 and is serving as associate producer for the Robert Greene documentary PROCESSION. He is the author of Suspicious Signs: Effects of Newscaster Scripts, Symbols, and Actions on Audience Perceptions of News Organization Bias and penned a chapter in Silenced: International Journalists Expose Media Censorship and holds a doctorate in political science.