CREATIVE CREW

STEPHEN SILHA

Project Director, Big Joy documentary Co-Director and Executive Producer, is a communications consultant, writer and facilitator. He oversees the web and film operations, raises funds, and inspires. He was a friend of Broughton’s and brings a journalistic approach. He has reported for magazines and newspapers including The Christian Science Monitor and The Minneapolis Star, covering education, communications, arts, community affairs, and youth issues. He has worked with a range of philanthropic organizations, including The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Northwest Area Foundation, and Idaho Commission on the Arts. His nonprofit clients have included the United Nations, Libraries for the Future, Children’s Express, Washington Council for the Humanities, Digital Partners, AIDS Housing of Washington and Seattle’s Metrocenter YMCA. He co-convened the first national symposium on the Media and Philanthropy, which spawned the local research project Good News/Good Deeds: Citizen Effectiveness in the Age of Electronic Democracy. Today, in addition to producing Big Joy, he co-facilitates Journalism That Matters, a think-tank on the future of journalism.

Eric Slade

Big Joy documentary Co-director and Producer, is an independent documentary producer based in Portland, Oregon. He provided primary artistic direction for the film. His writes, produces, and directs PBS films for Oregon Public Broadcasting (“History Detectives”, “Great Lodges of the National Parks”, “America’s History in the Making”, “Mathematics Illuminated”and “Rediscovering Biology”). He co-produced “Hope along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay.” He has received honors and awards from the following organizations: Golden Gate Award, SF International Film Festival, Emmy Nomination— Bay Area Documentary, International Television Association, National Educational Media Network, Columbus International Film Festival, American Medical Association Film Festival, Bologna, Italy International Film Festival, Seattle Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, International Cindy Competition, University of Oregon Film Festival, National School Public Relations Association, Frameline/SFAF Video Awards, Image Crossing Northwest. He has received grants and funding awards from the following organizations: National Endowment for the Arts, The California Council for the Humanities, The San Francisco Arts Commission, Wells Fargo Foundation, Pacific Bell—SBC, Columbia Foundation, Horizons Foundation, The Bridges/Larson Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation. http://ericslade.com/

Dawn Logsdon

Editor & Co-Director, has been working on documentaries about social justice and history for over fifteen years. She edited the Academy Award-nominated Weather Underground, Sundance award-winning Paragraph 175, George Foster Peabody Award award-winning The Castro, and many other documentaries for PBS, HBO, and Channel Four in England. She produced, directed and edited Faubourg Treme, The Untold Story of Black New Orleans. Dawn is a Soros Open Society Institute Media Fellow and has received fellowships from the Louisiana Division of the Arts and the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, and she was a California Arts Council artist-in-residence. She also holds a BA in philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley. Her current project is a documentary about public libraries, Free For All. http://freeforalldocumentary.com

Kyung Lee

Co-Editor, has worked extensively in field and studio environments as a videographer and editor. She was an editor and post-production manager for Link TV, before starting work on the Big Joy Project, where she still does editing and technical consulting. Her first feature film, TELOS: The Fantastic World of Eugene Tssui, is currently showing at festivals around the world.

Ian Hinkle

Cinematographer, is a producer, director, and editor for the Long Road North media production company. He has been chasing stories and shooting films focusing on social-political education, environmental issues and outdoor adventure at North Coast Films for the last 16 years. In 1998 he was awarded the Gold Camera Award at the Chicago International Film Festival for directing “The Living Coast.”

Art Adams

Cinematographer A native of Northern California, Art spent ten years in LA — first at film school and then working in the film industry. He started out as a camera assistant on low budget features and worked his way into spots, music videos, features, sitcoms and episodic television shows. He transitioned from assistant to operator to DP by the time he returned to the San Francisco Bay Area. He shoots film as well as film-style HD and is experienced with all flavors of HD cameras, big to small and fast to slow. Currently, Art focuses his energies on shooting spots, virals and high-end corporate productions, as well as special venue, VFX and blue/green screen projects for clients including Nintendo, SONY, Facebook, Snapfish, and Kendall Jackson. His first love is lighting faces. His second love is shooting projects that make his brain hurt with creative and technical challenges. He got to experience both when he shot some San Francisco interviews and B-roll for Big Joy. http://artadamsdp.com/74622/showreel

Joel Singer

Executive Producer, is an artist who was Broughton’s life and filmmaking partner for the last 25 years of his life. He has given the Big Joy Project rights to use Broughton’s films and poetry. http://joelasinger.com/main.html

Bill Weber

Consulting Editor, has a long resume of editing achievements. His early work included an Emmy award-winning open for Saturday Night Live and the first Music Video of the Year Award for MTV for a music video featuring The Cars. He continued cutting ground-breaking commercials and music videos until discovering his talent and love for editing documentaries after completing his first feature documentary, The Cockettes,which he edited and co-directed with his friend David Weissman. The film premiered at Sundance and the Berlin International Film Festival and went on to win the LA Film Critics Documentary of the Year award in 2002, among other awards. His more recent work included the Emmy nominated Last Letters Home for HBO, the Emmy winning Gold Rush for the History Channel, the 2007 Telluride premiered documentary feature Hats Off and the documentary Caregivers for the Alzheimer’s Project, also for HBO. In 2009, The Final Inch, a short documentary he edited on the effort to eradicate polio, was nominated for an Academy Award. Bill is based in San Francisco, and is currently working on a project that documents the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, told through personal stories. http://www.billweber.net/

Jami Sieber

Composer, is a classically trained cellist who migrated to folk, to rock/pop where within her popular band “Rumors of the Big Wave”, she garnered the coveted Northwest Area Music Association (NAMA) Award for Best Rock Instrumentalist. Since launching her solo career, Sieber has entered into dynamic collaborations with an extraordinary spectrum of dancers, actors, poets, visual artists, improvisers, vocalists, and instrumentalists that span the globe. Her compositions have been used for film, (Queen of the Sun, Climb Against the Odds, Jews and Buddism, Hope is the Thing with Feathers) theatre, (Orpheus, TS Crossing) and the popular video game – Braid. Jami’s independently produced recordings include: ‘Unspoken: The Music of Only Breath’ (2008), ‘Only Breath’ (2007), ‘Hidden Sky’ (2004), ‘Second Sight’ (1998), and ‘Lush Mechanique’ (1994). ‘Big Joy’ stretched her into new realms of expression. http://jamisieber.com

Evan Schiller

Composer, is a Seattle-based musician, soundtrack composer, audio engineer, and producer. Versed in a wide range of musical styles and genres, he has composed music for films, documentaries, contemporary dance, PSAs, TV commercials, computer games and modern theatre. Owner of zulusound studio, Evan has recorded and/or performed with such artists as Sadhappy, Eyvind Kang, Michael Manring, Geoff Tate (Queensryche), Mike Kineally, Timothy Young, Aiko Shimada, Mike Patton, Sherik, Gavin Lurssen, Very Special Forces, Bill Frisell and many others. http://www.evanschillermusic.com

Aimée Cartier

Associate Producer, is our number one behind the scenes lady. She keeps the project together with her expert organizational skills and project tracking. She has a long history in non-profit work. For years she raised funds, headed campaigns and worked in the communications departments of notable organizations like the Sierra Club and Global Greengrants Fund. However, now, when she’s not consulting for the Big Joy Project she is an author, speaker, and intuitive councilor. http://www.spreadingblessings.com

Max St Romain

Producer At 23, Max met an 81-year-old James Broughton, not knowing how life-changing that dinnertime acquaintance would become. Decades later, Max became part of BIG JOY’s creative circle since its inception. He’s been a key adviser on style decisions, such as animation, music, and marketing. He lives in Mexico City where he works as a Creative Producer, developing concepts for television and film, as well as screenwriting.

Jok Church

Executive Producer, is a longtime gay-rights activist who was lucky enough to become a friend of James Broughton before he knew James was a celebrity. ”He was just a guy living in a trailer park,” said Jok. Jok is the creator of the Universal Press Syndicate newspaper comic strip: “You Can with Beakman & Jax,” author of the Beakman books and creator of the CBS TV series “Beakman’s World” (now on Netflix). He also wrote and produced CD-ROMS for the National Geographic Society (“What it Means to be Green” and “Human Reproduction — Beyond Plumbing”) He shares his fund-raising activities for Big Joy with his partner, Michael Hemes. Jok has done TED Talks one of which can be seen here. Jok also makes a reasonably decent cup of tea and a passable piece of pie.

Kitten Calfee

Former Producer of Marketing and Distribution, is a community organizer with over 15 years of experience programming large cultural events in San Francisco, Washington, D.C, and Massachusetts. He is the founder of the Comfort & Joy mutual-support society which supports queer art, expression, self-actualization & spirituality through their members’ prolific community-based productions. Mr. Calfee has created several successful branded event concepts including the “Faetopia” pop-up theater & gallery space, the long-running “Afterglow” & “Touch” danceparty fundraiser series, and “Love on Wheels” bicycle dating game. He represented Big Joy at Independent Film Project’s PMD Lab. Kitten has a Bachelor’s of Arts in Public Administration with a focus on cultural nonprofit organizing from the University of San Francisco.

Michael A. Mann

Animation and Graphic Designer Michael A. Mann has worked in animation and graphic design and for twenty years, crafting social impact campaigns, animating documentaries, music videos and other formats, and building visual worlds full of colour, vitality, and humour.

Peter & Trudy Johnson-Lenz

(known as P+T) are consulting futurists and on-line collaboration coaches in Portland, Oregon. They’ve worked as a team since 1974. Since their pioneering research in on-line communications and groupware in the late ’70s they’ve been helping organizations cultivate virtual community and discover next steps to smarter futures. They provide elegant simplifications of complex ideas and precision connections to leading-edge ideas, tools, practices and practitioners. They’ve worked with organizations in person and on line, from multinationals to their neighborhood association — fortune firms, government agencies, think tanks, nonprofits, arts organizations, and consultants.