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P.O. Box 34, Garberville, CA 95542
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Mary Liz Thomson
Director / Editor
Mary Liz has a long history of involvement in politics and the film industry. In 1990, she co-produced and directed Redwood Summer: Where the 90s Begin, which aired on PBS. She documented the war zones in Central America, directed music videos with Island Records, worked for 60 Minutes, shot footage for the Academy Award winning documentary, Panama Deception, and directed a documentary, Flashpoint, about the alternative music scene in San Francisco, winning a "New American Makers" Best of the Year Award, and A "Local Hero" Artist Award.
In 1999 Mary Liz moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where she has directed shorts and worked in development, production, and post on both indie and studio films (The Flyboys, Small Town Saturday Night, Freddy vs Jason). She has also stayed political - blogging about environmental and political issues for the Huffington Post and Alternet. As an Editor and Post Producer, she has worked on commercials, music videos, and documentary series including as The Sierra Club Chronicles. She edited the short documentary that sold the award-winning feature film The First Grader to BBC films. Mary Liz speaks fluent Spanish and recently traveled to Nicaragua to consult on production and post for the socially conscious TV series, Contra Corriente, produced by the women's non-profit, Puntos Encuentros. |
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Darryl Cherney
Producer
Darryl Cherney was born in New York City where he was a child actor. For 20 years he has been an activist, topical singer -songwriter and organizer in Humboldt County California. He helped spearhead the successful campaign to protect the redwoods, including Headwaters Forests, now a national preserve. As creator and president of Environmentally Sound Promotions, the non-profit organization, he has produced five albums of his original songs dedicated to environmental protection. He also produced Judi Bari?s spoken word CD, Who Bombed Judi Bari?, and the benefit compilation, If a Tree Falls.
He has organized hundreds of rallies and events, attracting national press coverage on behalf of forest protection and civil rights. He was co-founder of Redwood Summer 1990 with Judi Bari and was car-bombed alongside her that year and falsely arrested by the FBI and Oakland Police. He and Bari (who passed in 1997) sued the authorities and won a $4.4 million jury award in federal court in 2002 for First and Fourth Amendment violations of the Constitution. He broke the story on Julia Butterfly's tree-sit, and has appeared in media outlets such as Donahue, Prime Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN. Darryl has worked on environmental litigation and lobbied in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. He joined with Judi Bari to create the Redwood Summer 1990 campaign as well as an alliance between timber workers and environmentalists. He is a founding member of the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment. Darryl is the inaugural winner of the Edward Abbey Deep Ecologist of the Year Award given by the Fund for Wild Nature in 1989; and the Sempervirens Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) of Garberville, California in 2012.
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Elyse Katz
Executive Producer
Elyse Katz has over 20 years of experience in film, documentaries, television, commercials, web, live-music shows and promotional programming. Her work includes groundbreaking
web content on DEN.net, the academy award winning documentary, The Last Days, and the critically acclaimed concert and DVD Barbra Streisand One-Night Only Live at the Village Vanguard.
Katz has worked with directors and producers including Steven Spielberg, Barbet Schroeder, Michael Ritchie, Mark Pellington, Debra Hill, Laura Ziskin, and Garry Marshall. Her film credits include Pretty Woman, Going All the Way, Single White Female and the Spielberg/Shoah Foundation produced documentary The Last Days. In addition to her film experience, Ms. Katz also produces documentaries including The Fire Within, Trudell, Bellyfruit and currently Pell Grants: A Passion For Education and To God's Ears.
She has worked on numerous productions as a line producer, production manager, and supervisor such as the independent produced Johns, Mohave Moon, Destiny Turns on the Radio, feature films, television series, music DVDs and national commercials. She has also consulted for individual companies in management, production, logistics, budgeting and scheduling.
In addition, Ms. Katz worked in promotional programming on projects for True Blood, Life After film School & was the EPK producer for the film Prestige. |
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Sheila Laffey
Executive Producer
Sheila is an award-winning producer/director of documentaries and short dramatic films, primarily on the environment. Her series on the Ballona Wetlands, The Last Stand, hosted by Ed Asner, won 15 awards including a Cine Golden Eagle, Best Documentary in several festivals and a Telly Award for Natural Heroes, the Public Television series in which it aired. Her film, South Central Farm: Oasis in a Concrete Desert aired on this Emmy Award-winning series. She was co-producer/co-director of Show Me the Way with Oscar-nominated William Gazecki.
She co-produced children's dramatic shorts, "We All Need the Forest" and "In the Middle of the Sea," as well as the documentaries Hawaii in Transition: Vision for a Sustainable Future and Geo-Thermal: A Risky Business in Hawaii's Wao Kele O Puna Rainforest which helped save the last lowland tropical forest in the U.S.
Laffey teaches courses at Santa Monica College including Green Screen: Films on the Environment and Transformation. She has a Ph.D.in Cinema Studies from N.Y.U. and was Program Coordinator for the National Audubon Society, Hawaii State Office. |
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Bill Benenson
Co-Producer
Bill Benenson made his producing and directing debut in the 1970's with two award-winning documentaries, which aired on PBS: Diamond Rivers based on his work in the Peace Corp in the poverty stricken backlands of Brazil where he witnessed first hand life on the human and ecological precipice; and The Marginal Way advancing his early environmental concerns as expressed by the people of Ogunquit, Maine.
Bill was a Directing Fellow at the American Film Institute (1975) under Czech director Jan Kadar. He wrote the original treatment and directed the test film for Pumping Iron and produced Boulevard Nights (1976) for Warner Brothers-the first studio film focused on Hispanic life in LA.
Bill went on to create Benenson Productions and BBZ Films and was involved with the creation of John Houston's Under the Volcano, The Lightship with Robert Duvall, A Walk on the Moon (1987) for which he wrote the original story and in 1990 on Mister Johnson with Pierce Brosnan. Also he was an Executive Producer on Watching the Detectives, Diminished Capacity, Trucker.
In 2009, Bill's "Dirt! The Movie" ran at Sundance and was Independent Lens' 30th Anniversary of Earth Day Special on PBS.
Additionally, Bill and his wife Laurie help run The Frances and Benjamin Benenson Foundation, dedicated to supporting educational, social and environmental organizations. They are active in the Violence Policy Center, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Bioneers, Conservation International, Rainforest Action Network, The Nature Conservancy and TreePeople.
Bill is now producing and directing a Feature Documentary shot in Tanzania with the last hunter-gatherers on the planet-The Hadza.
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Laurie Benenson
Co-Producer
A writer, editor and filmmaker living in Santa Monica, Laurie was the founder and editor-in-chief of Movieline Magazine. She was a Hollywood correspondent for the New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure section and, most recently, Executive Producer of the documentary Dirt! The Movie along with her husband. She is currently writing, producing and directing a documentary, Sacred Vanities.
She and her husband Bill Benenson are founding supporters of the Geffen Theatre, members of the Center Theatre Group Inner Circle, and have sponsored the Under the Radar series at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica. They support various other Los Angeles cultural endeavors, including the international arts preservation group Friends of Heritage Preservation.
Caring for the environment is one of Laurie's passions. She is a member of the Leadership Council of the Natural Resources Defense Council and is on the Board of TreePeople. Laurie is on the board of the Gun Policy Think Tank, the Violence Policy Center, as well as a long-time supporter of Plowshares, The Union of Concerned Scientists, the Rainforest Action Network and Conservation International. Laurie is a Trustee of the Frances and Benjamin Benenson Foundation. |
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Mika Kiburz
Assistant Editor
Originally from Chicago, Mika is a documentary filmmaker, having completed more than 30 short films and videos. Her non fiction work has screened at festivals internationally. She studied Cinema and Spanish at the University of Iowa, and as an avid traveler, has since lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Moab, Utah, Hawaii, Garberville, CA and Los Angeles. In her work she employs concepts of limitation in the context of the human condition, exploring the edge.
Previous documentaries range in topic from women in dada, images of beauty in contemporary Buenos Aires, Child labor activism, the Unification Church movement, motherhood and theology, Cleopatra's sculptural immortality through tooth decay, and an eco-village's youth circus in Hawaii.
Besides making films, Mika is involved in helping run several film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival, and enjoys spending time outdoors, bicycling, hiking, camping, organic farming (backyard chickens), nutrition, and juggling for fun.
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