The Filmmakers
Tia Lessin and Carl Deal
Directors and Producers
Tia Lessin and Carl Deal directed and produced the 2009 Academy Award®-nominated feature documentary Trouble the Water, winner of the Gotham Independent Film Award and the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize. They were also producers of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, winner of the Palme d'Or, Oscar®-winning Bowling for Columbine, and more recently, Capitalism: A Love Story.
Tia received the Sidney Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism for her documentary short Behind the Labels. She line produced Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and was associate producer of Charles Guggenheim's Oscar®-nominated film Shadows of Hate.
In television, her work as producer of the series The Awful Truth earned her two Emmy nominations and one arrest.
Tia is a Creative Capital grantee, a Sundance Institute Fellow, an Open Society Institute Katrina Media Fellow, and was awarded the Women of Worth Vision Award by L'Oréal Paris and Women in Film.
Carl Deal has contributed to many documentary films. He is a Creative Capital grantee, a Sundance Institute Fellow, and was the 2005 recipient of the FOCAL International/Associated Press Library Award for best use of footage in a feature film.
Previously, Carl worked as an international news producer and a writer and has reported from natural disasters and conflict zones throughout the U.S., Latin America, and in Iraq. In addition to his work as a filmmaker, he has authored investigative reports for Greenpeace, Amnesty International and Public Citizen.
T. Woody Richman
Editor & Co-Producer
T. Woody Richman edited Fahrenheit 9/11 and was associate editor of Bowling for Columbine. He edited Sooni Taraporevala’s first feature, Little Zizou and is currently cutting a documentary about the pharmaceutical industry and female orgasms. He has cut several other independent features, including Destination Unknown, winner of the Hamptons Film Festival. Woody began his career working as an assistant editor in the cutting rooms of Nick Gomez, Spike Lee and Oliver Stone.
PJ Raval
Director of Photography
PJ Raval’s work has been showcased at both Sundance and Cannes and earned him the ASC Charles B. Lang Jr. Heritage Award and the Haskell Wexler Award for Best Cinematography. PJ has been featured in American Cinematographer; his other feature cinematography credits include, the 2006 Independent Spirit Award nominated Room, the Los Angeles Film Festival Narrative Feature Award winner Gretchen, and the Burnt Orange produced Cassidy Kids.
PJ recently co-directed with Jay Hodges Trinidad, a feature documentary about a small Wild West outpost town turned “sex change capital of the world.”
Kimberly Rivers Roberts
Director of Photography
Kimberly and her husband Scott were born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, and are featured in Trouble the Water. Just 24 hours before Hurricane Katrina flooded her city, Kimberly recorded a day in the life of her neighborhood on her hi-8 camcorder, and continued to tape through the storm until a lack of electrical power forced her to stop.
Before the storm, Kimberly was working on her music career in the 9th Ward and, using the MC name Black Kold Madina, had recorded an underground demo album called Tryed and True. She believed all her music was lost in the storm, until she discovered that one of her relatives in Memphis had the only existing copy. Kimberly and Scott recently started a record company, Born Hustler Records, where she distributes and records new music.
(photo courtesy of Godlis)
Mary Lampson
Additional editor
Mary Lampson was co-editor of Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award winning film Harlan County, USA. She was the co-producer and editor with Emile de Antonio and Haskell Wexler of Underground and edited several more de Antonio films. She recently edited Anne Makepeace’s Rain in a Dry Land and Julia Reichart’s Emmy nominated film A Lion in the House. Mary began her editing career with Ricky Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker as an associate editor on Monterey Pop and One P.M., a film by Jean-Luc Godard.
Danny Glover and Joslyn Barnes
Executive Producers
In addition to being one of the most acclaimed actors of our time, with a career spanning 30 years from Places in the Heart, The Color Purple, the Lethal Weapon series and the award-winning To Sleep with Anger, Danny Glover has also produced, executive produced and financed numerous projects for film, television and theatre. Among these are Good Fences, 3 AM, Freedom Song, Get on the Bus, Deadly Voyage, Buffalo Soldiers, The Saint of Fort Washington and To Sleep with Anger, as well as the series Courage and America’s Dream.
The recipient of countless awards for his humanitarian and advocacy efforts on behalf of economic and social justice causes, Glover is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from Amnesty International.
Joslyn Barnes is a writer and producer with experience in several fields. She is the author or co-author of twelve commissioned screenplays for feature films including the upcoming epic Toussaint, and the award-winning film Bàttu, directed by Cheikh Oumar Sissoko (Mali), which she associate produced with British Screen and EMET Films.
Barnes has also served as an expert consultant and programme officer at the United Nations. She has lived and traveled widely in Africa and Asia, and has written numerous articles covering trade and social development issues, as well as contributing to books on the establishment of electronic communications in developing countries, food security and production in Africa, and strategic advocacy for the inclusion of gender perspectives on the international development agenda.
Since co-founding Louverture Films, Glover and Barnes have executive produced the award-winning feature Bamako (currently in release), the music documentary Africa Unite, Salt of The Sea and Soundtrack For A Revolution.
(photo by Jan Baracz)
Amir Bar-Lev
Co-Producer
Amir Bar-Lev’s feature directorial debut, Fighter, won Best Documentary at the Newport and Galway Film Festivals, Audience Choice at the Hamptons Film Festival, and a Jury Citation at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. It was released theatrically in Fall of 2001. Bar-Lev’s second film, My Kid Could Paint That, premiered at Sundance 07 and was released internationally in Fall of last year by Sony Pictures Classics. My Kid Could Paint That was nominated for a Gotham Award and an IDA ABC News/VideoSource Award. Bar-Lev has also taught documentary at NYU, Produced and Executive Produced shows for Sundance Channel, VH1, MTV, Spike!, and TWC as well as directed numerous award winning short films. He recently completed The Pat Tillman Story, which debuted at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.
Nadia Hallgren
Cinematographer
Nadia Hallgren is a Cinematographer from the South Bronx. Her feature credits include, Trouble The Water, Fahrenheit 9/11, Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden?, The Youngest Candidate, and What would Jesus Buy?. Nadia's career began the day Tia hired her to work on Fahrenheit 9/11.
Nadia has just directed her first film 'Sanza Hanza' (King Surfer), a short ilm about teenage kids who surf trains in South Africa.
Davidge / Del Naja
Original score
Robert Del Naja & Neil Davidge brought their cinematic fusion of hip hop, soul and hypnotic melodies to Trouble the Water, Del Naja is one half of Massive Attack the pioneering Bristol, UK based band who’s last five cds have sold over 12 million copies world-wide.
Together with Davidge, his writing and producer partner, they have written and produced music for three films in 2007: In Prison My Whole Life, Battle In Seattle and Trouble The Water, as well as working on the new Massive Attack record due in Fall 2008.
