The Filmmakers

DIRECTOR - Purcell Carson
CINEMATOGRAPHER - Hope Hall
SUPERVISING PRODUCERS - Pat Scharlin, Gary Taylor

PURCELL CARSON (producer/director) is a filmmaker and editor based in New York City. Her editorial work has aired nationally on PBS and HBO and received several honors, including a 2009 Academy Award and an Emmy nomination for editing ("Smile Pinki", Megan Mylan, dir.). That documentary premiered at the AFI/Silverdocs Film Festival and is now used successfully for outreach. Purcell's first feature edit, the multiple festival audience award winner, "Double Dare" (dir. Amanda Micheli), aired on PBS's Independent Lens and was honored for Best Documentary Editing at the Woodstock Film Festival. Purcell then edited "Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037" (dir. Ben Niles), which premiered theatrically at New York's Film Forum, screened in over 60 cities, and aired nationally on PBS. When not in the bananalands, Purcell has spent much of the past three years editing Semper Fi: Always Faithful, a Sundance Documentary Fund project which looks at environmental contamination on U.S. military bases. The film recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival where Purcell was awarded for Best Documentary Editing. The film has spurred Congress to re-introduce legislation to help veterans who were exposed to contaminated drinking water. Before working in documentary, Purcell spent four years as a cd-rom and internet producer. With this project, she is a recipient of grants from the Kendeda Sustainability Fund and the Sulzberger Foundation and a recent MacDowell Fellowship. She studied literature and history at Brown University and documentary filmmaking at Stanford.

HOPE HALLis both a director and a cinematographer, who focuses on observational and music documentary. Her short, personal film, "This is for Betsy Hall", won top honors at festivals, including Sundance, and is both broadcast and used as a teaching tool in mental health and eating disorder programs. She has directed films for and with the Guggenheim Museum, Eve Ensler, and Sekou Sundiata and is a collaborator with projection designer Wendall Harrington. Her cinematography can be seen in "Beyond Conviction", a feature documentary (MSNBC) on mediation between victim and offender, on MTV in their Unplugged, True Life, and First Year series, and in her New York contributions of one-take music videos to Takeawayshows.com online. Hope spent six months shooting for Barack Obama's presidential campaign and transition team and is the recipient of fellowships from the Whitney Museum Independent Study Studio Program, The Nation's Kopkind Institute, and the Guapamacataro Art and Ecology residency. She studied History and French at U.C. Berkeley and received a Master's degree in Documentary Film and Video Production from Stanford University.

PATRICIA SCHARLIN and GARY TAYLOR are founders of The Environment Group a firm that helps companies respond to issues of sustainable development. Scharlin was editor-in-chief of publications at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and editor of the Overseas Press Club's special environmental issue of the magazine, "Deadline." She chaired the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development at the U.N. Taylor is a graduate of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences. He has consulted for UNEP, the Organization of American States, the World Conservation Union, and a variety of private-sector clients and served as principal investigator at the Center for Environmental Management at Tufts University. Together, they are the authors of Smart Alliance: How a Global Corporation and Environmental Activists Transformed a Tarnished Brand (2004, Yale University Press), which has been hailed as "one of the fairest treatments of environmental and trade issues."