Izzy Chan; photo by Paige Green
Izzy Chan
Director & ProduceR
San Francisco-based Izzy Chan is a storyteller deeply curious about cultural and social trends that are poised to change life as we know it dramatically. Her award-winning documentary feature on breadwinner moms and at-home dads, The Big Flip—Stories from the Modern Home Front (2016), premiered at the Austin Film Festival and Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Izzy is a film and cultural envoy for the prestigious American Film Showcase, the U.S. State Department’s film diplomacy program; through the program, Chan has traveled to Egypt, China, and Ukraine to screen The Big Flip and conduct workshops on storytelling and strategy.
Brought up in Hong Kong and Singapore, Izzy graduated from the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. She has built a successful career in advertising as a researcher and strategist in human behavior, social trends, and popular culture, working on brands such as Apple, Google, Nike, Visa, and Oakley. Izzy’s creative process is an integration of her cross-cultural background, her experience across diverse industries, and her passion for filmmaking and storytelling as tools for instigating understanding, action, and change.
Noémie Serfaty
CO-DIRECTOR & EDITOR
San Francisco-based Noémie Hakim-Serfaty is an editor and filmmaker passionate about telling stories of women and their relationship with justice, feminism and matriarchal ancestry. She started her film career working as an Assistant Director and Assistant to Art Director on award-winning films such as The Untouchables. Her first documentary, Des Agrégations (2015), about the sexist and colonial biases of the French school system, toured French schools and universities, and started a nationwide conversation on school reform. Since living in the US, she has worked as a documentary filmmaker for organizations fighting police brutality and displacement in California, and works as an editor on award-winning projects such as The Story Of Stuff documentaries. Noémie was raised in Paris of Moroccan and Middle Eastern descent. She holds a Master's degree in Philosophy from La Sorbonne, where she graduated With Honors.
Marilyn McFadyen
CO-PRODUCER
UK born, Kiwi raised, Marilyn has spent much of her adult life between countries, where her lifelong fascination with different people and cultures confirmed in her mind that our dreams and desires overlap much more than our perceived “nationhood” would like us to believe. She has developed a passion for authentic storytelling that crosses these imposed borders, that is entertaining and engaging, while subtly affecting change in attitudes. Her experience started on the NZ studio floor, but a move to Singapore led to international projects taking her all over the world, with multiple-language crews, in often trying physical conditions. Clients include BBC, Nat Geo, The History Channel, Discovery Networks, Channel News Asia and TVNZ She was author, researcher and editorial lead on “Veil of Dreams”, a feature film that penetrated the secretive world of women’s football in Iran. She researched, wrote and directed a 3 part series on unknown stories of WW2 in Asia for The History Channel, directed the Australian and Asian episodes of “Ecopolis”, with Darlow Smithson London, for Discovery Channel and produced/directed a series of five shorts for the Asian launch of BBC Knowledge. In 2019/20 she researched and co-wrote the theatrical feature “Balance of the Five Elements” and its accompanying TV series “Colours of China” a New Zealand/ Germany/ China co-production.
Athena Kalkoupoulou
Consulting Producer
Athena Kalkoupoulou is a creative producer and consultant of documentary based in San Francisco and Athens. She collaborates with the Sundance Documentary Fund and the Catapult Film Fund. She produced A Growing Thing which broadcast on Deutche Welle and will be on PBS World Channel. She co-produced "These Are My Hours" which had its world premiere at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival in 2018. Previously, she oversaw the San Francisco Film Society’s documentary grants program. She has participated in grant reviews, panels, pitching forums, juries and industry meetings in festivals such as Sundance, SXSW, Dok Leipzig, Camden International Film Festival and others.
Kayla Briet; photo by Danny Liao
Kayla Briet
Cinematographer
(DEVELOPMENT)
Los Angeles-based Kayla Briët is an emerging cinematographer whose award-winning short documentary, Smoke That Travels, immerses viewers in her native Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation heritage. This film has screened and won awards at over 45 festivals internationally, including MoMA in NYC, and has been archived in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. Briët shares Director Chan’s interest in exploring, preserving and sharing culture through sensitive, personal stories and a non-invasive lens. Her experience gives her a powerful instinct for building trust with communities, especially when handling sensitive topics of culture. Briët was named a 2017 TED Fellow, a 2016 Sundance Film Festival Ignite Fellow, and a 2016 Adobe Creativity Scholar.
Karolin Klüppel
Photographer-In-Chief
(Development)
Berlin-based Karolin Klueppel has worked exclusively on projects documenting the last matriarchal and matrilineal societies of our time, including the Khasi and the Mosuo. She spent nine months in the remote village of Mawlynnong in northeast India to create “Mädchenland” (Kingdom of Girls), a photojournalism project on Khasi girls. The collection has won several awards, including the Canon ProfiFoto Award 2014 and the Felix Schoeller Award 2015, and has been published in renowned international magazines such as The National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times, The Independent, The Huffington Post, and The Washington Post, among others. Her work was recently shown in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Cultural History Museum Osnabrück, the Delhi Photo Festival, and the Chennai Photo Biennale.
Karolin Klüppel; photo credit: Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie, 2018
Photo source: Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival
Vivien Hillgrove
Consulting SUPERVISING EDITOR
Vivien Hillgrove is an acclaimed editor whose picture editing credits include Henry and June and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Her sound editing credits include Blue Velvet by David Lynch, Amadeus by Milos Forman, which won 11 Academy Awards in 1984, and One From the Heart by Francis Coppola. Her documentary work includes Broken Rainbow by Victoria Mudd, which won an Academy Award in 1985, six award-winning documentary films by Lourdes Portillo including The Devil Never Sleeps and Senorita Extraviada, which won a special jury prize at Sundance and the 2002 International Documentary Award. Her other documentary credits include First Person Plural (P.O.V.), Heart of the Sea (PBS-Independent Lens Audience award) and The Future of Food by Deborah Garcia.
Ramona S. Diaz
Consulting Producer
Ramona S. Diaz is an award-winning Asian American filmmaker best known for her compelling character- driven documentaries that combine a profound appreciation for cinematic aesthetics and potent storytelling. Her films have demonstrated her ability to gain intimate access to the people she films—be they rock stars, first ladies, dissidents, teachers or mothers —resulting in keenly observed moments and nuanced narratives. While she has focused on stories of Filipinos and Filipino Americans, the themes of Ramona’s films are universal. Her films have screened and won awards at Sundance, the Berlinale, Tribeca, Silverdocs, IDFA, and many other top-tier film festivals. She has received funding from ITVS, CAAM, Sundance, and MacArthur Foundation among others. All of Ramona’s feature-length films have been broadcast on either POV or Independent Lens on PBS. Her latest film, Motherland, won an award at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and had its international premiere at the Berlinale. It was nominated for an Independent Spirit Awards for Best Documentary. Ramona was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and was inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in 2016. She is a current recipient of a Women at Sundance Fellowship and a Chicken & Egg Pictures Breakthrough Filmmaker Award.
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Cassandra Jabola
Consulting Producer
Cassandra Jabola, a graduate of New York University with a background in cinema studies and broadcast journalism, is a San Francisco-based documentary film, television and video producer. She has collaborated with HBO, PBS, National Geographic, NBC, The Weather Channel, TLC, The Science Channel, The Travel Channel, A&E, and Investigation Discovery. She has produced feature documentaries that have screened at Tribeca Film Festival, AFI DOCS, DOC NYC, IDFA, and CPH: DOX, among others. Her work spans across science and technology, politics and history, art and music. Cassandra is experienced in taking feature documentary films, doc reality series and short-form videos from research and development through production and post - on set, in the field and in the edit room; locally and internationally; on land, in the air and underwater!
Ted Savarese
Composer
Ted is a composer, music producer and guitarist who is respected and loved by many in the San Francisco music scene. Ted won a Golden Eye award for his film score for the documentary October Country.
Niger Field Team
Fixer Mawli Dayak, translator Raicha, fixer Rabidine Waissan, and our kick-ass posse of drivers and guides
Indonesia Field Team
Guide and translator Eru Mamak and driver Gideon
China Field Team
Second camera AK Momo; fixer and Mosuo cultural expert Bo Wan; and fixer and humanities advisor Stefania Renda
Additional Support
Sharon Wood—Grant Writing Consultant
Professor Longzhe JIN, Ph.D. | Kanagawa University of Human Services—Mosuo Translation Support
Aileen Nguyen—Partner Relationship
Peter Locke—Design for Trailer Titles
Kent Kessinger—Second Camera for Niger Scouting Trip
Jessica Braff—Editing Support
Luca Evans—Intern
Ryan Baker—Intern