THE FILMMAKERS
Penny Lane (Director). Penny Lane’s most recent feature documentary The Pain of Others (2018) premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and went on to be selected for several other festivals, including BAMcinemaFest and Sheffield Doc/Fest. Her second feature documentary NUTS! (2016) premiered at Sundance where it won a Special Jury Prize for Editing. Her debut feature documentary Our Nixon (2013) premiered at Rotterdam, had its North American premiere at SXSW, won the Ken Burns Award for “Best of the Festival” at Ann Arbor, and was selected as the Closing Night Film at New Directors/New Films. Both NUTS! and Our Nixon garnered critical acclaim including multiple award nominations and wins, and are currently in wide release. Lane was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2012 and a Chicken & Egg Breakthrough Award Winner in 2017. Lane has been awarded grants from Creative Capital, Cinereach, TFI Documentary Fund, Jerome Foundation, LEF Foundation, NYSCA, Experimental Television Center, IFP and Puffin Foundation. She was named “Most Badass!” at the Iowa City Documentary Film Festival in 2009. Her short films, such as Just Add Water (2016) and The Voyagers (2010), have won accolades at film festivals and popularity online. Film festival screenings span the independent and experimental film worlds, including Sundance, Rotterdam, Images, IMPAKT, Hot Docs, Full Frame, CPH:DOX and Oberhausen. Lane has taught film, video and new media art at Bard College, Hampshire College and Williams College. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Colgate University, where she lives in a very old house and shows movies in her barn. And yes, Penny Lane is her real name.
Thom Stylinski (Co-writer). Thom Stylinski is a writer and video editor. He is the Senior Creative Producer at Yale University’s Center for Teaching and Learning, where he designs and produces online courses. He wrote and co-edited NUTS!, a documentary about a conman in the early 20th century, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, winning the Special Jury Award for Editing. Thom is a voice actor when necessary.
Julie Gratz (Director of Animation). Julie Gratz is a director, animator, and artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She grew up painting, dancing, and choreographing, so animation has become a beautiful culmination of all of her training and experience. Julie is the co-founder and Executive Director of Kaleida Studio, a video and animation studio that specializes in film, music, documentary, and commercial projects. Their award-winning work has been featured on VICE, The Creator's Project, Tribeca Film, Short of the Week, Great Big Story, CNN Films, Vimeo Staff Picks, Choreoscope International Film Festival, and Art of Brooklyn Film Festival.
Gabriel Sedgwick (Producer). Gabriel Sedgwick hails from Sweden but lives in New York City, where he has produced both fiction and documentary films that have screened at festivals such as SXSW, New Directors/New Films, BAMcinemaFest, Rotterdam Int'l Film Festival, Urbanworld, BAM's New Voices in Black Cinema, and Karlovy Vary, including Penny Lane's The Pain of Others and Lanre Olabisi's fiction features August the First and Somewhere in the Middle (both distributed by Film Movement in the US), winners of multiple awards on the festival trail. He also co-produced Jeremiah Zagar’s feature-length documentary Captivated - The Trials of Pamela Smart, for HBO and Sky Atlantic, which premiered in competition at Sundance 2014, and line produced Sara Jordenö's KIKI, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and has received numerous awards, including the Berlin Teddy Award, the Full Frame Human Rights Award, the Outfest Emerging Artist Award and an Independent Spirit Award nomination.
