Almost Home

Brad Lichtenstein is a filmmaker, virtual reality storyteller, radio producer, and founder of 371 Productions. He has been nominated for two Emmys and won two DuPonts and a Peabody. Recent films include the PBS FRONTLINE documentary American Reckoning (with Yoruba Richen) and the Participant documentary Messwood (with Emily Kuester). When Claude Got Shot is his third film for Independent Lens.

Lisa Gildehaus began her career at Iowa Public Television in 1992 as a segment associate producer and editor. In 1994, she joined The Duncan Group, a company that produced for The Learning Channel, PBS, and Discovery International. She served as series associate producer for the 13-part international program Mystic Lands. She began her own production company, Riveting Pictures, in 1997 and was producer/director of the documentary Oracle of Omaha, about billionaire Warren Buffett and his legions of followers; the television pilot Kill it and Cook it with Larry, about a Midwestern farmer who traps wild game; and Hell is Other People, the first installment in the Triptych narrative trilogy. In 2001, Gildehaus moved to the Czech Republic to work with filmmakers and artists and to study Eastern European cinematic movements, history, and languages. Almost Home brought her back to local concerns and the disparities of age, race, and socio-economic status in the U.S. Continuing on that theme, she is currently researching The St. Louis American, a documentary about race and class through the eyes of an African-American newspaper staff and their white editor. She also intends to spend time traveling through Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia, researching issues of war, ethnicity, and identity in the region.