Crew
James Weeks: Producer/co-director
The recipient of The Art of Living Black 2004, Jan-Hart-Schuyers Artistic Achievement Award, James Weeks is an award-wining photographer and a writer with more than 19 years of experience. His writings have appeared in Parenting, the Virgin Islands Daily News, the S.F. Weekly and other publications. His is the creator of the popular Sacred Journey fine art calendar series www.sacredjourneyworldwide.com and www.tamarindyears.com . He was initiated into the Ifa spiritual tradition and speaks the Yoruba language fluently. He has a B.A. Degree in French from Cal-State East Bay (formerly called Cal-State Hayward).
Stanley Nelson: Director
Stanley Nelson, one of the premier documentary filmmakers working today, is being considered to direct Across The King’s River. A recipient of the 2002 MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, Nelson is Executive Producer of Firelight Media, a not-for-profit documentary production company dedicated to giving voice to people and issues that are marginalized in popular culture. The MacArthur Foundation has described Nelson as “a documentary filmmaker with a signature style and a distinctive cinematic voice,” and noted that “his films on a wide variety of subjects convey powerful stories with evocative technique.”
Huguens Jean: First Assistant Director
In 1997, at the age of 16, Huguens Jean immigrated to the United States from Haiti to live with his father and continue his secondary education. Huguens is currently pursuing his PhD in Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. When choosing his doctoral research topic, Huguens combined his longstanding interests in filmmaking and technology and began working in the field of opto-electronics systems for computer vision. Specifically, his dissertation focuses on the use of a 3D camera paired with a 2D camera for unassisted object recognition in robots. The documentary film, Lift Up is his directorial debut.
Tupac Mauricio Saavedra: Director of photography
Director/Producer/Cinematographer Tupac Mauricio Saavedra is a cameraman, reporter and documentary filmmaker that splits his time between his native home, Bolivia and the United States. Tupac recently completed Bolivian Baroque, a 42-minute documentary that aired on European and Bolivian television. During the historic 2005 presidential elections in Bolivia, he followed the campaign of Evo Morales, who went on to become Bolivia’s first indigenous president. His award winning documentary, On the Road With Evo, is a close look at Morales the person and the politician, as well as an examination of the political conditions that brought him into power. In making the documentary, Tupac had a certain inside track and added connection: like Evo Morales, Tupac (named for the legendary Bolivian leader, not the rap star) also has indigenous roots. In recent years, Tupac has worked as a freelance cameraman and editor, producing documentary shorts for the series Frontline World and TIME/CNN from India, Cuba, Peru, Brazil, and Bolivia. Tupac received his Masters degree from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Karen Everett: Editor/Story consultant
Documentary editor and storytelling specialist Karen Everett brings two decades of cutting experience and a deep understanding of narrative structure to the editing room. During the past eighteen years, Karen has also taught editing at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, named the top U.S. documentary program by Documentary Magazine. She has consulted on hundreds of documentaries and moderated filmmaking seminars.
A published author, Karen wrote “Reality in Three Acts: What Documentary Filmmakers Can Learn From Screenwriters” and is currently writing a book titled Documentary Editing. She teaches a popular two-day seminar on documentary storytelling at the San Francisco Film Society which is available online. Karen has directed and produced five documentaries, including the award-winning PBS biography I Shall Not Be Removed: The Life of Marlon Riggs. She received a Master’s in Journalism from UC Berkeley in 1992 and her B.A. degree from Smith College in 1987.
