GIDEON'S ARMY | HBO Documentary
Premiered at Sundance Film Festival | Trilogy Films
Available at Amazon.
AWARDS: Emmy nomination; Sundance Film Festival, US Documentary - Editing Award; Ridenhour Prize fostering the spirit of courage and truth.
GIDEON’S ARMY follows the personal stories of three public defenders, who are part of a small group of idealistic lawyers in the Deep South challenging the odds of the criminal justice system. These attorneys face long hours, low pay, bias in the courtroom against both them and their clients and staggering caseloads. The job is so daunting that it is common for even the most committed attorneys to give up in their first year.
CREDIT: Additional Editing. I worked with director Dawn Porter early in the process, putting together character selects and scenes from the raw material. as well as shaping the rhythm of storylines with music and b-roll. Above are 3 short clips from the scenes that I prepared, and the below is the HBO trailer.
ARE WE NOT MEN? - The DEVO Documentary
Currently in production | Go East Productions
The film distills the iconic pop political band DEVO's brilliant, combative forty year career and captures the essence of their message and their groundbreaking, maverick, visual style. From their origins during the 1970 Kent State shootings, to their latest post-corporate album and tours, this is the subversive, riveting story of Devo. Featuring new interviews with band members, contemporaries (Iggy Pop), and followers (Dave Grohl, Tony Hawk) the official documentary tries to capture the ever-shifting truth about this seminal band and the complex, multi-layered relationships of its founders with rare archival film, private home-movies, and recent concert footage.
CREDIT: Editor. A six month journey through 400 hours of public and private footage of the band with director Tony Pemberton; accessing rare archival film; watching every music video over and over again; listening to the band’s interviews – to create the trailer shown here that raised 70K on Kickstarter. Then we worked together over the course of a year to edit the film. It has initial interest from Sundance Film Festival.
HOLLER BACK - [not] VOTING IN AN AMERICAN TOWN | Aired on LINK TV
Premiered at Sunscreen Film Festival | Shugah Works
AWARDS: Best Documentary, 2008 Sunscreen Film Festival
HOLLER BACK - [not] VOTING IN AN AMERICAN TOWN has screened at colleges from Harvard to Hawaii; this hour and 15 minute documentary explores why more young people, don’t vote in U.S. elections. Revealing interviews with non-voters draw you in as one after another they express their anger and lack of faith in a corrupt and unresponsive system. Fast-paced and cut to a dynamic soundtrack that includes The Teddybears, Cody Chesnutt & Maya Azucena; the film takes place during the contentious 2004 presidential election in Allentown Pennsylvania. With impressive detail and considerable humor, the tight and highly charged film focuses on the entrenched problems of U.S. elections: from the twisted complexities of the electoral college to easily hackable voting equipment.
CREDIT: Director, Producer, Editor, Camera, Correspondent
SOMEONE ELSE'S WAR | PBS Documentary
Tribeca Film Festival 2007 | UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
AWARDS - Student Visionary Award (Tribeca Film Festival); Best Short Doc Finalist (Atlanta Intl. Film Festival)
SOMEONE ELSE'S WAR tells the story of 30,000 workers from South and Southeast Asia who do the dirty work on U.S. Military Bases in Iraq. When I worked originally with the filmmaker, Lee Wang, she had shot some extremely compelling interviews with Halliburton contractors in Iraq that became the backbone of this trailer. That story led her to the longer film focusing on Asian workers that aired on PBS.
CREDIT: Producing Editor for trailer