My work with these film, video, and television projects focused on distribution strategies, marketing, and promotion.
· Following a public high school teacher and his class for over two years, ACCIDENTAL HERO: ROOM 408, by Terri De Bono and Steve Rosen, tells the story of Tommie Lindsey, an extraordinary man who is changing lives by introducing his students to a little known academic sport called "forensics." ACCIDENTAL HERO has important messages about the tremendous potential that young people from diverse backgrounds can realize when they are given the support of good teachers and ample educational tools.
· AMERICAN HIGH is a 13-part documentary series produced by R.J. Cutler for Twin Cities Public Television. Its penetrating look into a year in the life of high schoolers is the "real deal", proclaims Newsweek. Brimming with exuberance, hipness, and stylish editing, AMERICAN HIGH boasts authenticity as well as addictive drama.
· BORN IN THE U.S.A. is the first public television documentary to provide an in-depth look at childbirth in America. It offers a fascinating overview of birthing, beginning with the early days of our country when almost everyone knew of mothers or babies who died in childbirth. By the 1950's, women were giving birth while completely knocked out, while doctors delivered their babies with forceps. With the 60's and the rise of the women's movement, women began to question this practice. Today, many traditional hospitals and physicians are rethinking their policies, midwives are making a slow but steady comeback, birthing centers are opening and people are finding out that there's more than one way to give birth in America.
· BROTHER OUTSIDER: THE LIFE OF BAYARD RUSTIN by Nancy Kates and Bennett Singer, Executive Producer Sam Pollard. A master strategist and tireless activist, Bayard Rustin achieved national prominence as organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest and most jubilant peaceful protests ever held in the U.S. He is also credited with bringing Gandhi's protest techniques to the American civil rights movement, and with helping to mold Martin Luther King Jr. into an international symbol of peace and nonviolence. Despite these achievements, Rustin was silenced, threatened, beaten, imprisoned and frozen out of important leadership positions—sometimes due to his uncompromising political beliefs, but most often because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. BROTHER OUTSIDER presents a comprehensive portrait of Bayard Rustin, focusing on his work for peace, racial equality, economic justice and international human rights. A P.O.V. premiere, January 21, 2003 on PBS.
· DOWNSIDE UP by Nancy Kelly. What happens when an impoverished, working-class town decides that its only hope for survival lies within the world of contemporary art? Can these disparate worlds benefit each other? And why would they even try? "Downside UP" captures the beginnings of America's largest museum of contemporary art, MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) and the rebirth of its host city, North Adams. Through the eyes of filmmaker Nancy Kelly and her family, who worked in the factory before it closed, the film renders the subtle changes in the spirit of a region. "Downside UP" is about the tentative, dangerous notion of hope in a town widely viewed as hopeless.
· EVERYDAY HEROES, a new documentary feature film from Rick Goldsmith and Abby Ginzberg, tells the story of a 21-member AmeriCorps team, whose members worked as tutors, mentors and health educators with elementary through high school students in Richmond, Berkeley and Oakland. Their hopes and dreams, successes and failures provide insight into critical problems that confront 21st-century American society, and the possibilities of national service in addressing those problems.
· FIRST PERSON PLURAL is Deann Borshay Liem's story of multiple identities: within her Korean birth family, within her adoptive family, and a mistaken identity as a Korean girl of another name. The issues and themes which are revealed on her journey of discovery have particular significance to adoptees, birth families, and adoptive families. The issues and themes, in many ways, are also universal to each individual¹s need to understand where we belong in society, how we came to be there, and where we fit in the heritage of our various families.
· THE GOD SQUAD by Emily Hart shows the political realities behind the Endangered Species Act and the ruling council ("The God Squad") who decide the fate of possible additions to the list of endangered or protected species. Focusing on the story of the spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest, the film reveals how neighbor can be pitted against neighbor when conservation and commerce go head-to-head.
· THE GOOD WAR AND THOSE WHO REFUSED TO FIGHT IT, by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Tejada-Flores, is a fascinating one-hour documentary that sheds light on a previously ignored part of the World War II saga—the story of American conscientious objectors who refused to fight "the good war." It is a story of personal courage, idealism and nonconformity based on both ethical and religious beliefs—about men whose love of country could not extend to killing their fellow man. Narrated by Ed Asner, THE GOOD WAR AND THOSE WHO REFUSED TO FIGHT IT premiered on PBS in January, 2002.
· INVISIBLE REVOLUTION by Beverly Peterson.
· THE OPTIMISTS is a feature length documentary—12 years in the making—recounting individual acts of bravery, compassion, and moral judgement during the Holocaust which resulted in the saving of 50,000 Jews in Bulgaria. THE OPTIMISTS is accompanied by an ambitious community engagement campaign, inclusive of youth, faith communities, peacemakers, and the general public. By Jacky and Lisa Comforty.
· OUT OF THE POISON TREE is a one-hour documentary about people who are working to rebuild Cambodia in the midst of competing interests and often mutually exclusive desires for retribution and reconciliation. It explores the theme of personal and collective guilt in a country where the lines between victim and perpetrator are often blurred. This timely portrait focuses on contemporary Cambodia, 26 years after the Khmer Rouge regime murdered nearly 1/4 of their own people. Producer Beth Pielert.
· REGRET TO INFORM, a 1999 Oscar-nominated feature length film by Barbara Sonneborn, reflects the experiences of Vietnam War widows, both American and Vietnamese. With haunting and decisive clarity they examine the experiences of millions who have struggled to restore broken lives and resurrect hope in societies that have yet to deal forthrightly with the legacies of war, racism and violence.
· RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, a series of first-person video diaries in which individuals on the cusp of eventful personal changes are recruited, trained, and turned loose with Hi8 cameras to tell--in words and pictures--what happens next. A co-presentation of ITVS, WGBH, and the American Documentary. By Ellen Schneider & Steve Atlas.
· SATYA: A PRAYER FOR THE ENEMY, produced by Ellen Bruno, focuses on the testimonies of Tibetan Buddhist nuns, revealing continued religious oppression and human rights abuses in Chinese-occupied Tibet. For over forty years the Tibetans have adhered to the principles of nonviolent social change. Satya seeks to understand the basis and inspiration for this choice of nonviolence, and the spiritual principles that influence their understanding of the enemy.
· SEÑORITA EXTRAVIADA (Missing Young Woman) tells the true—and ongoing—story of 250+ young women dead to mutilation and violence in Juárez, Mexico. At best, the police force has failed to protect the city's young women, many employees in the maquila (foreign-owned) factories there. At worst, the police are complicit. From the brutality, fear, and hopelessness has grown a human rights movement, propelled by the mothers of the dead girls. SEÑORITA EXTRAVIADA will premiere on PBS in 2002, and received the Special Jury Award 2002 at the Sundance Film Festival.
· STORE WARS: WHEN WAL-MART COMES TO TOWN follows the one-year conflict that polarizes Ashland, Virginia (pop. 7,200) when Wal-Mart decides it wants to build a megastore on the edge of town. The ensuing debate, which pits neighbor against neighbor, illustrates the struggle between conflicting versions of the American dream. STORE WARS is about the right of a community to determine its own future. But which values are most important? And who gets to decide?
· In Jeremiah, Kentucky, in 1967, a local landowner named Hobart Ison shot and killed documentary filmmaker Hugh O'Connor. The two men had met only minutes before the murder-shortly after O'Connor and his crew interviewed a poor family renting property from Ison. By considering this single act of violence, STRANGER WITH A CAMERA spotlights the complex role media depictions play in society, and the responsibilities that those who produce media must assume. By Elizabeth Barret and Judi Jennings.
· TELL ABOUT THE SOUTH: Voices in Black and White, is a three-part history of modern Southern literature from 1915 to the present day. It is a tale of unprecedented artistic expression amidst social and economic turmoil, when writers of the South, black and white, were exploring the mysteries of their unique region, giving us stories of paradox and beauty. Narrated by Rita Dove. Produced by Ross Spears, James Agee Film Project.
· UNDETECTABLE, by Jay Corcoran, examines the realities of life for people surviving on the AIDS drugs "cocktails," challenging the widespread assumption that the worst of the HIV epidemic is over. Filmed over three years, this award-winning film examines the complex physical and psychological effects of the multi-drug therapies for HIV disease on three women and three men of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
· WORLDS APART, by Maren Monsen and Julia Haslett is about medical ethics and how they are experienced by those at-risk in our health care system (people of color, immigrants, the impoverished), and the role of that system in reforming itself.
