about the filmmakers

Roger Ross Williams, Director & Producer

Roger Ross Williams is a documentary, television news, and entertainment director, producer and writer.

He produced and directed Music by Prudence, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). Roger Ross Williams is the first African American director to win an Academy Award in his category of Documentary Shorts, and the first ever African American director to win an Academy Award for directing and producing a film, short or feature.

He is a member of a Gullah family from South Carolina, and has lived and worked in New York City for the past twenty-five years.

He has worked for ABC News, NBC News, MSNBC, BBC, CNN and PBS. He has produced shows for ABC, CBS, Comedy Central, Food Network, Sundance Channel, TLC, VH1 and Michael Moore’s Emmy Award winning series TV Nation.

He has directed prime-time reality shows for ABC and CBS, and produced a documentary series for Discovery Networks and a lifestyle series for Scripts Networks.

He has won numerous awards including a NAMIC Vision Award for his television special Moroccan Style and the National Headliner for Best Human Interest Feature for his documentary New York Underground.

Read the Q&A with Roger Ross Williams here.

Geeta Gandbhir, Editor

Geeta Gandbhir has over eighteen years of varied experience in the fields of film, television and animation. She started out working as an animator for the legendary filmmaker Suzan Pitt doing pieces for MTV’s groundbreaking Liquid Television series, as well as Pitt’s film Joy Street which was featured in the New York Film Festival. Wanting to branch out and broaden her skills, she then transitioned into film editing, working with distinguished, award winning directors and producers such as Spike Lee, Robert Altman and Sam Pollard. In television, she has worked for PBS, MTV, Discovery, Court TV, Oxygen Media, HBO and many others. Recent works include the PBS series African American Lives with Henry Lewis Gates, the four hour documentary When the Levees Broke for filmmaker Spike Lee for which she won an Emmy Award for Best Editing. Most recent works include What’s Going On; The Life Of Marvin Gaye for PBS American Masters, Amy Rice and Alica Sam’s feature documentary By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, Executive Produced by Edward Norton and released by HBO, and Music By Prudence, a documentary directed by Roger Ross Williams, which has been nominated for the 2010 Oscars. She just finished working on a feature documentary entitled Budrus by Just Vision Films, the directors and producers of the award winning film Control Room, which will be playing at the Berlin film festival. She is about to begin editing on director Spike Lee’s second installation of When the Levees Broke for HBO.

Patrick Wright, Co-Producer/Associate Editor

Patrick Wright became a filmmaker because he wanted to learn, to venture out of himself and his narrow slice of reality, to expand his vision and to translate it for others. He has made films on HIV/AIDS, clergy sexual abuse and a profile of Ann Coulter, one of the most controversial political commentators of our day. He has produced a number of shorts many of them exhibited in fine art galleries throughout the United States including Artist’s Space in NYC. He is Chair of the Video and Film Arts Department at the Maryland Insititue College of Art. His films have screened internationally and Is It True What They Say About Ann? is distributed on DVD.

Derek Wiesehahn, Director Of Photography

Derek is a New York based DP with over 20 years of experience in film and television. Although Documentaries are a current focus, Derek has shot well over 100 music videos, as well as numerous commercials and promos for such clients as HBO, Showtime, McDonalds, Adidas, Fedex, Napa, Columbia Records, MTV, and Nickelodeon. His work has won 5 New York Festivals Awards as well as BDA, and Addy awards. Narrative credits also include several feature films, and shorts, as well as Documentaries which have been well received at Sundance, the Tribeca Film Festival and the New York Film Festival.

Errol Webber, Cinematographer

Errol Webber was 21 years old when he flew to Zimbabwe to begin shooting Music by Prudence, just two weeks after graduating from the Maryland Institute College of Art. But despite his age, he had already worked as a commercial cinematographer and photographer for five years, shooting everything from concerts and promotional events to TV broadcasts and commissioned art videos for museums. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Webber immigrated to the United States at the age of 15, aspiring to become a commercial airline pilot. Once he picked up his first video camera, however, he knew he needed to spend his life behind the lens. Now 23 years old, he specializes in documentary cinematography and is currently shooting another long-term documentary that will take him back to Africa.

Osato Dixon, Cameraman

Osato Dixon was raised in Baltimore where he attended Carver Center for the Arts, where he learned the power of personal expression. In 2004 he graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Film. In 2007, while at Columbia University’s Graduate Film Program, Osato was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to complete, a feature documentary that follows the lives of albino children, entitled YOUR NAME IS MY NAME. The film was filmed in Zimbabwe and is currently in post-production. Osato is an experienced cameraman and editor. While in Zimbabwe Osato worked for National Geographic, The New York Time and ABC News.