Projects

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.… Show more 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. Show less

Peter Nicks is an Emmy Award-winning shooter/director known for his courageous cinema vérité style. He directed/produced The Waiting Room, which was released theatrically in 2012 to critical acclaim, shortlisted for an Oscar and won numerous awards including the Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit award. Nicks is a 2015 United States Artist Fellow… Show more in the midst of his trilogy of timely, immersive films exploring the interconnected narratives of health care, criminal justice and education in Oakland, CA. Show less

Bernardo Ruiz is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. His directorial feature debut, Reportero (POV, PBS 2013) about attacks on the press in Mexico, was nominated for a 2014 News and Documentary Emmy® Award and premiered at Full Frame (U.S.), IDFA (Europe) and Ambulante (Mexico). New York Magazine called it “a powerful reminder of how journalism… Show more often requires immense amounts of physical and psychological bravery.” His latest feature documentary, Kingdom of Shadows was called “unforgettable” by The New York Times and premiered at SXSW and IDFA. Ruiz founded Quiet Pictures, a New York-based production company, in 2007 in order to produce independent documentaries. Through Quiet, he created and Executive-Produced the two part bilingual PBS series, The Graduates/Los Graduados for Independent Lens. The series, about the lives of six Latino and Latina students, was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and co-produced with ITVS. In the fall of 2015, Ruiz was a “filmmaker in residence” at the Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) at the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He currently serves on the advisory board of the Full Frame Film Documentary Festival and the International Documentary Association's Enterprise Fund. Show less