Face2Face with David Peck

Steve and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new film Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, injustice, the 2008 financial crisis, speaking truth to power and closing the equity gap.

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Trailer

Find out more about the film here.

Synopsis

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail tells the incredible saga of the Chinese immigrant Sung family, owners of Abacus Federal Savings of Chinatown, New York.

Accused of mortgage fraud by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., Abacus becomes the only U.S. bank to face criminal charges in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

The indictment and subsequent trial forces the Sung family to defend themselves – and their bank’s legacy in the Chinatown community – over the course of a five-year legal battle.

Biography

Steve James produced and directed Hoop Dreams, winner of every major critics prize as well as a Peabody and Robert F. Kennedy Award.

Other award-winning films include Stevie, winner of the Sundance Film Festival Cinematography Award, IDFA Grand Jury Prize and the Yamagata Mayor’s Prize, among others; the Independent Documentary Association Award-winning miniseries The New Americans; Tribeca Film Festival Grand Prize winner The War Tapes, which James produced and edited; At the Death House Door, co-directed with Peter Gilbert, and winner of numerous festival awards; No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson for ESPN’s Peabody winning “30 for 30” series; and The Interrupters, which won an Emmy, Independent Spirit Award and the DuPont Columbia Journalism Award, among others.

James’ most recent film, Life Itself, was named the best documentary of the year by over a dozen critics associations, Rotten Tomatoes, the Critics’ Choice Awards, the National Board of Review, and the Producers Guild of America.

Most recently, Life Itself was nominated for Emmy awards for Best Documentary and Outstanding Editing: Documentary and Long Form. 

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For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Image Copyright: Steve James. Used with permission.

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Sara Taksler and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film Tickling Giants, fear, politics, outrage, hope and oppression and why jokes are an easier delivery system for calling out hypocrisy. 

Trailer

IMDB

More about the film here on the website.

Synopsis:

In the midst of the Egyptian Arab Spring, Bassem Youssef makes a decision that’s every mother’s worst nightmare... He leaves his job as a heart surgeon to become a full-time comedian.

Dubbed, “The Egyptian Jon Stewart,” Bassem creates the satirical show, Al Bernameg. The weekly program quickly becomes the most viewed television program in the Middle East, with 30 million viewers per episode. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart averaged two million viewers.

In a country where free speech is not settled law, Bassem’s show becomes as controversial as it popular. He and his staff must endure physical threats, protests, and legal action, all because of jokes.

As Bassem attempts to remain on the air, keep his staff safe, and not get arrested, he continues to let those in power know they’re being held accountable. Despite increasing danger, the team at Al Bernameg employ comedy, not violence, to comment on hypocrisy in media, politics, and religion. Tickling Giants follows the team of Al Bernameg as they discover democracy is not easily won.

The young women and men working on Bassem’s show are fearless revolutionaries, who just happen to be really, really funny. No unicorns or falafel were harmed in the making of this film

Biography

A Senior Producer at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Taksler has pitched stories and jokes, and researched footage for over a decade. Taksler directed and produced the feature documentary, TWISTED: A Balloonamentary, a hilarious and heartwarming look at the world’s premier balloon-twisting convention, with film partner Naomi Greenfield.

After debuting at South by Southwest, Hollywood Reporter called the film “A thoroughly winning feature” and Variety hailed it as “A feel good, irony-free celebration”. Taksler’s first film, Stop the Ignorance: The Beauty That Is New Jersey, was a tribute to her home state.

Her latest documentary, Tickling Giants, will have its world premiere at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, Taksler can talk backwards and has a remarkable fake sneeze.

Sara’s favorite way of Tickling Giants: Using comedy to find cathartic ways to process major bummers.

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For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Image Copyright: Sara Taksler. Sarkasmos Productions. Used with permission

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Jason Dudek and Face2Face host David Peck talk about root causes, Capital, impact investment, Sierra Leone, progress, opportunity and closed circuit economies.

Biography

Jason Anthony Dudek is the Co-Founder and Chief Financial Officer of Mountain Lion Agriculture, and holds an MSc from the London School of Economics where he studied smallholder Agronomics in Sierra Leone. He has spent the last 12 years working in Sierra Leone, where he helped found an innovative organisation dedicated to accountable, effective community-based development.

Jason also volunteers his time on a number of boards including as Chairman of the Catherine Donnelly Foundation, one of Canada's most innovative and effectual philanthropic foundations both in terms of programming and investment. 

Jason also has business experience in Canada, the United Kingdom and Iraq, co-founding several companies including the firm employed by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation to conduct Iraq’s Official Investment Map in 2008. 

Find out more here: www.mlbr.org

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Michelle Stevens and and Face2Face host David Peck talk about shame, suicide, trauma and empathy, the power of habit and why belief matters.

Read more about Michelle here.

Biography

Dr. Michelle Stevens, a psychologist, is the founder and director of Post-Traumatic Success, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating and inspiring those affected by psychological trauma. She is the author of Scared Selfless: My Journey from Abuse and Madness to Surviving and Thriving. 

She studied writing at New York University before earning her doctorate in clinical psychology from Saybrook University, where her thesis was honoured as the Dissertation of Distinction. Stevens has presented her research to the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation and the Los Angeles County Psychological Association, where she also received an award for Outstanding Research.

She works with survivors around the globe as a therapist, speaker, and advocate, encouraging them to heal, grow, and fight for better lives.

She lives in Los Angeles with her wife and son.

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For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gerry Flahive and Face2Face host David Peck talk about secrets, story, the “D” word, why he’s a 2001 fanatic and how a “real life” can be intimidating.

Biography

Gerry Flahive is a Toronto-based writer, producer and creative consultant at his media arts company, Modern Story. Until May 2014, Flahive was Senior Producer at the National Film Board of Canada, which he joined in 1981. He has done creative and storytelling consulting, strategic planning, course development and speechwriting for clients, including the Toronto Maple Leafs, Cirque de Soleil, Telefilm Canada, MaRS, TVOntario, Humber College and Giants of Africa. His productions have won many international awards including 2 Emmy Awards, a World Press Photo Award and a Peabody Award for HIGHRISE (highrise.nfb.ca), a global interactive documentary. He produced & co-produced more than 80 documentary projects on a wide range of subjects. Major projects include the international co-production PARIS 1919, the ground-breaking Filmmaker-in-Residence multi-media project at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, the NFB-Canadian Film Centre Feature Documentary Program, and short films for the Governor-General’s Performing Arts Awards, working with such recipients as Bryan Adams and Rush. In the early 1990's, as Senior Communications Manager, he managed NFB involvement in the Oscars and the Sundance Film Festival, as well as corporate communications and corporate branding. Flahive is a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail and has been published in Time, The New York Times and The Walrus, and many media industry publications, and is a National Magazine Award nominee for humour. He is a member of the boards of the Pages Unbound literary festival, the Toronto Irish Film Festival and the Seneca College Documentary Film Institute, and was on the Advisory Board for the MIT Open Documentary Lab report "Interactive Documentary and Digital Journalism".  He has been a guest speaker, presenter and mentor at many international events and institutions, including MIT, the I-Docs Lab in Switzerland, the MEDIMED Documentary conference in Barcelona, and the New York Film Festival.

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For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shimon Dutan and Face2Face host David Peck talk about the “settlement enterprise”, racism, empathy, the West Bank and absolutes, Israel and why there’s reason for hope.

Trailer

IMDB

Synopsis

Of the grievances and grudges that plague the Middle East, no issue is more incendiary than the Jewish-only settlements that have dotted the occupied West Bank for a half-century.  Canadian/Israeli Shimon Dotan’s acclaimed documentary The Settlers sets out to illustrate - through first-person accounts, historical footage and expert witness - how 400,000 motivated Israelis ended up in communities almost strategically placed between, and sometimes within, Arab Palestinian cities populated by the millions. It is a confounding tale of religious zeal and secular hatred, where an olive tree is an amorphous territorial border, and the burial of a stillborn baby amounts to a claim of political sovereignty over a city.  Dotan, a professor of political cinema at NYU Graduate School of Journalism, traces 50 years of internationally-incendiary conflict to a single charismatic rabbi, Tzvi Yehuda Kook, who gave a rabble-rousing sermon just before the 1967 War, asking rhetorically "Where is our Hebron? Where is our Nablus? Where is our Jericho?"  All those scriptural places would end up in Israeli hands, and the young disciples of Rabbi Kook, who formed themovement of the Gush Emunim, became a powerful political force who soon learned not to ask permission when it came to putting down roots in occupied territories. What follows is a history of wildly-different approaches from an Israeli government at odds with the most religious of its own people.  Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin called the Gush Emunim, “a cancer in the democratic fabric of the state of Israel” (and was assassinated by a Jewish extremist 20 years later). At other times, the government’s approach seems to range from arms-length to secretly-enabling.  “I made The Settlers because, in my view, the Settlement Enterprise has the most dramatic impact on the future of Israel, and the discussion about it, is often misinformed,” Dotan says. “I set out to explore the reality in the West Bank settlements. But it soon became clear that I had to go back to the roots, to where and when the West Bank settlements began.” 

Biography

Shimon Dotan was born in Romania in 1949 and moved to Israel in 1959. He grew up in Moshav Arugot, an agricultural cooperative. He then served five years in the Israeli military as a Navy Seal and went on to get his BFA at Tel Aviv University, where his student films won Israel’s Best Short Film and Best Director Awards twice. 

A Fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities, he is an award-winning filmmaker with thirteen feature films to his credit. His films have been the recipients of the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival (The Smile of the Lamb), numerous Israeli Academy Awards, including Best Film and Best Director (Repeat Dive; The Smile of the Lamb), Best Film at the Newport Beach Film Festival (You Can Thank Me Later) and the Special Jury Prize at Sundance (Hot House). 

Dotan has taught political cinema at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University since 2003. He also teaches at The New School in New York City. He has previously taught at Tel Aviv University and at Concordia University in Montreal. 

Dotan is the writer and director of The Settlers, which had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016, and opened in Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City on March 17.

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For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Image Copyright: Shimon Dutan. Used with permission.

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Karen Dougherty and Face2Face host David Peck talk about William Blake, mourning, balance, existential angst and how to really “be” with someone.

Read more about Karen and her work here.

Biography

Karen Dougherty is Toronto-based psychotherapist and documentary filmmaker.

In her practice she works to help patients through periods of adversity, transition, and instability to deepen self-understanding, establish emotional regulation, and build resilience. Her key areas of interest are repetitive bad-object relations, trans-generational trauma, and existential issues. She is a Candidate at the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis.

As a filmmaker, Karen specializes in psychoanalytic, history, and social issue documentaries. Her current project, funded by PEPweb http://www.pep-web.org/, explores the world of Columbia University Researcher Dr. Beatrice Beebe, whose frame-by-frame video microanalysis of mother-infant communications has revolutionized our understanding of attachment.

Recent collaborations include research and consulting on the CBC POV documentary Girls Night Out, about young women and binge-drinking culture (Directed by Phyllis Ellis, produced by White Pine Productions, premiering on CBC’s Firsthand on February 25, 2016); The Nature of Things documentary The Equalizer (Kensington Communications), about sports psychology and technology (airing on March 3rd, 2016); and, also with Kensington Communications, Risk Factor, a point-of-view documentary for TVO about the psychology of risk (in production).

As a psychoanalytic consultant on documentaries she helps filmmakers tune into their subjects, listening for and capturing unconscious communications and provides guidance on dealing with trauma and maintaining boundaries.

Karen has a Master’s Degree in English Literature (McGill) and a Master’s in Psychoanalytic Studies (School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield).

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For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bronwen Hughes and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film The Journey is The Destination, Dan Eldon, the “global tribe”, living a life of “crowded hours”, and having no sense of the other.

IMDB

Trailer  

More about Dan Eldon here.

More about Creative Visions here.

Synopsis

The Journey is the Destination is based on the remarkable true story of the life of Dan Eldon, a photographer, artist, and adventurer.  By the age of 22, he had travelled to more than 40 countries, created fine art journals, worked with refugees, been hired as the youngest photojournalist at Reuters, fallen in love  — and accumulated more life experience than most in a lifetime.  

Inspiring and irreverent, the film tell the story of a young man coming of age to realize his purpose, and his belief that we can all create positive change.  

This film is 23 years in the making and we could not be more proud to have Kathy’s original dream become a reality.  This would not be possible without the phenomenal group of producers, the incredible director Bronwen Hughes, the cast, crew and everyone who has been part of this journey.  The journey continues…

Biography

Bronwen Hughes is a New York and Hollywood-based feature film director of Canadian and British origin.

She is currently at work on the feature film The Journey is the Destination, based on the life of artist and photographer, Dan Eldon. This epic adventure tells the story of Dan who spent his life traveling and photographing in 42 countries, inspiring young people to follow him. Like Dan, Hughes started photographing and traveling the globe from a very young age. 

Hughes’ feature Stander is based on the true story of a notorious and brilliant bank robber in 1970’s Johannesburg. This charismatic criminal became a popular hero, often robbing 4 or 5 banks in a single day. Ultimately, he was apprehended and revealed to be the captain of the South African Police. Stander stars Thomas Jane (The Punisher, Boogie Nights) and Dexter Fletcher (Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). The shoot took place in Johannesburg and the Townships of Soweto and Tembisa, where Hughes directed thousands of extras in a re-creation of the riots of the apartheid struggle.

Her previous feature, Forces of Nature, starring Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck, was made for Steven Spielberg’s Dreamworks. It is a stylish and unique romantic comedy about two strangers thrown together on a wild ride battling the elements, both trying to make it to Savannah on a deadline. Noted for its special effects sequences of slow-motion hail storms and surreal hurricanes, Forces of Nature was the Number One film in the weeks of its National and International releases.

Hughes came to the attention of Spielberg who asked her to direct Forces of Nature after seeing her first feature film, Harriet the Spy, starring Rosie O’Donnell. Made for Paramount Pictures, Harriet was released to critical and box office success, and won international prizes.

She currently has several films in development: Romeo Spy, the true story of John Symonds, one-time London policemen who became an international seducer-of-women for the KGB in the 1970’s; Firecracker Boys for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way, a truth-stranger-than-fiction story of Alaskan Eskimos exposing the nuclear conspiracy of the Atomic Energy Commission; The Dictator’s Lover, the true story of three generations of female spies; and Tropicana, a large-scale musical based on the legendary Havana nightclub.

Her production experience has taken her all over the world, from Iceland and Norway, to East and Southern Africa, to Central American Mayan ruins, and the remote peaks of the Andes. Her award-winning documentary for The Discovery Channel, Cinenova’s Machu Picchu: The Search for Lost Worlds was filmed in the jungles of inland Peru.

For television, Hughes’ prestigious pilots White Collar and Fairly Legal, both for USA Networks and Fox TV Studios, are now hit series for the network.

Hughes completed an action-packed episode of Breaking Bad, which has received Emmy’s for AMC, and several episodes of the HBO series Hung, starring Thomas Jane, who also starred in her feature film, Stander. 

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For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Image Copyright: Bronwen Hughes. Used with permission.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Egil Larsen and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new film 69 Minutes of 86 Days, The Refugee crisis, making sense of time, polarization of real issues, childlike wonder and why he still has hope.

Trailer

Hot Docs Review – calls it “Essential viewing.”

Find out more about the film here.

Synopsis

Every day, about 90 Syrian refugees arrive in Canada.

40,081 have been welcomed since November 4, 2015. (Data as of January 29, 2017)

The war in Syria has now lasted six years.

According to UNICEF, one in three of today’s Syrian children have never experienced anything but war and flight. Every week hundreds of families flee. 69 Minutes of 86 Days is the part of the story that hasn’t been told. Follow three-year-old Lean’s journey from an unfamiliar port in Greece on the edge of a beach, through passport controls, congested trains, tents, and a large field, to the quiet streets of Uppsala, Sweden.

At an unspecified port, we are led into a crowd of people through a trail of discarded lifejackets. Part of a new wave of documentaries that depict the various elements of the Syrian crisis, 69 Minutes of 86 Days takes a poignantly humanistic approach. In its quiet beauty, it unravels the physical and emotional challenges that refugee families face every day: millions of people on the run, thousands who have lost their lives and a patchwork of political power games. With this serving as the entry point to the story, the camera moves onward. Walking along a Greek highway, a little girl stands out from the crowd. Three-year-old Lean is brimming with curiosity and childlike energy. Her playful nature engages us, in stark contrast to the intimidating backdrop of Europe. Without any background information on the child and her family, one can only guess where they’ve travelled from; we naturally assume they have crossed the ocean and already seen many things. While Lean may not fully understand what she’s experiencing, her strength and optimism shine through, giving hope to those who need it the most.

Filmed from one metre above the ground, the camera captures the story from the viewpoint of the child. We are with her and her little “Frozen” backpack amongst the legs and bags belonging to the adults around her. We realize that she understands the seriousness of the journey and is on her way to a new future, but through the journey she holds onto her childlike ability to normalize her days. She sings, plays, shares a lollipop with her little sister, washes the face of her uncle and sleeps in the arms of her parents when she gets tired. The landscape changes continuously as national borders are crossed. Lean is on her way to her grandfather in Sweden and she dreams of learning to swim.

Biography

Egil Håskjold Larsen has worked as a cinematographer and director since finishing his studies in 2008. Studying fine art photography in Turkey, and finally documentary filmmaking in Norway. In 2016 he released his first documentary film Ad Astra. 69 Minutes of 86 Days is his first feature length documentary film

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For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Image Copyright: Egil Håskjold Larsen. Taskovski Films. Used with permission.

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Vaishali Sinha and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film Ask The Sexpert, cultural context, “women as allies”, a Doctor as a 90-year-old pioneer and the latent effects of colonialism.

IMDB

Synopsis

ASK THE SEXPERT is a feature length documentary about a highly popular 93-year-old sex advice columnist for a daily newspaper in Mumbai. Despite sex being a taboo topic in that country, the column’s brand of non-moralistic advice and humor has emboldened many to write in with their questions, the vast majority of whom seek basic information.

The columnist gains popularity even while a ban on comprehensive sex education in schools is adopted by approximately one third of India’s states.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yRR1_VU1cQ 

Biography

Vaishali Sinha Co-Directed/Produced the feature documentary MADE IN INDIA about the personal stories behind the phenomenon of outsourcing surrogate mothers to India. The film premiered at Hot Docs Film Festival and aired on PBS in 2012.

The film received several Jury awards at festivals and is currently a case study at Harvard Business School for their class on ethics. ASK THE SEXPERT is Vaishali’s second feature length documentary; a presentation by her company Coast to Coast Films.

Vaishali has also produced numerous shorts. She has received support for her films from ITVS, the MacArthur Foundation, Tribeca Film Institute, Catapult Fund, Firelight Media, Playboy Foundation, Chicken & Egg Pictures, The Fledgling Fund, Center for Asian American Media, Mozilla, Ford Foundation, Nextpix and more.

Vaishali also freelances at Videoline Productions founded by Peabody award-winning filmmaker Richard Wormser (Rise and Fall of Jim Crow). Vaishali speaks regularly at events and has acted as jury member at film festivals. In the past she has worked with women’s right group Point of View, in Mumbai. She is originally from Mumbai, and now resides in Brooklyn, NY with her husband Fred Lassen, a Music Director and their two-year-old son Luca.

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