Paul Bonesteel (Asheville, NC) is currently in production on The Day Carl Sandburg Died, a feature-length documentary about the life and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and American icon Carl Sandburg. The film revisits Sandburg's impressive range of his work with modern-day scholars, artists, family and friends while exploring his socialist activism, his influence on poetry and politics and the curious reasons behind his dismal reputation with the academia that canonizes poets. Bonesteel has produced nine full-length documentary films, with most airing throughout the PBS system. Bonesteel's award-winning The Great American Quilt Revival was distributed through American Public Television in November 2005 and has aired in more than 70 percent of US markets. His past projects have focused on subjects as diverse as folk singer Robert Hoyt (Travels with Claude) and whitewater kayaking (The Adventures of Johnny Utah). In 2002, Bonesteel completed The Mystery of George Masa, the biography of a Japanese photographer who immortalized the Appalachian Mountains in his vivid images. In 2003, Bonesteel directed the Emmy-nominated Folkmoot USA (NETA), which tells the story of the largest international folk dance festival in the world. Bonesteel formed his own full-service production company, Bonesteel Films, Inc. in 1996. In addition to documentary films, Bonesteel works on a variety of projects including commercials and communications films.
Geoffrey Leighton (Durham, Maine) graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in film and television. After five years in San Francisco, where he worked as a director for PBS station KQED, he moved to Los Angeles, where he started the film and video production company Rock Solid Productions, which specialized in music videos, documentaries, commercials and long-form syndicated programming. During that time he co-produced, shot and co-edited Vacation Nicaragua, an award-winning feature-length documentary. Leighton then sold Rock Solid and founded Leighton Images and continued his work in documentaries. In 1995 Leighton Images produced a 26-part documentary series for Harcourt Brace Publishing on cutting-edge biology. He also produced multimedia programming for Biological Sciences Curriculum Studies on population growth and limited resources. After moving to Maine in 1997, Leighton continued working as Leighton Images, building a high-definition digital production facility in an 1810 farmhouse in Durham. Recently he has produced numerous short documentaries for Apple Computers on their implementation of laptop computers in the classroom and was the cinematographer, editor and producer of a feature film based on the painter Marsden Hartley's epic poem Cleophas and his Own. In January 2007, There Ought to Be a Law will have its premiere. This hour-long documentary, co-produced and edited by Leighton, follows a woman who tries to get gun control legislation passed after the suicide death of her son. Leighton also teaches documentary production at the Maine College of Art, and documentary history at Southern Maine Community College.
Chris D. Nebe (Los Angeles, CA) is president of Monarex Hollywood Corporation, and is a multi-award-winning filmmaker. The writer/producer/director just completed the 90-minute documentaries Marco Polo's Roof of the World, Marco Polo's Silk Road and Marco Polo's Shangri-La. He is in post-production on Secrets of the Silk Road, which he also wrote, produced and directed, and is in pre-production of Silk Road Melodies. He is the international business adviser to the Governments of Qinghai Province and Xinjiang Province of the People's Republic of China, as well as the business adviser of Yunnan TV in China. Monarex is a production company and DVD label, distributing its own library on DVD as well as motion pictures and documentaries acquired from other production companies for domestic and worldwide distribution. www.monarex.com.
WELCOME NEW IDA BOARD MEMBERS
Beth Bird (Los Angeles, CA) is a documentary filmmaker whose work engages vital contemporary social issues such as globalization, migration, popular resistance and local community empowerment. Bird has spent over 15 years making documentaries that draw attention to and put a human face on struggles for social justice, and brings to her filmmaking 25 years experience as a scholar and activist in areas of immigration rights, border issues and US/Latin American relations. Everyone Their Grain of Sand, Bird's first feature-length film, won the Target Award for Best Documentary at its US premiere at the 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival, Best San Diego Feature at the 2005 San Diego Film Festival and Festival Favorite at the 2005 Oxnard Film Festival. The film has screened nationally and internationally at major venues including the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival); The Cornerhouse Theatre in Manchester, England; InSITE 2005 in Tijuana, Mexico; The Play Gallery, Berlin; the Prague Biennale; and the Morelia International Film Festival in Morelia, Mexico, and is screening this spring at major cineplexes in 15 cities in Mexico.
Producer Brian Gerber (Los Angeles, CA) is currently vice president of Tree Media Group. He produced the acclaimed feature documentary Jimmy Scott: If You Only Knew, by Matthew Buzzell, which won the Audience Award on PBS' Independent Lens in 2005. Gerber recently produced Buzzell's feature documentary Tell Me Do You Miss Me for Rhino Home Video, which chronicles the bittersweet final bows of the critically acclaimed NYC indie-rock band Luna. He also produced Buzzell's Putting the River in Reverse, a documentary on the collaboration between music legends Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint as they embark on the first major recording sessions to take place in post-Katrina New Orleans. The film was released in June 2006 through The Verve Music Group. Gerber is currently in production on two feature documentaries: The Dungeon Masters for Antidote Films and One Nation Under God? for Public Interest Pictures. At Tree Media, Gerber is currently in post-production on 11th Hour, a feature-length documentary film on the state of the environment, produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, and has just finished producing five short-subject documentaries about the impact of global warming for the Weather Channel's new broadband network. Previous projects include directing and producing Show Us the Jobs, a documentary on the jobs crisis in America, and producing Norman Lear's "Declare Yourself" youth voter campaign. Gerber received his MFA in screenwriting from the American Film Institute in 1997. Prior to that, he received his ABJ from the Grady School of Journalism at University of Georgia in 1994.
Thomas Rigler (Los Angeles, CA) is excited to join IDA's board and looks forward to helping shape the IDA into the ultimate global community of documentary enthusiasts. Rigler is a filmmaker producing and developing programming at the crossroads of television and new media. He passionately believes in the broadband revolution, the inspirational power of niche programming and the online communities who watch and interact in increasing numbers. In 2006 he executive-produced the launch of the "Vine@eonline," a multi-channel broadband player for E! Networks. Rigler now consults on new media content and strategy for nonprofits, interactive agencies and TV networks in the US and Europe during their transition from traditional television to new media business models. Besides documentary productions, most of Rigler's projects revolve around broadband television and online communities. He publishes the Broadband Jungle Blog and recently co-founded GoGooroo.com, currently in beta, a community-driven Internet TV guide to address one of the glaring defects of broadband television: Its complete lack of user-friendly organization. A native of Graz, Austria, Rigler studied directing and screenwriting at the National Film School in Vienna. He's written, produced and directed dozens of hours of nonfiction programming for various broadcasters like E! Networks, Fine Living and Germany's pubcaster ZDF / 3sat / ARTE. His first American project, Glenalbyn Drive, tracked the journey of renowned Austrian painter Hubert Schmalix, who had found a new life and new avenues for artistic expression in Los Angeles. After making the rounds of film festivals with his debut, Rigler relocated to Los Angeles in 1993.
Mark Vega (Los Angeles, CA) helps brands navigate the ever-changing media and marketing landscape as a transactional entertainment lawyer focusing his practice on the converging worlds of marketing, advertising and entertainment. During his tenure at one of the largest and most respected law firms in the country, Vega was able to focus his talents on the refinement of content and revenue models that emerged from the ill-fated dot-bomb era. He began counseling both corporate and entertainment creative clients on innovative ways to integrate brands into television, motion picture and live event experiences. Vega spent the first part of his professional career as a news reporter on television and radio outlets around the world and eventually started his own firm as a platform for articulating and assembling bleeding-edge brand integration transactions.
Susan West (Los Angeles, CA) has produced television and documentary films in collaboration with some of today's most interesting filmmakers, including Eleanor Coppola, Academy Award winner Jessica Yu and other distinguished documentarians. In addition, she produced VH-1's hit television program Behind the Music for two seasons, served as director of on air talent for E! Entertainment Television and has produced documentaries for BRAVO, HBO, PBS and A&E. Prior to her work in film, West produced theater for ten years. During this time she produced some of the most innovative live performance acts in the United States and Europe, including the Blue Man Group, Bill Irwin, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, David Byrne and Robert Wilson. She also produced and managed theater both on and off Broadway in New York, including productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company, author Susan Sontag, The Wooster Group and actor/playwright Sam Shepard. Her theater experience also includes serving as general manager for productions and festivals around the globe, including the Los Angeles Festival, the Olympic Arts Festival and the TOGA Festival in Japan.