Production Team
Deann Borshay Liem
(Director, Producer, Writer) is the Producer, Director and Writer of the Emmy Award-nominated documentary, FIRST PERSON PLURAL, which was broadcast nationally on PBS as part of the acclaimed documentary series, Point of View (POV). FIRST PERSON PLURAL had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2000 and received numerous awards including the Grand Jury Prize for Best Bay Area Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival and First Prize at DocAviv. In 2001, Deann was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Craft of Directing. Deann served as Co-Producer for Special Circumstances which follows Chilean exile, Hector Salgado, as he attempts to reconcile with former interrogators and torturers in Chile, and Co-Executive Producer on award-winning documentaries including Spencer Nakasako's KELLY LOVES TONY (broadcast on PBS in 1998). She received an Emmy Award for her role as Co-Executive Producer for Spencer Nakasako and Sokly Ny's ground-breaking video diary, A.K.A. DON BONUS (broadcast on PBS in 1996). Deann is a recipient of a Rockefeller Film/Video Fellowship for her new feature-length film, Precious Objects of Desire, which is currently in production.
Charlotte Lagarde
(Co-Producer) is the award-winning Producer/Director of Heart of the Sea: Kapolioka'ehukai (2002), a documentary about the Hawaiian surfing legend, Rell Sunn, which won numerous awards including the Audience Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Best Documentary Award at the Ashland Independent Film Festival and the 2003 PBS Independent Lens Audience Award. Her most recent project, Beautiful Son, which chronicles one family's journey to find treatment for their autistic son, will be released in 2008.
Lagarde's productions Voting in America (2004), Every Child Should Have a Chance (2001), Tribal Sovereignty: Unplugged (1998) and Juvenile Justice: Unplugged (1997), are distributed in public schools throughout the United States. Her films Swell (1996), about four generations of female surfers (Gold Apple from the National Educational Media Network) and Zeuf (1994), a documentary about a woman surfer's struggle with breast cancer (Directors' Choice award at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival) were broadcast on PBS stations and the Sundance Channel. Lagarde was the executive producer of Reporter Zero, nominated for Best Documentary at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival. Lagarde holds an MA in documentary filmmaking from Stanford University.
Michael Chin
(Director of Photography) has over twenty years of experience photographing documentary and feature films. He has served as Director of Photography for Eyes On The Prize 1&2; America's War On Poverty; The Great Depression; Academy Award-winning, In The Shadow of The Stars; Dancing; A Hymn For Alvin Ailey; Malcom X: Make it Plain; Irish In America; Cadillac Desert, Yesterday's Tomorrow (Showtime); Africans In America; America's Hero: The Joe Dimaggio Story; First Person Plural; The Floating World of Masami Teraoka; Zoot Suit; The Roman Empire in the First Century; Chicago: City of the Century; Peter and Paul-The River and the Rock, among many others. His feature film credits include: Wayne Wang's Chan is Missing and Dim Sum, Philip Gotanda's The Kiss and Life Tastes Good; Raoul Peck's Haitian Corner, and Lawrence Hott's The Boyhood of John Muir.
JT Takagi
(Sound Recordist) is a much sought-after Sound Recordist having worked on numerous award-winning documentaries, including Spike Lee's Four Little Girls, American Master's Paul Robeson, and American Experiences' Marcus Garvey and Massachusett's 54th. In the past year, she has recorded sound for Citizen King for Roja Productions/ American Experience, Sweet Honey in the Rock for Firelight Media, Mali to Mississippi/History of the Blues for Blues, Inc., Maters of Race Series for Roja Productions for PBS, and Role Reversal for Optomen USA for A&E. Takagi has also directed and produced a number of films, including Homes Apart: Korea, and with Hye Jung Park, The Women Outside, both of which have focused on Korea and the impact of the Cold War, the militarization of the Korean peninsula, and the role of the U.S. in contemporary Korean history.
Vivien Hillgrove
(Editor) has over 20 years of experience as an editor for both narrative feature films and documentaries. Her documentary credits include Lourdes Portillo's The Devil Never Sleeps, Senorita Extraviada, and Corpus: A Home Movie For Selena; First Person Plural by Deann Borshay Liem; Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action by Roberta Grossman; Heart of the Sea; and Future of Food. She was also editor for the Academy Award winning documentary, Broken Rainbow, produced by Earthworks and Hawaii-Born In Paradise, an IMAX film directed by Bob Hillman. The narrative feature films she has edited include Henry and June (picture editor) and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (picture editor and supervising dialogue editor) by Phil Kaufman. She was supervising dialogue editor for Blue Velvet by David Lynch, The Mosquito Coast by Peter Weir, and Amadeus by Milos Forman. She also served as dialogue editor for The Right Stuff and Never Cry Wolf, and as picture editor for Emiko Omori's Hot Summer Winds.
Jongsuk Lee
(Production Manager) served as First Assistant Director for the Korean feature film, Return, by Lee Kyu-man which was released theatrically in South Korea in 2007. He was Assistant Director and Script Supervisor for a narrative/music video short film, Back, by Kim Sung Soo, featured at the Daum Internet Film Festival, and Assistant Director/Casting Supervisor for the short film, Blind Battle, by Kim Sung Soo. He is the Producer/Director of Sister Sound, a portrait of a Korean activist women's drumming group in Oakland, California and Dream, a short stop motion animation film about a young boy's dreams (winner of UC Berkeley's Student Film Festival Award, Eisner Film Festival Award). A graduate of UC Berkeley's film program, he currently lives in Seoul, South Korea.
Chelsea Walton
(Assistant Editor) is an editor and animator. Her short films are screened internationally and nationally and in museums, alleys, backyards, and driveways. She has an M.F.A in Cinema from San Francisco State University and is an Apple Certified Trainer of Final Cut Pro. When not editing or animating she teaches animation and Final Cut Pro classes in the San Francisco Bay Area www.chelseawalton.com.