KATY CHEVIGNY

Director / Producer

Katy Chevigny is an award-winning filmmaker and a co-founder of Big Mouth Productions and Arts Engine. Prior to co-directing E-TEAM, She directed ELECTION DAY (2007) which premiered at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in 2007 and was broadcast on PBS in 2008. With Kirsten Johnson, she co-directed DEADLINE, an investigation into Illinois Governor George Ryan's commutation of death sentences. After premiering at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, DEADLINE was broadcast on NBC to an audience of over six million, in an unusual acquisition of an independent film by a major network. It was nominated for an Emmy Award and won the Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award, among others. Her producing credits include ARCTIC SON, INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY, NUYORICAN DREAM, BROTHER BORN AGAIN, OUTSIDE LOOKING IN: TRANSRACIAL ADOPTION IN AMERICA, PUSHING THE ELEPHANT and 1971. Chevigny’s films have been shown theatrically, on HBO, Cinemax, POV, Independent Lens, NBC, Arte/ZDF, Britain’s Channel 4, and others and have played at film festivals around the world, including Sundance, Tribeca, Full Frame, SXSW, IDFA, Sheffield and Berlin.

ROSS KAUFFMAN

Director / Producer / Director of Photography

Ross Kauffman is the Academy Award winning director, producer, cinematographer and co-editor of BORN INTO BROTHELS, winner of the Oscar® for Best Documentary 2005. The film also won the Emmy for Best Documentary 2005, and was accepted to over 50 film festivals worldwide and has since received over 40 awards, including National Board of Review Best Documentary 2004, LA Film Critics Best Documentary 2004 and the 2004 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award. 

In 2009, he served as Executive Producer on the documentary feature IN A DREAM, directed by Jeremiah Zagar, which was short-listed for the Academy Awards. He also worked as Consulting Producer on POSTERGIRL, a documentary short nominated for the Academy Award in 2011. Ross is also regarded as a top documentary cinematographer. From the war zones of Libya to the front lines of Kashmir, he has filmed around the world.

Ross is currently working on a variety of projects, including; RIGHT ON RED, a comedic scripted feature film about a gay couple trying to adopt a newborn baby from a drug-addicted pregnant woman and her abusive lesbian partner, and the documentary WAIT FOR ME, chronicling the story of a mother’s spiritual and emotional search for her son who went missing twenty-three years ago.

MARILYN NESS

Producer

Marilyn Ness is a two-time Emmy Award-winning documentary producer. She produced Katy Chevigny and Ross Kauffman's feature documentary E-TEAM and Johanna Hamilton's feature documentary 1971, both premiering in 2014. She is currently a partner at Big Mouth Productions and produces and directs feature length documentaries as well as short films for non-profits.  She directed and produced the documentary feature film BAD BLOOD: A CAUTIONARY TALE that broadcast nationally on PBS in 2011 and was the centerpiece of a campaign to reform blood donation policies in the U.S.  Prior to that, Ness spent four years as a producer for director Ric Burns, collaborating on four award-winning PBS films: ANSEL ADAMS; THE CENTER OF THE WORLD; ANDY WARHOL; and EUGENE O’NEILL. Ness’s other credits include films for TLC, Court TV, and National Geographic.  Ness’s films have received funding from the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Sundance Documentary Fund as well as other innovative sources.  She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons and currently teaches Producing Documentaries at Columbia University School of the Arts Masters Film Program.

DAVID TEAGUE

Editor

David Teague is a film editor whose work includes Oscar-winning and Emmy-winning documentaries. His work has played Sundance, Cannes, Berlin, Hot Docs, SXSW, Silverdocs, Tribeca, LA Film Fest, Full Frame, and True/False, amongst many others. He recently edited the award-winning feature documentary CUTIE AND THE BOXER, which premiered at Sundance in 2013 and was named by the New York Times as one of the top five docs of the year. Previously, David edited the Oscar-winning documentary FREEHELD (2007) as well as two other Oscar-nominated films (MONDAYS AT RACINE, SUN COME UP). Other credits include the feature documentary The Iran Job, the PBS series CONSTITUTION USA, and the Emmy Award-winning Sesame Street primetime special “Growing Hope Against Hunger”.  In 2009, David directed and edited his own award-winning documentary INTIFADA NYC which was broadcast on TV outlets all over the globe, including Al Jazeera. His documentary directing work also includes OUR HOUSE, co-directed with Greg King, which premiered at Hot Docs2010. Along with having taught cinematography and editing at Downtown Community Television, the New School, Brooklyn College and Long Island University, he is the author of three best-selling guides to film editing with Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express. David lives in Brooklyn, NY, with Annie Wedekind and their son Henry Wedekind.

RACHEL BETH ANDERSON

Co-Cinematography

Rachel has filmed in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, South Sudan, and Nepal for CNN “Hero’s”, Frontline, Human Rights Watch, and the independent feature documentary film E-TEAM.  Her directorial debut feature documentary First To Fall was borne of a 7-month journey spanning the Libyan revolution.  During the 2011 Egyptian revolution Rachel worked as a videographer and field producer for PBS Frontline documentaries: Gigi’s Revolution, and The Brothers. Her footage from the uprising is also included in multiple long form documentaries including BBC’s This World, Egypt – Children of the Revolution, PBS’s Before the Spring: After the Fall, and independent films, Zero-Silence and Uprising. Rachel filmed E-Team members Anna and Ole during two of their undercover missions in Syria, smuggling across the Turkish Syrian border with the investigators on foot. 

JAMES FOLEY

Additional Cinematography

Jim was an American journalist and video reporter. Before becoming a video journalist, Foley was an instructor for Teach for America. In 2009, he became an embedded journalist with USAID-funded development projects in Iraq, and in 2011, he wrote for military newspaper Stars and Stripes in Afghanistan, and Global Post in Libya, where he was captured by Gaddafi loyalist forces and held for 44 days. After his release, he continued to work as a freelancer in Libya and in Syria, covering the civil war there and exposing the suffering of civilians in those conflicts. In late 2011, he worked on the documentary film E-TEAM, following Peter Bouckaert while investigating abuses in the aftermath of the fall of Gaddafi. He was working as a freelance war correspondent for Agence France-Presse and Global Post during the Syrian Civil War when he was abducted on November 22, 2012 in northwestern Syria. After over a year in captivity, in August 2014, Jim was the first American citizen to be killed by the group calling itself the Islamic State. His parents and friends have honored his work and life by creating a fund in his memory. http://jamesfoleyfund.org/

 

T. GRIFFIN

Composer

T. Griffin is a songwriter, composer and producer working in Brooklyn, New York. Alone and with his band The Quavers he has released five critically acclaimed CDs of songs in a homespun electronic style that's been described as 'porch techno'. A prolific film composer, he has scored over two dozen feature-length narrative and documentary films, and twice been nominated for Cinema Eye Honors for original music score. In 2008 he was one of six composers selected as fellows at the Sundance Composers' Lab.

Notable film scores include Liza Johnson's RETURN (Cannes, 2011), Tristan Patterson's DRAGONSLAYER (SXSW Grand Jury Prizewinner 2011), Marshall Lewy's Robert Carlyle vehicle, CALIFORNIA SOLO (Sundance, 2012) and Michael Almereyda's NEW ORLEANS, MON AMOUR. He has created music for several live film/music events that have toured the world, including Sam Green's UTOPIA IN FOUR MOVEMENTS, Jem Cohen's WE HAVE AN ANCHOR and the FACTORY FILMS of the late Danny Williams.

As a producer and player he has worked with musical luminaries including Vic Chesnutt, Patti Smith, Tom Verlaine, DJ/ Rupture, Mary Margaret O'Hara and members of godspeed you! black emperor, Fugazi, The Dirty Three and The Ex. More: tgriffinmusic.com

JAMIE BOYLE

Associate Editor / Production Manager

Jamie Boyle is an associate film editor working in New York City. While earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Colorado, she became a four-time recipient of the Grillo and Goldfarb Award for Outstanding Filmmaking. Most recently, she worked as an assistant editor on the short film, The House at the Edge of the Galaxy, which premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival in March, 2013. She has edited for numerous leading digital media companies, working on videos for top fashion and lifestyle brands. She produced and edited commercials for InFocus Creative, a commercial marketing group based in Denver, Colorado. She worked as an editor for Human Rights Watch on their multimedia report, People and Power: The 2014 Sochi Olympics, which helped lead to the suspension of construction of what was projected to be the largest natural gas power station in the world in Sochi, Russia. She has worked as an assistant editor on short films and commercials, including Ross Kauffman's spot for GE and Fire with Fire, part of a series of films in the GE-commissioned Focus Forward initiative. She has worked as a teacher's assistant at the Bronx Documentary Center and was a guest-lecturer at Columbia University in Producing for Documentary.