Team

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER Tom Shepard

For 20 years, Filmmaker Tom Shepard has produced, directed, edited, and distributed documentary films. Four of his feature projects – SCOUT’S HONOR, KNOCKING, WHIZ KIDS and THE GROVE – have aired nationally on PBS (including POV, Independent Lens and PBS Plus). Coverage of his work has been featured prominently in the U.S. and foreign press, including reviews of three of his films in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe among others. Shepard’s films have played in hundreds of film festivals worldwide – including Full Frame, Silver Docs and the Sundance Film Festival (where he won two top awards for SCOUT’S HONOR in 2001.) Shepard has raised two million dollars for production of his own work and has received funding from the Independent Television Service (ITVS) four times previously. He is the former Chairman of New Day Films and in 2013, founded the Youth Documentary Academy in Colorado where he teaches regularly. He graduated from Stanford University where he studied human biology and film.

PRODUCER, CINEMATOGRAPHER Jen Gilomen

Jen Gilomen is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker and cinematographer who has created nationally and internationally distributed films, including Deep Down and the associated Virtual Mine interactive project, which were funded by ITVS and MacArthur Foundation, participated in the U.S. State Department’s American Documentary Showcase, and received an Emmy nomination in the category of New Approaches to News & Documentary in 2011. Jen was recently a Supervising Producer and programmer at the Independent Television Service (ITVS), where she oversaw a portfolio of feature documentaries for public television. Prior to joining ITVS, Jen was Director of Independent Media at the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), where she developed innovative national initiatives for public media production, distribution, education, and collaboration, ran programs for documentary filmmakers, and led the public access television station for the City of San Francisco. She has acted as a strategic, technical, and creative advisor for nearly one hundred independent producers and nonprofit organizations, managed programs for community media and innovation, and produced nationally and internationally distributed films.

Jen and Tom

EDITOR Eva Ilona Brzeski

Eva Brzeski is the writer, director and editor of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning films THIS UNFAMILIAR PLACE, 24 GIRLS, and CHINA DIARY (911) and the producer, director and editor of the underground sensation LAST SEEN, written and co-produced by Holiday Reinhorn. Eva edited the documentary feature UNDER OUR SKIN as well as the TV shows The Real World, The Simple Life and many documentary and narrative films. She teaches and edits in the Youth Documentary Academy and lives in Northern California, where she works as an editor.  Eva is directing and producing her latest documentary project entitled FATHERLAND.

CONSULTING EDITOR Jim Klein

Jim Klein’s involvement in independent films began in the early 1970s. He is a founder of the pioneering film distribution co-operative New Day Films. With partner Julia Reichert he created innovative documentaries Growing Up Female, Academy Award nominee Union Maids, and Academy Award nominee Seeing Red. His films Letter to the Next Generation and Taken for a Ride both had national broadcasts on PBS’s flagship POV series.Klein was the principal editor for several dozen films including the Prime Time Emmy winning A Lion In The House, Academy Award nominee The Last Truck, and Scout’s Honor.  Klein has edited five fiction feature films, including The Speed of Life, which won a Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival, and The Dream Catcher. He is also a retired Professor in the School of Theatre, Dance and Film at Wright State University.

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Andy Black

Andrew Black is a Director of Photography whose work includes documentary and feature films.  Films that he has shot have been for theatrical and broadcast distribution and have garnered awards in many festivals worldwide.  He worked with Michael Moore on Fahrenheit 911 and Sicko. He shot the Academy Award nominated The Weather Underground by Sam Green and Bill Siegel. He annually shoots the Emmy Award winning The New Environmentalists, a PBS show that features environmentalists from around the world.  Recent credits include the soon to be American Master’s film Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin by Arwen Curry, the Emmy nominated HBO documentary 50 Children by Steven Pressman, Bill Siegel’s Emmy Award winning The Trials of Muhammad Ali, Jacob Kornbluth’s and Netflix Saving Capitalism, portions of the Emmy Award winning series Years of Living Dangerously for National Geographic, as well as A Cinematic Study of Fog by Sam Green.  He resides in San Francisco California.

Mike Seeley

Mike Seely has produced, directed and photographed dozens of cross-cultural and international documentary projects. His work has been broadcast in the US and screened at festivals worldwide including Slamdance, Tribeca, Toronto International Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. His 2010 film The Most Distant Places about a rural hospital project in Ecuador is in distribution through New Day Films.  As a freelance cinematographer and producer, he works with independent directors, non-profit, broadcast and commercial clients such as National Geographic, MTV2, Frontline World, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Facebook and Williams-Sonoma.  Recent DP credits include: Hard Earned (prod. Kartemquin Films, Al Jazeera America broadcast 2015), Code: Debugging the Gender Gap (Tribeca 2015), and Daughters of the Forest (ITVS/PBS broadcast 2015). In 2005, he completed his MA in documentary film production at Stanford University, and for 2010 he received a Fulbright grant to work in Lodz, Poland on a project exploring the Polish documentary film tradition.

COMPOSER Justin Melland

Award winning film composer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Justin Melland primarily works in the demanding world of film and television, creating refreshingly inventive scores at his studio The Eleventh Laboratory, in Los Angeles, California. The Washington Post called out his score for The Kill Team by Oscar nominated Director Dan Krauss as “A brilliantly spare and evocative soundtrack”. Justin has enjoyed working with many highly respected, award winning directors. Twice his work with Dan Krauss has been nominated for an Academy Award. First was The HBO Documentary Films: The Death of Kevin Carter in 2006, and again for the Netflix Original Documentary : Extremis in 2016. Justin has also worked along side Oscar winning director Paul Haggis and Dan Krauss scoring their film 5B, and Oscar winning director Alex Gibney scoring his series for National Geographic called Parched. The Melland-scored film In Football We Trust won an Emmy Award in 2017. Most recently, Justin scored the STARZ Original Series Wrong Man and the second most-watched Netflix release since Nielsen measurement began: Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes with two time Emmy Award winning director Joe Berlinger.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER D. Stuart Harrison

D. Stuart (Stu) Harrison has credits as Executive Producer on Scouts Honor (2001), Knocking (2006) and Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America (2019).  He has provided fundraising support and mentorship to several social justice documentary projects and is the founding funder of the Alexander Valley Film Festival. Stu has an MBA from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada and spent 30 years in management positions in Tech industries in the UK and Silicon Valley.  He is the founder of the Distributech Conference for electric power professionals, now in its 26th year.  Stu and his partner live in Sonoma County where they are active in community service groups, political campaigns, and drinking too much wine.