Elizabeth (Betsy) Walters

Betsy’s research focuses on the film and television industry, particularly streaming platforms and their relationship to the industry’s traditional sites of prestige: film festivals and awards. Her MFA thesis examined Netflix’s controversial presence at premier festivals like Sundance, Cannes and Venice. She is also interested in the industry’s discourses of quality, and she has presented papers on Documentary Now! and Quality Television, Netflix’s true crime docuseries and the evolution of the true crime TV genre, and Netflix’s acquisition and release of The Other Side of the Wind, the final, unfinished film of the late auteur Orson Welles.

Before enrolling in graduate school, Betsy worked for the Washington, DC-based nonprofit CINE curating media awards programs for emerging and established film and TV creators. She has worked for the AFI DOCS festival in Washington, DC and serves on the international jury of the Ekotopfilm/Envirofilm festival in Bratislava, Slovakia. She also currently sits on the board of trustees for the Marvin Hamlisch International Music Awards.