Mentors: Filmmakers: Documentary
Every filmmaker has a story to tell. Get advice, or share those stories with experienced filmmakers in our Documentary Filmmaker Mentor category.
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Mentor session signup is open to all Film, Gold and Platinum badge holders at a first-come, first-served basis. Registrants who signed up online must check-in 30 minutes before your mentor time slot to guarantee your spot. Limited on-site signup is also available for a small number of mentor sessions spots and will begin 30 minutes before the first time slot of each session.
Presenters
Amy Grappell
Writer/Dir
LFE Productions
Amy Grappell’s most recent documentary “Quadrangle” premiered at Sundance (2010) winning a Jury Prize, and went on to win Best Short Film at SXSW and AFI Film Festival before being broadcast on HBO. She is currently writing a one-hour pilot based on "Quadrangle" for a narrative HBO series.
Andrew Garrison
Producer/Dir
Trash Dance
Andrew Garrison works in both documentary and fiction. His work has been in festivals from SXSW and Sundance to Rotterdam and Locarno, broadcast on PBS, and earned Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and AFI fellowships. His most recent film, TRASH DANCE, premiered at SXSW 2012 and went on to win Audience Awards for Best Documentary Feature at both AFI/Silverdocs and the Full Frame Festival, among others, and is now available through Netflix. Garrison teaches documentary and narrative production at the University of Texas, and is a member of Cinema Audio Society as a production mixer. His current project as director is a feature fiction film set in Texas and Mexico.
Asher Goldstein
Traction Media
Asher Goldstein is an executive and producer at Traction Media, an independent film sales, production, and packaging company based in Los Angeles. At Traction, Asher oversees the financing, production, and sales/distribution of Traction projects and those of their clients. He most recently produced Destin Daniel Cretton's 2013 SXSW Jury Prize and Audience Award winner SHORT TERM 12, he was also a producer on Cretton's first feature I AM NOT A HIPSTER which premiered at Sundance 2012. He received a BFA with honors in Film/TV Production from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
David Hartstein
Blue Suitcase Productions
David Hartstein is an Emmy award winning documentary producer who calls Austin home. Immediately out of film school, David produced and directed Along Came Kinky: Texas Jewboy for Governor, a feature documentary chronicling Kinky Friedman’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign that premiered at SXSW 2009. He is the producer of The Happy Poet, a feature comedy that had its international premiere at the 67th Venice International Film Festival. He was a producer of Where Soldiers Come From, nationally broadcast on PBS and winner of the News and Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story as well as the Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit Award. Recently, David was a producer of America’s Parking Lot, a feature doc about Dallas Cowboys tailgaters that aired on ESPN in 2013. David is also currently in production as producer/director of his feature-length documentary, Untitled Israel Football Project, and was a producing fellow at the recent Biennale Cinema College lab in Venice with La Barracuda, a new narrative project.
David earned a BA in Film Studies from Emory University followed by an MFA in Film/Video Production from the University of Texas. He has taught narrative and documentary production at the University of Texas. He serves on the Filmmaker Advisory Committee to the Austin Film Society and is currently a producer and director on the MSNBC series Wounded: The Battle Back Home about veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
David Magdael
Pres/Owner
David Magdael & Associates Inc
DAVID MAGDAEL, President - DAVID MAGDAEL & ASSOCIATES, INC.
As founder and president of DAVID MADGAEL & ASSOCIATES, INC, his company continues to specialize in documentaries, independent films, directors, and public affairs issues since 2000. From developing Oscar® campaigns for documentaries to creating film festival strategies for filmmakers and indie films to television broadcast publicity to theatrical release public relations and film unit publicity, the company has become an important entertainment communications firm that boasts a client roster including numerous Academy Award® winning and nominated documentary and short films, Sundance Film Festival Award winners, Toronto International Film Festival standouts, Tribeca Film Festival and South by Southwest gems and independent films, as well as studio projects and television broadcast films for Lionsgate, Paramount, Universal, Sony/Columbia, Variance Films, Zeitgeist, Showtime, HBO, Relativity, Fox Searchlight, Rogue, Focus Features and others.
Magdael has been representing films at SXSW Film Festival for over 7 years since 2006. Recent film projects include: BLOOD BROTHER; AMERICAN PROMISE; ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW; A RIVER CHANGES COURSE; CENTRAL PARK FIVE; COMRADE KIM GOES FLYING; BURN; ASAD; KING’S POINT; OUT OF THE CLEAR BLUE SKY; LOVE FREE OR DIE; BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS!*; MANSOME; THE SECRET DISCO REVOLUTION; EVERYBODY HAS A PLAN; 5 BROKEN CAMERAS; IF A TREE FALLS; THE TSUNAMI AND THE CHERRY BLOSSOM; WE ARE LEGION; BEING ELMO: A PUPPETEER’S JOURNEY; THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975; COMIC-CON EPISODE IV: A FAN’S HOPE; ELITE SQUAD: THE ENEMY WITHIN; THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES; GIVE UP TOMORROW; THE OTHER F WORD; POM WONDERFUL PRESENTS: THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD; WASTELAND; THE INTERRUPTERS; SEMPER FI: ALWAYS FAITHFUL; SUPERHEROES; LEAVE IT ON THE FLOOR; ADDICTION INCORPORATED; SUPER SIZE ME; WHAT WOULD JESUS BUY; JAM; and others.
Keith Maitland
Dire/Producer
illegalfilms
Keith Maitland is currently in production on two feature docs – TOWER, an animated re-telling of the witnesses, survivors and heroes of the first American school shooting at the University of Texas in 1966; and the UNTITLED AUSTIN CITY LIMITS DOCUMENTARY, that looks at the past, present & future of the longest-running live music show in television history.
Maitland is the director and producer of the Emmy-nominated THE EYES OF ME, which premiered at SXSW and was broadcast on PBS's Independent Lens. An independent producer/director, and founder of IllegalFilms, Keith Maitland first gained invaluable hands-on experience on productions for MTV, Jim Henson Productions, Woody Allen, Janusch Kaminski, Joel Schumacher, and as an AD on 7-seasons of LAW & ORDER.
Liliana Greenfield-Sanders
Writer/Dir
Liliana Greenfield-Sanders
PJ Raval
Dir
Before You Know It
Named one of Out Magazine’s “Out 100 2010” and Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film 2006," PJ Raval is an award-winning filmmaker whose credits include TRINIDAD (Winner Best Documentary Cleveland International Film Festival 2009, Showtime, LOGO), the highly charged & not-safe-for-work CHRISTEENE video collection (praised by the Hollywood Reporter as "...something you wish you could desperately un-see."), and BEFORE YOU KNOW IT his latest documentary following the lives of three gay senior men as they face the challenges of life and love in their “golden years” (SXSW 2013, Winner Best Documentary Chicago LGBT Film Festival). Slant Magazine hailed BEFORE YOU KNOW IT as an “…exemplary example of a documentary that successfully puts human faces on wider issues..." indieWIRE described the film as “…a crucial new addition to the LGBT doc canon.”
Also an award-winning cinematographer, Raval’s work has earned him awards such as the ASC Charles B. Lang Jr. Heritage Award as well as the Haskell Wexler Award for Best Cinematography. Raval’s work includes the 2009 Academy Award-nominated & Sundance Grand Jury Award winner TROUBLE THE WATER as well as the Independent Spirit Award-nominated ROOM. He recently shot LOVE & AIR SEX directed by Bryan Poyser (SXSW 2013) which is currently in theaters as well as PRIMATE CINEMA: APES AS FAMILY the first film created for a chimpanzee audience (Sundance 2013, Berlinale).
In his spare time Raval likes to try and take small naps and pretend he knows ballet.
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