diana whitten

(Director, Producer, Camera) is a filmmaker with a decade of professional film/TV direction, production and design experience, including work with On the Leesh Productions, Naked Angels, Pterodactyl Films, Little Airplane Production Company for Disney Children’s Programming, Nickelodeon, and the Noggin Channel, B-Productions, for British MTV, and for comedian Mike Myers.  She has directed and designed films that appeared over 25 international film festivals.   A graduate of Tufts University (BA), the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (BFA), and the Newschool Program in International Media (MA), she was a Fulbright Fellow to Indonesia in 2000 documenting the political use of shadow theater.   She currently manages the communications department at Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program.

abigail disney

(Executive Producer) is a filmmaker and philanthropist. Her longtime passion for women’s issues and peacebuilding culminated in her first film, the acclaimed PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL, about the Liberian women who peacefully ended their country’s fourteen-year civil war. She is currently Executive Producer of the groundbreaking PBS mini-series WOMEN, WAR & PEACE, the most comprehensive global media initiative ever mounted on the role of women in peace and conflict.

Along with her husband, Pierre Hauser, Abigail co-founded the Daphne Foundation, which works with low-income communities in the five boroughs of New York City. Her work in philanthropy, women’s engagement and leadership, and conflict resolution has been recognized through the Epic Award from the White House Project, the Changing the Landscape for Women Award from the Center for the Advancement of Women, and the prestigious International Advocate for Peace (IAP) Award from the Cardozo Law School’s Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution. In addition, Abigail holds degrees from Yale, Stanford, and Columbia. She lives in New York City with her husband and four children.

mitchell block

(Producer) has handled the distribution and marketing of hundreds of documentary, live action and animated short films and documentary features, which have won 24 Oscars and have received 49 nominations from the Motion Picture Academy, of which he is also a member. He conceived, co-created and was an Executive Producer on the 10-hour national Emmy Winning PBS documentary special and companion theatrical documentary feature CARRIER produced in partnership with Icon Productions. His newest feature documentary STEALING AMERICA opened in NY and Los Angeles this August. It has played over 100 dates as part of its theatrical release.  He is the managing director of Direct Cinema, Limited, and worked under contract in Los Angeles consulting on nonfiction projects for Sheila Nevins, President (non-fiction programming) of HBO/Cinemax for seven years as well as on numerous independent productions worldwide. He executive produced the Academy Award winning documentary film BIG MAMA for HBO in 2001. He has been an adjunct faculty member at USC since 1978 and his class in the Peter Stark Producing Program is required of all students.

elissa brown

(Co-Producer: Post-Production) Associate Produced “By the People: The Election of Barack Obama,” released on HBO in November, 2009.  Prior work includes serving as assistant editor on “Bi the Way” which premiered at Austin’s SXSW film festival, research and development for a documentary about evangelical Christians, marketing and distribution work for THINKFilm, and directing a short film about Providence.  She completed her undergraduate work at Brown University and post-grad coursework at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies.

sovereignty productions

was formed as a forum to use video and new media to explore how sovereign spaces, those offshore and of exile, can be isolated and charged by activist agendas that challenge accepted frameworks in the name of social change.