One of the IDA’s primary goals is to develop a robust community of documentary filmmakers and supporters. To further this effort, each month we spotlight a group of new(ish) members in the Welcome New Members column.

If you’re a new member and would like to be included (or an “old” member who hasn’t been featured yet), please send your bio (250 words max) to associate editor Tamara Krinsky at krinskydoc@gmail.com. You must include “Welcome New Members” and your name in the subject line of the e-mail. Bios should focus on your filmmaking background, interests, experiences, education, accomplishments, etc. If you’re a student, tell us about where you’re studying. If you’re a film fan, tell us what you love about documentaries. Please also include the city, state and country in which you currently reside.

Katja Esson (New York, NY) is a German-born, New York-based producer/director who has directed several award-winning documentaries, including the Academy Award-nominated Ferry Tales, which aired on HBO in 2004. Her film Skydancer received a Jerome Foundation Grant in 2008. In 2006 she completed Hole in the Sky – The Scars of 9/11, which received the Gold Award at the World Media Festival. Other credits include the documentary Vertical Traveler (2001), which explores the pioneering spirit of New York City through the metaphoric story of the city’s unique relationship with elevators. The film was broadcast on PBS and on Europe’s ARTE Channel. Recently completed is Latching On, a documentary about the cultural complexities behind the simple act of breastfeeding. Esson is currently in pre-production with Poetry of Resilience, for which she received the Simons Fellowship for the Humanities at Kansas University in 2007. Poetry of Resilience is a feature-length documentary that traces the lives of six poets—artists who survived some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century: the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima, the Chinese and Iranian revolutions, Saddam’s attacks on the Kurds and the Rwandan genocide. The film also received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council for the Arts. 

Len Friedman's (Philadelphia, PA) recently formed production company LensEye specializes in independent documentaries. In the past Friedman's main body of work dealt with documenting Holocaust survivors and liberator testimonies. He has also worked in producing various artist biographies, as well as educational projects for children. He started down this path in 1982 when he filmed My Promise To God, the true story behind America's First Holocaust Museum.    

    Friedman's latest project, A Broken System, Philadelphia's Family Court is out of Order!, deals with the corruption and political favoritism that's going on in the family courts. Explains Friedman, "This is not just happening in my own city, but is rampant throughout the whole nation. As an independent filmmaker it behooves me to step outside the box for this one, but I understand why I must. This story is a fact-based custody case situation, and concerns the grandparents who raised their granddaughter since birth, only to lose their custody because of the actions of corrupt judges, advocates, lawyers, clinicians, court-appointed personnel, as well as doctors and a major hospital that all committed fraud."    
    The project is a personal one for Friedman, as the "grandparents" are his relatives and the little girl is his grandneice. The project has been under development, and he is in the process of securing fiscal funds to take it to the "Court of Public Opinion," the audience. www.aflyonthewall.info

Robin Hessman (Brooklyn, NY) graduated from Brown University with a dual degree in Russian and Film. She completed her graduate degree in film directing from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. She received an Academy Award in 1994 – with co-director James Longley – for their student short documentary, Portrait of Boy with Dog. During her eight years living in Russia, Hessman worked for the Children’s Television Workshop as the on-site producer of Ulitsa Sezam, the original Russian-language Sesame Street.
    Back in the US, Hessman co-produced Tupperware!, which received a Peabody Award in 2005. She also co-produced the PBS biography of Julia Child, Julia! America’s Favorite Chef. In 2004, she founded Red Square Productions and was granted the position of Filmmaker in Residence at Boston’s PBS affiliate, WGBH, to develop her feature documentary directing debut, My Perestroika. The film is a co-production with Bungalow Town Productions and ITVS International, in association with American Documentary and YLE Finland. It has been supported by grants and institutions including the Ford Foundation, the Sundance Documentary Fund, Chicken and Egg Pictures, the LEF Foundation, the IFP/Radziwill Grant, and the NEH. My Perestroika premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival as part of the US Documentary Competition and was screened in New York as part of New Directors/New Films, curated by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. It received the CDS Filmmaker Award at the Full Frame Festival in April 2010 and will be broadcast on POV in 2011.

Hanneh Rudkilde (North Boulder, CO) is a film editor with 17 years of experience editing film, televison and video. After film school at University of Southern California, she worked for 10 years in Hollywood. She was a staff editor at Miramax Films and Paramount Pictures, and her credits include work on four theatrical releases, three award-winning documentaries, three syndicated TV shows and 16 television movies for HBO, Bravo and Lifetime. Rudkilde also spent two years as staff editor at Swell Media in Chicago and currently serves the independent film community in Colorado. Between 2004 and 2009, Rudkilde produced, directed, shot and edited her first indie, Stage IV – A Journey Into the Unknown, which is currently doing quite well on the festival circuit. www.stageIVthemovie.com

Joe Yaggi (Bali, Indonesia) is the co-founder and creative director of Jungle Run Productions, based in Bali, Indonesia. Says Yaggi, "I’m our director/DP, and since we’re small, I also write, edit, manage locations, make coffee and splice cables, the later two of which I’m not very good at."
    Yaggi was born in San Diego, studied anthropology and loves the outdoors. He began his filmmaking career as a video kayaker shooting on rivers in California, Costa Rica, Alaska and Africa before landing in Indonesia in 1993. His company produces and works on broadcast and non-broadcast projects including natural history/wildlife, education, environment/conservation, climate change and social issue films. Lately he's been involved in about 30 hours of production each year. About half of that is in-house while the rest involves crewing, and production and location management. Jungle Run Productions works with a wide range of clients/partners including BBC, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, PBS/NOVA, Animal Planet, Disney Channel, ORF Austria, MTV, TVE, USAID, The Nature Conservancy, WWF, Greenpeace, CIFOR and others.       
    "Projects which pop out in my mind include my first long-form doc which chronicled a 23-day expedition crossing Borneo, the third largest island in the world, by rivers, using whitewater kayaks," says Yaggi. "Some of our most powerful projects have been non-broadcast, locally targeted environment and social films. We’re about to do a series on bird flu, and we're producing an in-house reality series, repairing our roof and developing a few new ideas that will hopefully keep us busy!" www.jungle-run.com

Changfu Zhang (Jakarta, Indonesia) was born on a state-run farm in mainland China in 1974. He was admitted to the Beijing Film Academy in 1995. After graduating in 1997, he worked as a freelancer and independent filmmaker for major Chinese TV Stations, with emerging media production companies and on independent film projects, mainly in Beijing. Since 2003, he has been traveling, and currently lives in Jakarta, Indonesia. In 2006, Zhang created an independent film workshop focused on creative documentary production that utilizes digital cameras and Apple’s Final Cut Studio.
    Zhang's credits include working as a production manager for Fiction Films (Mainland China) on the projects Expiry, Troubles in Xiaoxin Village and Paper, which screened in the 2000 Pusan International Film Festival and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. He was a writer/director on the reality show News Story for Shanghai Oriental TV Station, and a co-director on the feature length documentary This Winter, which was an official selection of the 2001 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and won the Best Debut Work award at the 2002 Marseille International Documentary Festival. He wrote the indie feature Coming of Age, and was the producer/director/DP/editor and sound designer on the documentary Lives to Death, made with Golden Tiger Pictures, which was presented in 32nd Festival / 25th Market of the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. cinecf.blogspot.com