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Kathy Leichter is a documentary film producer and director and the founder of Two Suns Media and Mint Leaf Productions, both based in New York City. In addition to her work directing and producing HERE ONE DAY, Leichter recently produced HIDDEN BATTLES, a documentary about the psychological impact of killing on soldiers from across the globe. Leichter also produced and directed PASSING ON, about her ninety-one year old, tell-it-like-it-is grandmother, Elsa, an Austrian Jewish immigrant and family therapist and the award-winning PBS documentary, A DAY’S WORK, A DAY’S PAY about three welfare recipients who become leaders in the fight against workfare in New York City. Leichter is the Project Director of THE WORKFARE MEDIA INITIATIVE, a media activism project which trains current and former welfare recipients to show A DAY’S WORK, A DAY’S PAY and lead facilitated discussions educating audiences about economic justice and community organizing. Other credits include co-producer of the award-winning films, SPIT IT OUT, about a man who stutters and his journey towards self-acceptance and producer of MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS: MIRRORS THAT BIND, about the impact of the mother/daughter relationship on a woman’s body, sexuality, and self-esteem. Formerly Leichter worked at WQED-PBS, where she produced a national series on health care reform and worked for MISTER ROGERS NEIGHBORHOOD.
Pola Rapaport is a writer, director, and editor of many award-winning films. Her work includes “Subway: The Musical” (work-in-progress); “Hair: Let the Sun Shine In”; “Writer of O,” portrait of the elusive author of the erotic novel Story of O; “Family Secret,” the story of the discovery of her secret Romanian brother; “Blind Light,” doc/drama of a photographer’s peak experience in an Italian villa, starring Edie Falco; and “Broken Meat,” portrait of the mad poet Alan Granville. She is the editor of several feature documentaries, including Kathy Leichter’s “Here One Day," and the multi-award-winning “Grace Paley: Collected Shorts”. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, an Emmy nominee for sound editing, and winner of numerous grants and awards. Pola is a graduate of NYU, and is married to DP Wolfgang Held, with whom she has often collaborated.
Kirsten Johnson works as a cinematographer and a director. She is currently at work on "A Blind Eye", a Sundance Documentary Fund supported film that she shot and directed in Afghanistan. Her shooting appears in the 2013 Academy Award nominated, Sundance 2012 Audience Award winner, "The Invisible War". As the supervising DP on Abby Disney and Gini Reticker's 2011 series, "Women, War and Peace", she traveled to Colombia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. She shared the 2010 Sundance Documentary Competition Cinematography Award with Laura Poitras for "The Oath". She shot the Tribeca Film Festival 2008 Documentary winner, “Pray the Devil Back to Hell'. Her cinematography is featured in “Farenheit 9/11”, Academy Award-nominated “Aslyum”, Emmy-winning “Ladies First”, and Sundance premiere documentaries, "A Place at the Table", "This Film is Not Yet Rated", "American Standoff", and "Derrida”. A chapter on her work as a cinematographer is featured in the book, “The Art of the Documentary”. Her previous documentary as a director, "Deadline", (co-directed with Katy Chevigny), premiered at Sundance in 2004, was broadcast on primetime NBC, and won the Thurgood Marshall Award.
Nathan Halpern is a composer and singer/songwriter from New York City. His latest film score was for Robert Redford's All the President's Men Revisited, which has been nominated for the 2013 Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Nonfiction or Documentary Special. In 2012, he scored the Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present (HBO Films), winner of the Peabody Award, the Audience Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, and an Emmy for Best Arts Programming of 2013. Screenfanatic said of the film: "a mesmerizing, incredibly moving piece of cinema, perfectly matched by the electrical charge of Nathan Halpern’s score;" New York Music Daily said: "A chillingly Lynchian soundtrack...Halpern is a master of noir."
Halpern made his film scoring debut in 2011 with Renee (ESPN Films / 30 for 30), whose music was lauded as an “excellent score” by The Huffington Post and “a hauntingly poetic score” by The Examiner. Other recent film scores include In So Many Words (from Director Elisabeth Haviland-James, producer of HBO's The Loving Story), premiering April 2013 at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival; Here one Day, screening at HOT DOCS in April 2013. He has contributed music to the PBS documentary series Makers: Women Who Make America (narrated by Meryl Streep) and Half the Sky. He was commissioned to write original music for the documentary Amnesty International: 50 Years (Show of Force), as well as a series of commercial spots for Sony, Kodak, Neiman Marcus, and The New York Times. Currently, he is recording a solo album of original songs with co-producer Martin Bisi (Brian Eno, Snoic Youth), and composing the score to
The Poisoner's Handbook for PBS/American Experience.
Carolina Correa is a bilingual producer and editor with over 12 years of experience. Previously she was Field Producer for StoryCorps, a national oral history project that airs every Friday on NPR. She has edited and produced for broadcast networks such as PBS, FOX, Telesur, and Nickelodeon, including the Emmy Award winning PBS/WTIU children’s program Friday Zone. She also served as associate producer on Kathy Leichter’s documentary Here One Day which premiered at IDFA in 2013 and Victoria Mills' Hidden Battles which travelled the festival circuit and is now being distributed by Filmakers Library. Carolina has a Masters in Media Studies from The New School University and graduated in Telecommunications from Indiana University. She is a member of the National Academy of Arts and Science and New York Women in Film and Television. Recent freelance clients include Dora the Explorer and USA De Verdad.
Steve Pequignot is one of the partners of Glue Editing & Design (you can link to their website), a post-production company located in Chelsea in NYC. The company was started in 1998 by Emmy Winning editor Ken Sirulnick with 1 Avid Symphony in his living room. Pequignot has over 20 years of experience both offline and online editing for network and cable television, sports, music videos, documentaries, children's television, news, special effects, opens, teases, bumpers and graphics. Glue Editing & Design is in an amazing, creative, sunny, friendly environment in the Starret Lehigh building at 601 W 26th Street. Our neighbors are filmmakers, directors, producers, and editors who make up our creative W 26th street family. A great place to meet and share creative ideas.
Martin Czembor came to New York from Berlin, Germany, in 1993 where he had previously graduated from the Tonmeister program. Starting in the environment of New York’s music recording studios, he has worked with a variety of artists, such as Eykah Badu, the Backstreet Boys, A Tribe Called Quest or Bette Midler. His work as scoring engineer for composer Philip Glass brought him to work on projects like Martin Scorsese’s “Kundun” or Godfrey Reggio’s “Qatsi” trilogy. Building on this musical background, he worked as Re-recording Mixer at New York’s legendary Sound One on such projects as Scorsese’s “Blues” series, Antoine Fuqua’s “Lightning In A Bottle” and Reggios “Naqoyqatsi”. Other feature film projects have taken him to work with directors like Robert Altman (“Prairie Home Companion”), James Ivory (“The White Countess”) and Robert De Niro (“The Good Shepard”). A great interest in working in the documentary genre had also allowed him to work with directors like Ken Burns (“Horatio’s Drive”) or Alex Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room”).
Working as an independent Re-recording mixer since 2007, Martin has happily expanded on his experience and served the New York independent film and television world through collaborations with directors like Tim Robbins, Craig Lucas, Campbell Scott, Edward Burns and has continually dedicated himself to working on a wide range of documentary films, including several series such as Maro Chermayeff and Jeff Dupre’s “Carrier”, “Circus”, “Half The Sky” or Ric Burns’ “We Shall Remain”, to award winning artistic films, like “Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present” or the re-envisioned “The Rolling Stones: Charlie is My Darling”.
It is a great labor of love that drives Martin to trying to find and understand the essence of each new film project and to seeking to give that essence it’s expression in sound through the collaborative process that culminates in a completed mix for a film.