production crew

Producer/Director/Editor 

Award-winning Producer/Director/Impact producer Regan Brashear (they/she) has been working for economic, disability, LGBTQI+, and environmental justice for over twenty-five years now through documentary film and community and union organizing. Brashear served as an impact producer for DEEJ, Time for Ilhan, and I Am Maris, among others. Brashear also served as a producer and impact producer at Open Eye Pictures, doing community engagement for the Academy Award-shortlisted film, Under Our Skin and as co-producer for The Grove. She also works with filmmakers as a consultant on their social impact campaigns and educational distribution through Making Change Media. Brashear has a BA in American Studies and a MA in Social Documentation (Documentary Film) from the University of California, Santa Cruz. In recent years, Brashear can be found at Welcome Home Somatics, where they are focused on supporting disability and chronic illness communities, as well as filmmakers and other creatives, through body-based embodiment practices.

Co-Editor

Josh Peterson is a freelance editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has been cutting documentaries, corporate pieces and independent features since 1993. He was nominated for a national Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Editing in 2009 for his work on Soldiers of Conscience. He also edited The Rape of Europa, which was nominated for an Emmy for Best Historical Programming and short-listed for a Best Documentary Academy Award. More recently he co-edited The Island President. His clients include Apple, Lucasfilm, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and the Kenwood Group. Josh’s work has appeared on PBS, ABC, National Geographic Channel, Sci-Fi Channel, at U.S. and international film festivals and in theatrical release. He graduated from Harvard in 1991 with an honors degree in History. His film, Blood Makes the Green Grass Grow, which he wrote, directed and edited, was released fall of 2012. His most recent film which he edited is a new documentary called Born This Way about coming of age as gay or lesbian in Cameroon and which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2013.

Composer

Chris Brierley is based in London, England. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and was a founder member of the award-winning Kreisler String Orchestra which included Youssou N’Dour, Brian Eno, John Cale and Michael Nyman among many collaborators. Since 2005 Chris has worked with Heart’n’Soul, a creative collective run by artists with learning disabilities. He performed with the ‘Radical Racoons’ , a band made up of young Heart’n’Soul artists, at the Beautiful Octopus Club in the Royal Festival Hall in September 2012 as part of the celebrations at the end of the Paralympic games. Over the last 5 years he has written extensively for the Heidi Latsky Dance Company in New York and he performs, records and writes with the Band of Holy Joy and the Vast Earth Orchestra. Chris was recently appointed as a visiting music tutor at Core Arts in Hackney, East London, the renowned charity that exists to enrich the lives of socially excluded people with severe mental health issues.

Associate Producer

Hannah Swenson was born and raised in Minneapolis, where she first became involved in civic engagement work, community art and filmmaking. A graduate of the Justice & Policy Studies program at Guilford College and the Documentary Film Studies program at Duke University, Hannah also served as an AmeriCorps member in the Washington, DC public schools, as an ESL and media instructor in North Carolina, and most recently with Open Eye Pictures in Sausalito, CA. She continues to be moved by storytelling as a means for dialogue, debate and mobilization in the Bay Area.

Graphics

Renny is a cinematographer, editor and motion graphics artist in Austin, TX. In 2009, he created the titles and graphics for the documentary Under Our Skin which was shortlisted for the Academy Awards. His graphics work has been seen on PBS, IFC, MTV Hive, LogoTV, Pitchfork and over a hundred festivals around the world. You can see his work at www.rennymccauley.com

Production Assistant

Jackie Grieff is an aspiring digital film editor in the Bay Area working on her BS in Digital Filmmaking and Video Production at The Art Institute of California – San Francisco. She is a Final Cut Pro and After Effects Tutor at The Art Institute as well as the department’s Peer Mentor. She loves Star Trek, South Park, the Ender Series, and Pokemon.