Spies of Mississippi

Dawn Porter is an award-winning filmmaker whose 2013 documentary Gideon’s Army won the Sundance Film Festival Editing Award, the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy. The film broadcast on HBO in July 2013 and has been used to engage local communities about indigent defense, the U.S. justice system, and socioeconomic influences on crime. Porter’s other films include Spies of Mississippi (2014, Independent Lens/PBS) and Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper, a documentary film chronicling President Obama’s program to help young men and boys of color succeed. Dawn interviewed President Obama for the film, which aired nationally on The Discovery Channel and The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) in 2015. Porter is a Keppler Speaker, has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and is a returning guest on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show. Prior to her work as a filmmaker, Dawn was director of standards and practices at ABC News and vice president of standard and practices at A&E Television Networks. She graduated from Swarthmore College and Georgetown Law Center and practiced law at the firm of Baker & Hostetler for five years.

Risa Morimoto produced the feature film The LaMastas in 1998. Since then, she has produced, written, and directed for film and television. Morimoto produced the award-winning program Cinema AZN, a half-hour show on Asian film for AZN Television Network.

President of Edgewood Pictures, Inc., a motion picture production company, Morimoto graduated with a master’s degree in film and education from New York University in 1999, where she served as associate director of the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute. From 2002 to 2006, she served as executive director of Asian CineVision, a nonprofit media arts organization. A second-generation Japanese American, Morimoto studied at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.