Steve Connors, Director
Molly Bingham, Director
Dal LaMagna, Executive Producer
Daniel J.Chalfen, Producer
David Emanuele, Editor
Joel Plotch, Co-Editor
Luciana Fernandes, Associate Editor
Richard Horowitz, Score
Sussand Deyhim, Vocals
STEVE CONNORS, Director
Steve Connors was born in Sheffield, England. He began taking photographs while serving as a British soldier in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. After leaving the military in 1984 he worked for London newspapers and housing charities, but maintained a preference for photographing the quirkiness of British life.
At the end of 1989 Connors started traveling - first to Czechoslovakia as the communist government fell and then into Sri Lanka in 1990. Connors spent the early1990s covering the wars following the break-up of Yugoslavia and later spending time in Russia and the former Soviet Union as the euphoria of a new age gave way to the miserable realities of economic meltdown. Connors has worked for most of the worlds' newspapers and magazines including Time, Newsweek, The New York Times in the United States; The Guardian, The Observer and The Telegraph in London and in Europe he has worked for Der Spiegel, Stern and Paris Match among others.
Connors spent fifteen months from November 2001 on in Afghanistan. Starting during the invasion, he went to Iraq, and spent fourteen months there total, working ten months solidly on Meeting Resistance.
MEETING RESISTANCE is Connors' directorial debut.
MOLLY BINGHAM, Director
Molly Bingham was born in Kentucky and graduated from Harvard College in 1990. She began working as a photojournalist in earnest in 1994, traveling to Rwanda in the wake of the genocide. She spent a good amount of her energies for the following four years focused on the regional fallout of that event. Aside from her photojournalistic work, Bingham has also completed two special projects for Human Rights Watch - one on Burundi and another on small arms trafficking in Central Africa. From 1998 through 2001 Bingham worked as Official Photographer to the Office of the Vice President of the United States.
In 2001 Bingham returned to work in Central Africa, producing a story for the New York Times Sunday Magazine (published in August 2001) on the mineral "coltan" that is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Washington on September 11 Bingham got some of the only close up pictures of the Pentagon, and followed the story of America's response to the 9/11 attacks to Afghanistan later in the fall. 2002 found Bingham in the Gaza Strip and Iran before heading to Iraq shortly before the US attack in March 2003. Bingham was detained for eight days by the Iraqi government security services and held in Abu Ghraib prison with four other westerners during the war, and released to Jordan in early April 2003. Bingham's first major written story - on the Iraqi resistance - was published in Vanity Fair in July 2004.
Bingham teamed up with Connors in August of 2003 to begin a film about who was behind the emerging post-war violence in Iraq.
DAL LAMAGNA, Executive Producer
For the past several years, Dal has been a progressive activist concentrating on stopping the violence against U.S. troops and Iraqis in Iraq. He is an executive producer of four feature length Iraq War movies: The Ground Truth, The War tapes, Iraq for Sale and Meeting Resistance.
Dal has participated in two meetings with members of the Iraq Parliament and others in Amman, Jordan. The first meeting, in August 2006, was comprised of a peace delegation where he and 15 other peace activists Ðon a mission to listen to Iraqi voices -- met with Iraqi members of Parliament, sheiks, and torture survivors. The second meeting occurred when he accompanied Congressman Jim McDermott of Washington State. Dal produced video presentations from both of these meetings and is using them to help educate members of the U.S. Congress and other Americans as to the Iraqi perspective on the war. In March of this year, Dal produced a live video conference between members of the U.S. Congress and Members of the Iraq Parliament.
DANIEL J. CHALFEN, Producer
Daniel J. Chalfen is a documentary producer specializing in non-fiction feature films, television series and specials, educational programs, news and current affairs programs and digital media content. Chalfen's latest documentaries include the feature-length films Meeting Resistance, Encounter Point (A Just Vision Production; distributed by Typecast Releasing), 39 Pounds of Love (An HBO Cinemax/Hey Jude Production; distributed by Goldcrest International), and Pulled from the Rubble; and the television series Ordinary People (A Radical Media/Noga Communications Production; distributed by Solid Entertainment & Cinephil) and Entente Cordiale (An Arte/Camera Lucida Production). He has also produced and directed programming for NGOs, including Ability Awareness and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Chalfen's films have been shown in festivals around the globe, have been theatrically released and broadcast worldwide (including on HBO, CBC, Al Arabiyya, ARTE and ZDF), and have received a multitude of major awards and accolades. His films have also been screened at the United Nations in New York; the UNHCR Headquarters in Geneva; the Frontline Club in London; the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague; and for Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Chalfen is a graduate of UCLA's School of Cinema, Television, and Theater, Los Angeles, (Professional Certificate in Producing); the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (MA Israeli Politics and Society); and the University of Leeds, England (BA (Honors) Politics and Religious Studies). He is a founder of Cine-Peace Film Festival, Los Angeles; an Advisory Committee Member of the Other Israel Film Festival, New York; and a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).
DAVID EMANUELE, Editor
David Emanuele is currently an editor at NBC Universal News, including the programs, Dateline and the Today Show. He previously worked on such films as Three Sister's Searching for a Cure, Deadline, and Gay Sex in the 70's. David has worked with numerous production companies, including, Lovett Productions, Big Mouth Films, and Catalyst films. He holds a BFA in Film from NYU's Tisch Film School.
JOEL PLOTCH, Co-Editor
Joel Plotch has been editing feature films for the last twelve years. Included in the 20 films that he has edited is an ongoing collaboration with award-winning writer-director Neil Labute that includes such films as "In the Company of Men," "Your Friends and Neighbors," "Nurse Betty," "The Shape of Things," "Wicker Man," and most recently "Lakeview Terrace" starring Samuel L. Jackson. Additionally, he has continued his long career editing commercials, music videos, television programming and documentaries. He also has directed the award winning short film, "Heavy Put-Away" which was adapted from a Terry Southern short story (Easy Rider, Dr. Strangelove, etc.) starring Gretchen Mol, Dallas Roberts and Mark Boone Jr. Currently he is in pre-production on a feature film he adapted from the controversial book "Ocean Beach," soon to be published by Borders Books and sold through Borders and Amazon.com.
LUCIANA FERNANDES, Associate Editor
Luciana Fernandes graduated in Photography at CEUB in Brasília, Brasil, and moved to São Paulo in 1991. She studied Scenography and Fashion Design at FAAP and Art Direction at 'Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing' (ESPM), in Sao Paulo, where she worked in photography for Abril Publishing, DPZ and Touché Advertising Agencies. In 2001, Luciana moved to New York to study photography at ICP and Film Editing and Cinematography at FVA. In 2003, she worked as assistant editor for Paul Devlin on 'Power Trip', and in 2004, for Larry Silk on 'The Dishes' (Directed by Katy Chevigny, Big Mouth Productions). Luciana also worked as a freelance editor at Kirschenbaun Bond & Partners and in 2006 she worked on the first Video Exhibition at Jenkins Johnson Gallery, 'LightYears Project', a video & photography project by german photographer Gerald Förster. From 2005 to 2006, she worked as assistant editor for David Emanuele on 'Meeting Resistance' and as editor of two episodes of the web-series Environmental Countdown (director: Daniel J. Chalfen) and an educational video for Ability Awareness called "Volunteerism" (director: Daniel J. Chalfen). Back in Brazil since 2007, Luciana has edited work for Roberto Moreira and Geórgia Costa (at Coração da Selva), Rita Buzzar (at Nexus Cinema), Anna Muylaert (at Africa Filmes), photographer Manolo Moran and Geórgia Guerra-Peixe (at Bossa Nova Films).
RICHARD HOROWITZ, Score
Richard Horowitz is a Golden Globe winning composer. His credits include: Any Given Sunday, The Sheltering Sky, Three Seasons, Majoun (Sony Classical CD) and Logic of the Birds with Sussan Deyhim and Shirin Neshat. Horowitz is cofounder and artistic director of The Gnaoua Festival in Essaouira. Mentored by Paul Bowles. Recent projects include Meeting Resistance, Aisha Kandisah and The Whisperers.
SUSSAND DEYHIM, Vocals
Sussand Deyhim Ð Composer/vocalist/ actor. Best known for her CDs Mad Man of God and Majoun with Richard Horowitz; her work on Unfaithful, Sleeper Cell, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Kite Runner and Any Given Sunday and her long collaborations with Shirin Neshat including Turbulent, winner of the Venice Golden Lion. She also collaborates with Bobby McFarin, Ornette Coleman, and Bill Laswell, among others. She was a member of The Bejart Ballet and The Pars National Ballet of Iran.
