PICTURE ME: A MODEL’S DIARY
Filmmaker, Ole Schell, follows his girlfriend, model Sara Ziff, for several years, chronicling her rise from a fresh face to one that adorns billboards and magazines around the world. Go behind the scenes and chronicle the glitzy world of high fashion modeling, from photo shoots with celebrated photographers to runway shows in New York, Milan, and Paris. Picture Me was a press sensation coming out theatrically, on TV and on demand with Netflix, Sundance Channel, Warner Brothers domestically and on other premiere outlets like Channel 4, RTL and Globo TV in over fifty countries.
LIL BUCK GOES TO CHINA
A 20-minute doc about a hip hop dancer we brought to China to perform with Yoyo Ma and Meryl Streep. The film made quite a splash in the press: NYT, WSJ, New Yorker and all the way to the Colbert Show.
WIN IN CHINA
The world’s largest and most lucrative business-plan competition is held... not in the United States or in any western country, but in communist China. Beyond the 1.3 billion Chinese, the competition goes largely unnoticed in the rest of the world. But in communist China the competition, aptly named “Win in China,” is broadcast on national TV. Over 120,000 entrepreneurs compete for prize money in excess of $5 million with the winner receiving nearly $1.5 million dollars to invest in their new business plan. This feature length documenary uses the game show, Win In China as a metaphor for the drastic change taking place in China and features a host of Chinese rappers, Ferrari salesmen and one aspiring lingerie baron.
Commentators in the film include Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group and Chairman of Yahoo China, James Fallows, correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and China expert Orville Schell.
DEO:ESCAPE FROM BURUNDI
A short film about the harrowing escape of Deogratias "Deo" Niyizonkiza from Burundi to the United States during the 1993 genocide.
VOTERGATE
In 2004 we made a film to explore if electronic voting machines could be hacked. We traveled the country speaking with hackers, software engineers, lawyers and politicians while going behind the scenes in modern-day elections and how they are tallied. What we discovered is these machines could indeed be manipulated but not that they ever had been. That was in part due to the fact that they do not keep a record, making recounts impossible The film came out before the Bush vs. Kerry election but the principles of what we discovered couldn't be more germane to our time in which the Russians are seeking to and succeeding in effecting our elections.