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Samantha Buck - Co-Writer & Director

 

Samantha is an award-winning director, screenwriter and actor. She directed the Peabody Award winning documentary Best Kept Secret. It was a New York Times Critics Pick and the closing film for the PBS series POV. It was named Best of Fest at AFI DOCS, won the Audience Award at the Independent Film Festival in Boston, and was nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Audience Award. Her directorial debut 21 Below earned critical acclaim and was broadcast on Channel 4. It was an official selection at Hot Docs, AFI/Discovery SilverDOCS, and others. She recently co-wrote and produced the narrative short film Canary. With her writing partner Marie Schlingmann, she is currently developing feature narrative projects as part of Sunfishing Films. Samantha is a recipient of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Fund grant, and The Adrienne Shelly Foundation Grant for Female Directors.As an actor, Samantha can next be seen in Martin Scorsese’s HBO series Vinyl as well as TNT’s Public Morals. Other television credits include Stella, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Big Apple, and Boardwalk Empire. Film credits include Gayby, What Maisie Knew, Hellbenders, and Woman in Burka. She teaches documentary filmmaking and is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is currently completing her MFA in Directing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. 

 
 
Marie Schlingmann - Co-Writer & Producer

 

Marie is a New York City-based award-winning writer, director and producer from Berlin, Germany. Credits include the documentary Why We Were So Dangerous, currently on exhibition at the German Historical Museum, her most recent fiction short film Canary (featuring Catherine Curtin), as well as the short films Lawn Care, The Death of Hercules, Glacial Erratics and Bette Gordon’s upcoming feature Border Crossing.

Marie has a background in photography, critical theory, and art history, and is a recipient of the David Jones Memorial Award for Best Director and the ASCAP Scoring Fellowship. She is currently developing feature narrative projects with her writing partner Samantha Buck as part of Sunfishing Films, and is completing her MFA in Directing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

 
 
Daniella Kahane - Producer

 

Daniella Kahane is currently producing 1296 Hits, a feature written by Mark Poirier and Bill U’Ren, and co-produced by Diana Ossana.  She recently produced a Farrelly Brothers short film, directed by the 2015 Project Greenlight winner, executive produced Samantha Buck's Peabody Award winning film Best Kept Secret, and associate produced Academy-Award nominated Edet Belzberg's documentary about genocides, Watchers of the Sky (Sundance). Previously she worked for Academy Award winning producer of Forrest Gump and The Devil Wears Prada.  Daniella graduated summa cum laude with a BA in English and Film Studies from Barnard College, Columbia University and with an MFA from Columbia University, where she wrote, directed, and/or produced a number of shorts, including Top Floor (SXSW, GenArts Film Festival, Lighthouse, Vimeo Staff Picks), All The Broken Pieces (Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, LA Jewish Film Festival, NY Shortsfest), starring Tovah Feldshuh, and A Mighty Nice Man, adapted from the short story by Patricia Highsmith and starring Billy Magnussen and Kristin Connolly, for which she was awarded the HBO Young Producer’s Award.  A Mighty Nice Man (Tribeca FF, Palm Springs Shortfest) won Best Film at the Columbia University Film Festival, the Audience Award, a National Board of Review Award, and was a BAFTA Finalist.  Daniella was first runner up for the prestigious Producers Guild of America Award.  

 

Katherine Harper - Executive Producer

 

Katherine is a creative marketing and public relations executive with 15 years of experience in global branding, communications, and entertainment marketing. A native Texan, Katherine graduated with honors from Southern Methodist University with degrees in business and Spanish. She received the Richard C. Leach International Marketing Award and moved to London in 2002 to work for HIT Entertainment. On returning to Dallas, she continued to work for HIT in marketing and publicity roles on its portfolio of global children's brands such as Barney the Dinosaur, Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine. In 2007, Katherine transitioned to the production and post-production side of the business as Director of Marketing for Golden Globe-nominated studio, Reel FX. Since then, as Head of Marketing and Communications, she has overseen the studio's overall strategic marketing and communications efforts for its commercial division, VR division and original animated films including 2013's Free Birds (Jimmy Hayward, Scott Mosier) with Relativity Media and 2014's Golden Globe, PGA, Critics Choice and Annie Award-nominated The Book of Life (Jorge Gutierrez, Guillermo Del Toro) with 20th Century Fox.  Katherine has done extensive freelance writing including the2008 viral essay "Life and Times of Cash McMogulson" and produced several short form pieces. In her free time, she enjoys horses, cooking, eating, yoga, and turning her phone off. ​

 

 

Chloe Lenihan - Co Producer

 

Chloe Lenihan worked for the Academy-Award winning GK Films (The Departed, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, The Young Victoria) before studying acting under Bill Esper at the William Esper Studio in NYC. She co-founded Buds of May Productions, developing content for the stage and screen. Her directorial debut, Red Dot, has screened at domestic and international film festivals. Chloe joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1989, appearing in national television programs, commercials and modeling campaigns. She is currently an MFA candidate at Columbia University, School of the Arts and is the recipient of the New York Women in Film & Television scholarship.

 

 

Danielle DiGiacomo - Associate Producer

 

Danielle DiGiacomo is Director of Acquisitions at The Orchard, overseeing the acquisition and release of documentaries and independent films across independent cinemas digital platforms worldwide. In her three years there, she has acquired documentaries including Rich Hill (2014 Sundance Grand Jury Winner for Best Documentary), Oscar nominated director Marshall Curry's Point and Shoot (2014 Gotham Award and IDA Award nominee for "Best Documentary"), Cartel Land (Executive Produced by Kathryn Bigelow and Winner of 2015 Sundance Film Festival's Best Director and Best Cinematography' over $600,000 domestic box office), and Frederic Tcheng's Dior and I. Her recent fiction acquisitions include The Overnight, produced by Mark Duplass and starring Taylor Schilling, Adam Scott, and Jason Schwartzman, Joe Swanberg's Digging for Fire and Joachim Trier's Louder than Bombs. DiGiacomo is also a Peabody-award winning producer for the documentary Best Kept Secret, directed by Samantha Buck, which aired on PBS' award-winning series POV in 2013. Before that, she associate produced two documentary features, Jennifer Venditti's Billy the Kid and Samantha Buck's 21 Below. She was associate producer on Andrew Semans' Nancy, Please, which premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. She was one of six producers selected to attend the 2011 Sundance Institute's Creative Producing Lab, where she was the Mark Silverman honoree.

 

 

Laura Heberton - Associate Producer

 

Laura Heberton is a producer of award-winning narrative features that have premiered at top festivals worldwide, including Sundance, Berlin and SXSW. Recent projects include Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck's God Bless the Child and Alison Bagnall's Funny Bunny--which both premiered at SXSW 2015-- and Marcin Malaszczak's The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (Berlin, 2015). She works with some of the most exciting and original filmmakers on the independent scene in addition to Bagnall, Machoian, Ojeda-Beck and Malaszczak: Matt Porterfield, Josephine Decker, Jonathan Lisecki, Andrew Neel, Andrew Semans and Lance Edmands. Her projects have received support from numerous organizations such as the SFFS/KRF, IFP, the Sundance Institute, the Polish Film Society, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Austin Film Society and Rooftop Films. She runs the production company Hot Metal Films.

 

 

Joshua Z. Weinstein - Director of Photography

 

Joshua Weinstein’s work has shown at Sundance, Toronto, South by South West, and Tribeca. Recent credits include Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me (Sundance Selects/ Tribeca), Code of the West (SXSW), Morgan Spurlock’s Inside Man (CNN), Give Up Tomorrow (Emmy Nominated / Tribeca Special Jury Prize), and The Gambling Man (PBS). He also directed Drivers Wanted (PBS), Flying On One Engine (SXSW) and I Beat Mike Tyson (HOT DOCS).

 

 

Jonathan Rudak - Production Designer 

 

Jonathan Rudak is a Dallas based Art Director and Production Designer who has worked with innovative directors including: David Gordon Green (All The Real Girls, Undertow), Craig Zobel (Great World of Sound), Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter), and David Lowery (St. Nick- 2009 Mise-en-Scene award, Sidewalk Moving Pictures Festival). Recently, he was the Art Director for David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, and Production Designer for Eirc Steele’s Bob Birdnow (2013 Ron Tibbet Award for Excellence in Filmmaking in Indie Memphis) as well as Frank Mosley’s Spider Veins.

 

 

Annell Brodeur - Costume Designer

 

Annell Brodeur is a Dallas based costume designer, stylist, stitcher and costumer who worked on David Lowery’s western romance Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck), and on Andrew Renzi’s Franny (Richard Gere and Dakota Fanning). Her most recent designs were seen at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival in Kat Candler’s family drama Hellion (Aaron Paul and Juliette Lewis) as well as Toby Halbrook’s short film Dig. She has been working in film and theatre since 2010 styling music videos for artists such as School of Seven Bells, Sarah Jaffe, Spector and the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Sacrilege”.

 

 

Leeran Z. Raphaely - Composer 

 

Leeran Z. Raphaely is a film composer based in New York City. Raised in a musical home, he started playing classical piano at the age of five, displaying a talent for improvisation early on. His passion for composition began with writing jazz pieces for small combos, eventually progressing to a wide range of genres and ensembles. In high school, he found opportunities to compose songs and underscore for theatrical productions and began writing his first film scores. In 2013, Raphaely composed the score and wrote songs for En Passant, an ambitious animated musical short film that had him collaborating with artists, musicians, animators, and actors from across the globe. For this project, Raphaely was awarded two Jerry Goldsmith Awards at the International Film Music Festival of Cordoba (Best Score in Animated Short and Best Song). In 2014, Raphaely achieved further recognition by winning the highly coveted Best International Film Music Award at the prestigious Zurich Film Festival, beating out 230 other applicants.

 

 

 

Associate Producer: Nancy Wunk DiGiacomo
Associate Producer: Tom DiGiacomco
Associate Producer: Audrey Kaplan
Associate Producer: Pat Pangburn
Hair and Make Up Artist: Mandy Benton 
Edited by: Matt Posorske
Visual Effects Artist: Adam J. Ely
Assistant Director: Tim O’Connor
Steadicam Operator: Tim Yoder
Gaffer: Scott Payne
First AC: Carlos Valdes-Lora 
Second AC: Sarah Hennigan
Key Grip: Darren Joe
Grip: Hunter Jackson
Additional Camera: Lena Tsodykovskaya and Carlos Valdes-Lora
DIT: David Jeter
Sound Recordists: Sydnee Johnson and Chase Hailey 
Assistant HMU: Marlene Whiton, Alicia Nieboer, Patti Burris
HMU for Broadcast: Livia Ferretti
Set Decorator: Crisman Liverman
Set Dresser: Kimberly Johnston
Graphic Design: Jeremy Word, Marcie Maute
Warhol Prints by Elliott Johnson
Art Assistant: Marco Lopez
Dallas Casting Director: Buffalo Casting, Tisha Blood & Matthew Taylor  
Historical Consultant: Nancy Smith
Assistant to Producer: Carolyn Hodge 
Caterer: Sam Crow
Production Assistants: Paiam Alavi, Maria Hunt, Robert Mapes, Chris Martin, Dayna Schutz, Agatha Stopnicki
Editing Consultant: Mick Audsley

 

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