Production Crew
Christopher (Toby) McLeod
Toby McLeod circled the globe for five years filming the Standing on Sacred Ground series. McLeod founded the Sacred Land Film Project in 1984 to make high-impact documentary films relevant to indigenous communities and modern audiences. He produced and directed In the Light of Reverence (P.O.V., 2001) and other award-winning documentary films: The Four Corners: A National Sacrifice Area?, Downwind/Downstream, and NOVA: Poison in the Rockies. In 1990, he produced Voices of the Land as a 20-minute preview of Standing on Sacred Ground. In 1997, he completed A Thousand Years of Ceremony, a 40-minute profile of Winnemem Wintu healer Florence Jones and her efforts to protect Mount Shasta as a sacred site for the Wintu—a film made specifically as an archival film for the use of the Wintu community. Awards include the Council on Foundation’s Henry Hampton Award, the John de Graaf Environmental Filmmaking Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship for filmmaking and a Student Academy Award in 1983. His first film was The Cracking of Glen Canyon Damn—with Edward Abbey and Earth First! McLeod holds a master’s degree from U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. in American History from Yale.
Jessica Abbe
Co-produced Angle of Inspiration, a 2004 PBS documentary about the effect on the small town of Redding, California, of a startling new bridge by world-renowned architect Santiago Calatrava. Writing credits include Power Paths (2008), about the Native American movement toward renewable energy development, and In the Light of Reverence. Wrote and produced documentaries on AIDS and San Francisco history. Helped start Bay Area Backroads, the highest-rated local program during her tenure as producer, and worked for two years with director Francis Ford Coppola and author Diane Johnson on a screenplay about the search for a cure for AIDS. Holds a B.F.A. in dramatic arts from New York University, and a master’s degree in journalism from U.C. Berkeley.
Jennifer Huang
Documentary filmmaker in San Francisco for 15 years. At Lucasfilm, wrote and produced Harlem’s Hellfighters: Black Soldiers of World War I, and contributed to nine other documentary films, with topics ranging from Gertrude Bell to Dracula, from Tin Pan Alley to the Congo. Worked as a writer, field producer and associate producer on productions for PBS, Travel Channel, HGTV, TNT and AZN TV, and co-founded Hyphen, an Asian American news and culture magazine. Holds a B.A. in Social Welfare and Ethnography through Cinema from U.C. Berkeley.
Marta Wohl
Freelance film/video editor with 20 years experience in editing and producing documentary, educational, corporate and broadcast film and video. Recent film credits include Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers (2011), Claiming the Title: Gay Olympics on Trial (2009), Don’t Know, We’ll See: The Life and Work of Karen Karnes (2008), Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops (2008), and Without a Net (2008). Spent four years as the offline editor in the documentary unit at JAK Films, the production arm of Lucasfilm, editing 25 of the 94 companion educational documentaries profiling historical figures of the early 20th century that surfaced in the 44 episodes of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones television series.
Quinn Costello
Freelance editor and post production supervisor from the Bay Area who has worked on a wide variety of documentaries with an emphasis on environmentalism, social activism and issues pertaining to indigenous communities around the world. His work has been seen on PBS, Sundance Channel and Learning Channel. Post Production Supervisor credits include American Masters—Sam Cooke: Crossing Over. Editing credits include Mustang—Journey of Transformation, and Global Focus: The New Environmentalists.
Andrew Black
Work includes documentary and feature films released theatrically and broadcast on PBS, BBC, Learning Channel, Channel 4, Sundance Channel, Discovery Channel, IFC and others. Worked with Michael Moore on Fahrenheit 911 and Sicko. Shot The Weather Underground by Sam Green, which was nominated for an Academy Award, Documentary Feature category. Annually shoots Global Focus, a PBS series that features environmentalists from around the world.
Will Parrinello
Shot and edited In the Light of Reverence. He was director of photography for the Academy Award-nominated Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press and produced Emile Norman: By His Own Design, Mustang—Journey of Transformation, Dreaming of Tibet, on Tibetan refugees, and Little Italy, on Italian-American culture. He produces segments for films about about the winners of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
Vicente Franco
A producer and cinematographer, he was a 2003 Oscar nominee for Best Documentary a for Daughter from Danang, winner of the 2002 Sundance Grand Jury Prize. His credits include the Academy Award nominated documentaries Freedom on My Mind (2004), and The Most Dangerous Man in America (2010), the POV specials Discovering Dominga and Thirst, and the PBS Latin Music USA, In Search of Law and Order and Making Peace. He shot Botany of Desire, and his latest production was Summer of Love, for PBS American Experience about the San Francisco Haight Ashbury hippie community in 1967.
David Wendlinger
Worked on a range of projects worldwide for the BBC, Google, Discovery and National Geographic, among others. Since 2006, worked on short films about the winners of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
Callie Shanafelt
Finalized the archival materials and online process for Standing on Sacred Ground. She also subtitled all four films in Russian and Spanish. Her documentary The Fountain is about her quest to understand her father’s childhood and grandparents death at the 1950’s cult: The Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith and Love Fountain of the World.
Erin Lee
Erin worked in post-production for several films on Caribbean culture, and as well as providing support on location for large-scale music festivals on the islands. Originally from Miami, she currently produces videos for the San Francisco School of Bartending, SF Mixology, and the Evolutionary Healing Institute in Miami.