ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

Daniel B. Gold (Writer, Director, Producer, Director of Photography)
Daniel B. Gold won the 2002 Sundance "Excellence in Cinematography Award" for his work on "Blue Vinyl", which he co-directed and co-produced. That film also garnered him two Emmy Nominations: one for Research, and one for Best Documentary. In 2002, "Blue Vinyl" was broadcast on HBO's America Undercover.

In 2007, Gold's work as DP will be featured in several new documentaries including "Coma", a 90 minute Moxie Firecracker special on HBO; "New Orleans", an Insignia Films two hour PBS special American Experience; "Saint Misbehavin': The Life and Times of Wavy Gravy"; "Coal Miners", a Barbara Kopple one hour special, and a theatrical release of "Toots Shore: Bigger Than Life", which premiered at Tribeca film festival in 2006.

Recent broadcast credits as DP include "The Nazi Officer's Wife"(A&E Special), "Breaking the Violence"(Lifetime Special), segments on the PBS series, "Colonial House" (sequel to the PBS series "Frontier House"), and "Saving Xiera", a short documentary on HBO. Prior to concentrating on feature documentaries, Gold's camerawork was frequently seen on "Saturday Night Live", "Dateline NBC", and "The Hallmark Channel".

Each summer, Gold teaches two classes at the New School. One, called Doc Camp-co-taught with Judith Helfand, is a week long intensive for documentaries in trouble; the other is a Digital Cinematography class to improve documentary camerawork and lighting through an appreciation of art history and the aesthetics of story telling.

Daniel B. Gold just recently started his own company called Hidden Rhythm Pictures, which represents him as a Director of Photography and Director/Cameraman.

Judith Helfand (Writer, Director, Producer)
Filmmaker, activist and educator Judith Helfand is best known for her ability to take the dark, cynical worlds of chemical exposure and heedless corporate behavior and make them personal, resonant, highly charged, and entertaining. Her films, "The Uprising of '34" (Co-directed with George Stoney), the Sundance award winning "Blue Vinyl" (for which she and Co-Director Daniel Gold were nominated for two Emmy's), and its Peabody award winning "prequel" "A Healthy Baby Girl" (a five-year "video-diary" about her experience with DES related cancer), explore home, class, corporate accountability, intergenerational relationships and the ever shrinking border between what is "personal" and what is a critical part of the public record.

Building on a decade of developing innovative outreach and organizing efforts around the distribution of her own films, Helfand co-founded Working Films in 1999, a national organization that is a dynamic bridge between high-profile non-fiction filmmaking and cutting edge social change organizing.

More recently Helfand, Julie Parker Benello (Co-Producer on "Blue Vinyl" and SF resident) and Wendy Ettinger (Producer of "The War Room") co-founded and launched Chicken & Egg Pictures and Film Fund. Their goal is to provide small development/we-believe-in-you grants and executive producing services to emerging and veteran women filmmakers producing non-fiction and fiction film projects.

Helfand speaks widely and passionately about all of this work in North America and internationally, and is full-time faculty at New York University's Undergraduate School of Film & Television, where she teaches documentary making.

Helfand is developing a feature documentary, "Heat Wave: an Unnatural Disaster", about the heat wave that ravaged the city of Chicago in the summer of 1995 leaving 739 people dead - the majority of them old, poor and people of color.

Chris Pilaro (Producer and Still Photographer)
Chris Pilaro has been producing documentary films since 1995. He was the Associate Producer and Still Photographer on Children In America’s Schools with Bill Moyers (PBS 1996) and the Field Producer and Still Photographer on Blue Vinyl (HB0 2002). He has also been a Creative Consultant on a number of other documentary films including Vamos Izquierda (2001), Twenty To Life (2002), Always Falling (2003) and Ghetto Fabulous (2004).

Pilaro is also as a freelance photographer focusing on social and environmental issues. Some of his finished projects include the inequalities of funding within the U.S. public educational system, migrant day laborers in California, water usage in the West and of the Colorado River, the effects of NAFTA on Mexican/American border communities and homeless Native Americans.

Pilaro shoots for Express Publishing in Idaho, where he lives with his family and is Chairman of the CAP Foundation, a National Council Member of Environmental Defense and an active environmentalist in his community.

Adam Wolfensohn (Producer)
For the past six years, Adam has been neck deep in climate change as a media producer, consultant, grant-maker and investor. From 2002 to 2003, he managed Conservation International's program to make the 2003 Pearl Jam and Warped Tours climate neutral with avoided deforestation offsets. Since 2003, he has been producing "Everything's Cool" as well as directing clean energy investments for Wolfensohn & Co. Before his left turn into the environmental world in 2000, he wrote and produced award-winning music for numerous film, theater and television productions at tomandandy and his own studio, Red Ramona.

He is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Trustee of the Alaska Conservation Foundation and President of Bang on a Can.

Toby Shimin (Editor)

Jacob Steingroot (Editor)

Jeremiah Dickey (Animation)

Emily Hubley (Animation)

Beth Urdang (Music Supervisor)

Stephen Thomas Cavit (Original Music)

Working Films (Community Engagement)
Working Films brings the persuasive, provocative and personal narratives in independent documentary films and video - vividly illustrating the struggles and triumphs of our lives - to long-term community organizing and activism.

With offices in Wilmington, North Carolina and New York City, Working Films is a national nonprofit that connects documentaries to social change through a variety of ways. Their services range from coordinating rough-cut community feedback screenings, to developing strategies for a documentary's community and audience engagement campaign, to developing and running collaborative campaigns between filmmakers and organizers.

Working Films has made a two-year commitment to an energetic audience and community engagement campaign for Everything's Cool, with support from the Oak Foundation and the Park Foundation. Contact them to join Everything's Cool push for clean energy: ec@workingfilms.orgor 910 342-9000