Roberta Cantow's journey in the world of film began with a grant from the American Film Institute while she was still a graduate student at New York University (NYU). Throughout her career, she received funding from prestigious organizations such as the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts to complete four film projects.
Her work has garnered numerous accolades, including a New York area Emmy for her film "Clotheslines," which explores the symbolic and artistic significance of laundry in women's lives. Her films and videos have received Best of Category citations at various film festivals across the country, as well as Awards of Excellence and Merit from the Global Accolade Competition.
Roberta's 16mm films, including "If This Ain't Heaven," "The Book of Laughs," "Iluminada," and "Mosaics," have been exhibited at prominent venues for independent filmmakers, including the Cineprobe Series at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Her work has also been selected for archival preservation by the Donnell Media Center in 2001.
Prior to her work in film, Roberta earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan, with an emphasis in theatre, and spent a year studying mime in Paris. She also holds a Master of Arts degree in Teaching English as a Second Language from USIU (now Alliant University),which she acquired in 1992.
Roberta has been teaching English as a second language in various settings, including adult, college, and worker education programs, as well as English as a foreign language in business schools, since her time in France. Born in Detroit, Michigan, she has a rich background in education and storytelling.
In 2004, Roberta began her journey with digital storytelling through a workshop conducted by the Digital Storytelling Center (now StoryCenter) in Berkeley, California. She has since conducted digital storytelling workshops with pregnant teens and ESL students at Palomar College, and has been trained in Story Facilitation and Digital Story Facilitation by StoryCenter.
In the 2017-2018 academic year, Roberta initiated a campus-wide digital storytelling program at Palomar College, in collaboration with StoryCenter. She has recently decided to step away from documentary filmmaking to focus on both digital and live storytelling, and has presented at seven live storytelling events to date.
