Documentary
Below is a series of short films and trailers for documentary film projects I’ve worked on. On the majority I was the cameraman/photographer and editor, and on some the producer/director as well.
This is a piece about a youth gardening program in a public housing project adjacent to downtown Seattle called Yesler Terrace. The story is a profile of the visionary program’s training of young people in both the skills and technology for tomorrow’s green jobs, as well as creating their own food security. The piece originally aired on The Seattle Channel.
This piece is about Bhutanese Refugees and their journey from a refugee camp in SE Nepal to living here in Seattle’s Rainier Valley. The piece visits the former bamboo home of the family profiled in the video, where they’d lived for 18 years after being forcibly expelled from Bhutan, and into the new challenges faced in life in America. The piece is one of 2 Pangeality Production’s videos nominated for an Emmy award by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. It originally aired on The Seattle Channel.
A piece about a Tibetan family from Seattle who arrived here in the late 50′s in the early days of the Chinese invasion. Direct lineage holders of the Sakya sect of Tibetan Buddhism, the lineage skipped a generation when none of 5 brothers entered the monastery, but now there is a new ‘Rinpoche’ or teacher from this new generation. This is the story of a now 10 year old boy who’s been studying in Nepal and learning to be a spiritual leader far from his family here in Seattle. The piece is the second of 2 Pangeality Production’s videos nominated for an Emmy award by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. It originally aired on The Seattle Channel.
This piece is about overcoming the stigma of disability in Nepal. It’s a piece I did for the Seattle Channel’s City Stream program about the work of Rob Rose and the Bellevue based nonprofit The Rose International Fund for Children. TRIFC is working with local and international Rotary Clubs to assist schools and organizations supporting children with disabilities there. The organization is doing impressive work there with a 5 year multimedia campaign blanketing the country with messages aimed to change perceptions of disabled people as being possessed or punished for past life sins and incapable of being productive members of society. This piece won 2nd place in the Public Health category of the 25th Annual Government Programming Awards, a program of The National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, also known as the Emmy’s of government television.
I filmed The Digital Dump in Lagos Nigeria in 2005 for the Seattle based nonprofit organization The Basel Action Network. The story examines the illegal international waste trade in electronics from a global hot spot of such imports. Exploring the toxic environmental legacy of the developed world’s discarded techno trash and it’s impact on the planet. The film was edited and produced by Carol Gertsema of Twisp River Films, and has been shown at now hundreds of conferences and film festivals around the world, at the United Nations and other policy making bodies, and wrote about in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and far beyond. This was a tough film to make as we were somewhat undercover on location while filming, saying that our mission was to show the recycling side of things, while really it was to expose the ugly truth. The full length 23 minute documentary film is available for screenings and purchase through BAN.
The Meat With No Bone is from a 2005 trip I took to China on a grant to study independent tofu production in 4 different cities. This is a trailer from the longer story.
This is a short film about tea shop culture in Nepal.
SIGNERS is a short video about Seattle panhandlers at the southbound onramp for I5 at 45th St in the University District. I shot, edited and produced it as part of 911 Media Center’s New Voices Program, a seminar for up and coming documentary filmmakers that I produced in 2002.
Promotional documentary about the NYC funk and soul band Moon Palace Revival