JONATHAN OPPENHEIM
Editor / Co-Producer
Jonathan Oppenheim’s editing credits include SISTER HELEN, which won the documentary directing award at Sundance and CHILDREN UNDERGROUND, a film he co-produced, which was nominated for an Oscar and won the Sundance Special Jury Prize, Gotham and IDA awards. He edited the classic documentary feature PARIS IS BURNING, awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. PARIS IS BURNING also received the New York Film Critics, Los Angeles Film Critics and IDA Awards.
Among Oppenheim’s other credits are: YOUSSOU NDOUR: I BRING WHAT I LOVE, the story of the great African singers’ attempt to transmit moderate Islam through music, OUT OF THE SHADOW (PBS), which describes a woman’s life with her paranoid schizophrenic mother, CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE (PBS), a cinema verite look at three Arab-American New Yorkers in the wake of 9/11, and the Oscar-nominated STREETWISE (as Associate Editor). He was the co-editor of STRONGMAN, winner of the 2009 Slamdance Grand Jury award for Best Documentary Feature. Recently, Oppenheim edited and co-produced PHYLLIS AND HAROLD, the tale of a 60-year bad marriage, scheduled for theatrical release in 2010; and he co-edited and co-directed COWBOYS, INDIANS AND LAWYERS (PBS) which deals with a battle over water in the West. He also edited the critically acclaimed feature documentary, ARGUING THE WORLD, for which he received, along with producer/director, Joseph Dorman, a Peabody Award.
OSVALDO GOLIJOV
Composer
Osvaldo Golijov has received numerous commissions from major ensembles and institutions in the U.S. and Europe. In 2000, the premiere of Golijov’s St. Mark Passion took the music world by storm. It was commissioned by Helmuth Rilling for the European Music Festival to commemorate the 250th anniversary of J.S. Bach’s death. The CD of the premiere received Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations in 2002.
Golijov’s music is performed regularly by musicians such as Robert Spano, Dawn Upshaw, Gidon Kremer, and ensembles such as the Boston Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has been composer-in-residence at Merkin Hall in New York, the Spoleto USA Festival, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Music Alive series, Marlboro Music, Ravinia, and several other festivals.
Golijov recently completed the film scoreS for director Francis Ford Coppola’s YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH and TETRO. Golijov is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
DAVID MENSCHEL
Executive Producer
David Menschel is a criminal defense lawyer and a director of the Vital Projects Fund, a charitable foundation with an interest in human rights and criminal justice reform. Through the Vital Projects Fund, Menschel has helped to fund several documentary films that advance progressive messages, including: NO IMACT MAN (2009), about a New York City family’s year-long experiment in carbon neutral living; and WAR DON DON (forthcoming), about a war crimes trial in Sierra Leone.
Formerly, Menschel was an attorney and the Arthur Liman Fellow at the Innocence Project in New York City and the legal director of the Innocence Project of Florida in Tallahassee. He is the author of Abolition Without Deliverance: The Law of Connecticut Slavery, 1784-1848, published in the Yale Law Journal. Before attending law school, Menschel taught American history to high school students for five years. He received a B.A. from Princeton University (‘93) and a J.D. from Yale Law School (‘02). He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
LAURA POITRAS
Director / Producer / Cinematographer
Laura Poitras was nominated for an Academy Award, an Independent Spirit Award, and an Emmy Award for MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY (2006), a documentary about the U.S. occupation of Iraq. MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY was co-produced with ITVS, released theatrically by Zeitgeist Films, and broadcast on P.O.V./PBS.
She received a Peabody Award and was nominated for an Emmy and an Independent Spirit Award for FLAG WARS (2003; made with Linda Goode Bryant), a documentary about gentrification that premiered at the SXSW Film Festival and won the award for Best Documentary.
Following MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY, THE OATH is Poitras’ second documentary in a trilogy titled THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY about America post 9/11. The final film will focus on the 9/11 trials.
Poitras is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation/Tribeca Film Institute. She has attended the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Storytelling and Edit Lab as both a Fellow and creative advisor. Her work has received support from the Independent Television Service (ITVS), P.O.V./American Documentary, Creative Capital, Sundance Documentary Film Program, Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund, the Vital Projects Fund, NYSCA, Jerome Foundation, Chicken and Egg Pictures, and others.
She is currently working on THE GUANTANAMO PROJECT, a multi-media project to collect documents and artifacts from Guantanamo Bay Prison. Before making documentaries, she worked as a professional chef. She lives in New York City.
KIRSTEN JOHNSON
Cinematography
Kirsten Johnson works as a director and cinematographer. Her feature film script MY HABIBI was selected for the 2006 Sundance Writer’s Lab and Director’s Lab and is the recipient of an Annenberg grant. Her most recent documentary, DEADLINE, (co-directed with Katy Chevigny), premiered at Sundance in 2004, was broadcast on primetime NBC, and won the Thurgood Marshall Award. As a cinematographer, she recently shot the Tribeca Documentary Winner, PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL and Christy Turlington’s NO WOMAN, NO CRY. She has worked with directors such as Raoul Peck, Barbara Kopple, Michael Moore, Gini Reticker, and Kirby Dick. Her cinematography is featured in FARENHEIT 9/11, Academy Award-nominated ASYLUM, Emmy-winning LADIES FIRST, and Sundance premiere documentaries, THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED, AMERICAN STANDOFF, and DERRIDA. A chapter on her work as a cinematographer is featured in the book, “The Art of the Documentary.”
ALIZA KAPLAN
Co-Producer
Aliza is a documentary film producer and on the full-time faculty at Brooklyn Law School where she teaches writing and lawyering skills and represents asylum seekers through the Law School’s Safe Harbor Project. She also sits on the National Advisory Committee of Equal Justice Works, the nation’s leading public interest law fellowship program. She is the former Deputy Director of the Innocence Project; a not-for-profit that uses DNA evidence to exonerate wrongfully convicted prisoners. In addition to representing inmates in their efforts to obtain DNA testing, she coordinated the Innocence Project’s media and fundraising events. Aliza was formerly an associate at Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault and the law clerk to the Honorable Joseph E. Irenas in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey. Aliza lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and two dogs.
Her filmmaking credits include: Co-Producer, THE OATH; Co-Producer, MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY; Advisor, AFTER INNOCENCE; Advisor, DEADLINE; Consultant for the PBS documentary, BURDEN OF INNOCENCE; and Consultant for Court TV’s STORIES OF THE INNOCENCE PROJECT.
NASSER ARRABYEE
Co-Producer
Nasser Arrabyee is a journalist and human rights activist based in Sana’a, Yemen. His journalism experience includes: Chief Editor of the English desk, Yemen News Agency (SABA), 1997 – 2004. He is currently the Sana’a Correspondent of the Cairo-based English language Al Ahram Weekly (beginning 2000), and the Sana’a correspondent of the Dubai-based English language daily Gulf News (beginning 2002). He has been a regular contributor (mainly in politics and human rights issues) to the Yemen Observer since August 2006. He also works as a freelancer with a number of other local newspapers.
Arrabyee’s human rights work includes collaborating with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) as a National Media Expert for a project on child trafficking in Yemen from 2006 to 2007. He also served as the Director General of Studies, Research, and Translation at the Ministry of Human Rights in (2005). From 1996 to 2004, Arrabyee served as translator and interpreter for the Ministry of Information. He runs and owns a small firm providing media and translation services.
Arrabyee received his BA from Sana’a University in 1996. He is a member of Yemen’s Journalists Syndicate, the Arab Federation of Journalists, and the International Federation of Journalists.