Director, Writer, Editor | Sam Green is a New York-based documentary filmmaker. He received his Master’s Degree in Journalism from University of California Berkeley, where he studied documentary with acclaimed filmmaker Marlon Riggs. Green’s most recent live documentaries include The Measure of All Things, (2014), The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller (with Yo La Tengo) (2012), and Utopia in Four Movements (2010). With all of these works, Green narrates the film in-person while musicians perform a live soundtrack. Green’s 2004 feature-length film, The Weather Underground, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for an Academy Award, was included in the Whitney Biennial, and has screened widely around the world.
samgreen.to
Director, Writer, Editor | Joe Bini enjoys working in both fiction and non-fiction film forms. He is best known for his 20 year collaboration with Werner Herzog, resulting in such notable films as Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Into the Abyss, and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. He has also edited the ground breaking films, We Need To Talk About Kevin and You Were Never Really Here, directed by Lynne Ramsay and American Honey, directed by Andrea Arnold, as well as Nick Broomfield’s Tales of the Grim Sleeper. His films have won numerous awards world-wide. You can tell by the color of her nail polish that the lady holding the photographs is a spy.
Executive Producer | Josh Penn is a producer with the Department of Motion Pictures. He produced Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, the Caméra d’Or at Cannes, and was nominated for four Academy Awards (including Best Picture). In addition, Josh was nominated for Outstanding Producer at the 2013 Producer’s Guild Awards. He has also held producing roles on Patti Cake$ (Sundance 2017), Western (Sundance 2015 Special Jury Prize Winner), The Great Invisible (SXSW 2014 Grand Jury Prize Winner,) and Contemporary Color among other films. Josh premiered two projects at Sundance 2018: Monsters and Men (Special Jury Prize for Outstanding First Feature) and the live documentary A Thousand Thoughts. Additionally, Josh has been a leading member of the Court 13 collective for over a decade. Outside of his work in film, Josh was previously the Michigan New Media Director for President Obama’s 2008 campaign and a Senior Digital Program Manager for the 2012 re-election campaign.
departmentofmotionpictures.com
Producer | Janet Cowperthwaite has played a leading role in the extraordinary accomplishments of the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet since 1981. Kronos made the pioneering move to incorporate as the non-profit Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) in 1975. Janet has worked in close collaboration with Kronos as Managing Director to grow KPAA into an organization with a budget of $2.7 million, and a full-time staff of 11 who work year-round to oversee all aspects of touring, home season performances, recordings, commissions, artistic collaborations, project development, education and community programs, fundraising, marketing, and media relations. Janet has served on several boards, including the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) and the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA). She also chaired the annual conferences and served in key strategic planning roles for both of those organizations.
kronosquartet.org
The Kronos Quartet – David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello) – has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually reimagine the string quartet experience for more than 40 years. In the process, Kronos has become one of the world’s most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts, releasing more than 60 recordings, collaborating with an eclectic mix of composers and performers, and commissioning over 950 works and arrangements for string quartet. They have won over 40 awards, including a Grammy Award and the prestigious Polar Music and Avery Fisher Prizes. The nonprofit Kronos Performing Arts Association manages all aspects of Kronos’ work, including the commissioning of new works, concert tours and home season performances, education programs, and a self-produced Kronos Festival. In 2015, Kronos launched Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, an education and legacy project that is commissioning—and distributing for free—the first learning library of contemporary repertoire for string quartet.
kronosquartet.org
Cinematographer | Kirsten Johnson is one of the most notable cinematographers working in documentary cinema today, having shot Citizenfour, Happy Valley, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Oath, The Invisible War, and dozens of other essential documentaries. With her new documentary, the visually radical memoir Cameraperson, Johnson presents an extraordinary and deeply poetic film of her own, drawing on the remarkable and varied footage that she has shot and reframing it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between storytelling and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented in so many other directors’ films as one recreation of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection. When not shooting she teaches a class on “Visual Thinking” for NYU’s Graduate Journalism Department, a course in cinematography at SVA, and often leads workshops for young camerapeople and documentarians under the auspices of the Arab Art and Culture Fund in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia.
ArKtype / Thomas O. Kriegsmann is recognized as among the industry’s leading supporters of new, experimental work. Established in 2005 to support the finest in emerging and established artists worldwide, ArKtype supports risk in live performance – creating an ever-shifting mechanism for the fulfillment of artists’ visions for new work, international collaboration, production and touring. The company has grown to encompass renowned artists from twenty-five different countries at any given time, limitless genres and commercial and non-profit support structures for a variety of spaces, including projects with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Peter Brook, Anna Deavere Smith, Bryce Dessner, Daniel Fish, Victoria Thiérrée-Chaplin, Yael Farber, Annie-B Parson & Paul Lazar, Lisa Peterson, Peter Sellars, 600 HIGHWAYMEN, John Cameron Mitchell and Julie Taymor.
arktype.org
C41 Media is full-service production company headquartered in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Founded in 2011 by filmmaker/ cinematographer Pete Sillen and producer Brendan Doyle, C41 has a roster of award winning directors who’s work in experimental formats, television, commercials, and documentary feature films have been nominated for Emmys, Webby’s and Academy Awards. Their commercial work won four Lions at Cannes 2017, One Show Gold Pencils, and Effie Awards. The films C41 has produced have screened at Sundance, Berlinale, and film festivals around the world.
c41media.com