Producer/Director Tamara Gould is a former Executive Producer for KQED Public Television, where she oversaw numerous documentaries and series, including The Nobel: Visions of Our Century, California’s Power Play, and This Week in Northern California. She executive produced the Emmy award winning weekly Independent View series, and developed and executive produced SPARK, an award-winning weekly art series co-produced by KQED and the Bay Area Video Coalition, a noncommercial media production center where she previously served as Executive Director. Tamara is currently the Director of Distribution for the Independent Television Service (ITVS) based in San Francisco.
Producer Bonni Cohen is a founder of Actual Films, an independent documentary company based in San Francisco. She is currently executive producing a two-hour film for PBS, The Rape of Europa, about the history of Nazi art-looting during World War II. She produced and directed a one-hour special for national PBS entitled The Nobel: Visions of Our Century, an analysis of 100 years of the Nobel prize told from the perspectives of 11 different Nobel laureates. For the BBC she directed and produced Eye of the Storm, an intimate portrait of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan that follows his diplomatic efforts from Baghdad to Nigeria to New York. Eye of the Storm has been shown in over 125 countries. She produced They Drew Fire for national PBS, a portrait of the combat artists of World War II. Her other works include The Human Sexes with Desmond Morris, an Emmy-nominated series for The Learning Channel/Discovery about gender differences around the world and two episodes of the Emmy award-winning Eyewitness series for PBS. Bonni earned her Masters in Documentary filmmaking from Stanford University in 1994. Before graduate school, she was a journaist for Reuters Television in London and Jerusalem.
CoDirector and Cinematographer Jon Shenk is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a founder of Actual Films in San Francisco. He recently co-directed, produced and photographed Lost Boys of Sudan, a documentary about refugees from the Sudanese civil war who are resettling in the U.S. Lost Boys was the 2004 winner of the Independent Spirit Award and was broadcast on PBS’ POV series. Jon produced, directed, and photographed The Beginning, a cinema verité documentary about the making of Star Wars: Episode I, The Phantom Menace, which was released on the Phantom Menace DVD. His films Dark Rooms and Naked to the World have aired on PBS and have won many awards. He produced two documentaries for the George Lucas Educational Foundation’s series Teaching in the Digital Age. Jon works as a freelance documentary cinematographer for PBS, National Geographic, A&E, Bravo, CBS, NBC, and the BBC. He earned his Masters in Documentary Filmmaking from Stanford University in 1995.
Editor Josh Peterson is based in San Francisco, where he has been working on documentaries and independent features since 1993. He recently edited Bloodlines: Technology Hits Home and The Nobel: Visions of Our Century for PBS. The Beginning: Making Episode I, which he edited for Lucasfilm’s DVD release of The Phantom Menace, has been called “the best DVD behind-the-scenes documentary ever made” by several reviewers. Working with Gary Weimberg, Peterson co-edited The Story of Fathers and Sons for ABC and Teens Get Real for the WB Network. Peterson was the editor and sound designer for the remake of Rod Serling’s A Town Has Turned to Dust for the Sci-Fi Channel, and he edited Rob Nilsson’s feature film Singing, which premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival in 2000. He graduated from Harvard in 1991 with an honors degree in History. Josh is currently editing The Rape of Europa, about the history of Nazi art-looting during World War II.
Cinematographer Jon Else was series producer and cinematographer for Eyes On The Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1987) and has photographed hundreds of documentaries for PBS, the BBC, ABC, and HBO, including the BBC/PBS History Of Rock And Roll (1993), HBO’s Who Are The DeBolts ( Academy Award 1976), MTV’s Tupac Resurrection (2003), and Alice Waters (2003), as well as dozens of music videos and several independent feature films. He currently directs the documentary program at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Jon was a MacArthur Fellow from 1988 to 1993, and has won four National Emmys (for writing, producing, directing, and cinematography), several Columbia-DuPonts, Polk Awards, and Peabody Awards as well as several Academy Award nominations, and the Prix Italia. In 2000 he released Sing Faster: The Stagehands Ring Cycle, which won the Filmmakers Trophy at Sundance, and that year’s National Emmy for best documentary. Jon also produced and directed Cadillac Desert (1997), Yosemite: The Fate of Heaven (1989), A Job at Ford’s for Henry Hampton’s PBS series The Great Depression (1992) and Open Outcry (2001).
Key project adviser J Alexander Thier served as legal adviser to the Judicial and Constitutional Commissions of Afghanistan. Over the last ten years he has worked in Afghanistan for the United Nations, the British Department for International Development, Oxfam, and the International Crisis Group. He speaks Farsi, has lived throughout the country, and through his work has had interaction with much of Afghanistan’s political leadership. He has published numerous articles and chapters in edited volumes about Afghanistan, including, “Nation-Building Unraveled: Aid, Peace, and Justice in Afghanistan,” (Kumarian, 2003). Alexander is a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and is currently writing a book about nation building.
