Sisters of SelmaThe Filmmakers
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Executive Producer Celia Carey, Managing Director of Documentary Production at Alabama Public TV's Birmingham station, is a native of Alabama. Among her most recent productions is the Emmy Award-winning Quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend, and Mr. Dial Has Something to Say, winner in the short documentary category at the 2006 San Francisco Film Festival. She inherited Sisters of Selma from Tommy Wier who oversaw the development of the project, but retired before it went into production. Carey took over and the project moved forward without missing a beat. |
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Producer - Director - Editor Jayasri Majumdar Hart is an independent producer-editor in Los Angeles. She produced radio features for BBC World Service, London and TV programs for the national educational channel in India, and her award-winning documentary Roots in the Sand: California's Punjabi-Mexican-Americans aired on PBS stations nationwide until 2004. She, too, inherited this project from Lisa Plendl who had proposed a series on American nuns. It was this story that caught Hart's attention--and that of the funders. |
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Associate Producer - Writer William Hart brought his talents as novelist and as award-winning poet and short story writer to the craft of documentary writing. Although he is now based in Los Angeles, his family has deep roots in rural Alabama and the urban Midwest. He collaborated with the Jayasri Hart on Roots in the Sand. |
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Director
of Photography
Sandra Chandler was director of photography on various PBS documentaries like Tobacco Blues (POV) and The First Year (KCET), and received an Emmy nomination for her recent documentary work for HBO which includes Living Dolls, and The Young and the Dead. She filmed pickups for Sisters of Selma when she went back to Selma on another project. |
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Consulting Editor
Kate Amend, A.C.E has edited Academy Award-winning historical documentaries, the most recent being Kindertransport: Into the Arms of Strangers. For PBS, she had edited several programs in the American Experience series and she gave Sisters of Selma a clear storyline and final polish. |
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Music
Bronwen Jones was principal clarinet with Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. She has composed music for several documentaries on Indian, Kurdish, Italian-American, Slovak, and German subjects. She is also a conductor and orchestrates for other composers. |
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Academic Advisors Carol Coburn, Professor, Avila University in Kansas City has co-authored with Sister Martha Smith, Professor Emerita of History, Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836-1920 (1999). She interviewed three of the Sisters in the documentary for a post-1920 book. Her knowledge of Catholic archives has been invaluable. J. Mills Thornton, Professor, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a recognized authority on Alabama and civil rights, has helped shape several prestigious documentaries including George Wallace: Setting the Woods on Fire, and the PBS series Eyes on the Prize. The Selma section of this project is based largely on his Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma (2002). Fr. Cyprian Davis, African American author of The History of Black Catholics in the United States (1990) was himself in Selma in March 1965 and knows the two African American sisters to be interviewed for this project. Leslie Tentler, Professor, Catholic University at Washington D.C. and author of Wage-earning Women (1986) has written histories of the Catholic church in Detroit. Her understanding of women's issues continues to be her major contribution to the project. Alston Fitts III, author of Selma: Queen City of the Black Belt (1989), has the advantage of being a native Alabamian who has enjoyed a long and intimate association with the Fathers of St. Edmunds. |
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Research Associate Gregory N. Hite, PhD. University of Virginia has written The Hottest Places in Hell: The Catholic Church and Civil Rights in Selma (2002) using resources that this project is based on and is well-acquainted with our interviewees. He has suggested that his database of men and women religious be made available through the website using software that will not only give researchers access to a wealth of primary sources, but allow the participants to update their own information. |
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