Filmmakers’ Bios – Becoming Benjamin Lay

Marcus Rediker

Marcus Rediker is Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh. He has written or edited seventeen books, including The Many-Headed Hydra (2000, with Peter Linebaugh); The Slave Ship (2007); The Fearless Benjamin Lay (2017); and Freedom Ship (2025). His writings have won numerous awards and been published in twenty languages worldwide. He wrote The Return of Benjamin Lay with Naomi Wallace. He has also created four graphic novels with David Lester and a children’s book with Michelle Markel and Sarah Bachman. He has produced two documentary films with Tony Buba: Ghosts of Amistad in 2014 and now Becoming Benjamin Lay. For more information, visit www.marcusrediker.com.

Tony Buba

Tony Buba has made over forty films, including four feature films exploring working-class issues in and around his hometown since 1974. Buba began his career with “The Braddock Chronicles,” a dozen short documentary portraits of the stubborn signs of life in a dying mill town. His "Mon Valley Trilogy" was purchased by the Carnegie Museum of Art and is part of their permanent collection. Buba’s work has been showcased in one-person shows at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Anthology Film Archives, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and more than 100 museums and universities. He has received fellowships from the NEA, AFI, and the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations. Buba’s many awards include Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award and Pennsylvania Media Artist of the Year.

John Rice

John Rice has worked as Director and Director of Photography on feature films, documentaries, and television commercials. His work has garnered Clio, Addy, Art Directors Club, and numerous film festival awards. He met Tony Buba and Tom Dubensky while working on George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, and has collaborated with both filmmakers for over four decades. A Penn State University alumni, Rice served on the College of Communications Alumni Advisory Board, led production and networking seminars for students, and received the Alumni Society Volunteer of the Year Award. As a Point Park University Cinema Arts faculty member, he developed the cinematography curriculum, taught narrative and documentary production courses, and served in the faculty union leadership, before retiring as a Master Teaching Artist.

Jan McManis

Jan McMannis retired in 2009 after a career in adult education. Most recently, she worked as a learning specialist at the University of Pittsburgh where she first became acquainted with Marcus Rediker’s books and lectures. Jan developed her knowledge of documentary film as a pre-screener for the Athens International Film Festival and an editor for the film journal Wide Angle. After moving to Pittsburgh, she served for several years as film programmer for the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Oakland Screening Room. Working with the rest of the team in Sierra Leone was an amazing adventure for which she is incredibly grateful.

Tom Dubensky

Tom Dubensky has edited numerous feature films and documentaries in a variety of genres, styles and subjects. Tom’s work includes the 1990 remake of the horror classic Night of the Living Dead and the award-winning comedy/drama The Journey. Tom's work in collaboration with Tony Buba, includes Struggles in Steel, Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of the Rebels, and We Are Alive! The Fight to Save Braddock Hospital, which he also co-directed. Documentaries he edited for filmmaker Kenneth Love include Saving Fallingwater, Charles Moore: I Fight with my Camera, and the CINE award-winning film Newspaper of Record: The Pittsburgh Courier, 1907-1965, all of which were shown on numerous PBS stations. He also edited Dumpster and Mr. Pleasant, both directed by John Rice.