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Jeanne Jordan and Steven Ascher
Executive Prodcers Jeanne Jordan and Steven Ascher are Oscar-nominated filmmakers and founders of West City Films. Their feature documentaries include TROUBLESOME CREEK, which won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at Sundance, the Prix Italia, a Peabody Award and IDA distinguished Achievement Award. SO MUCH SO FAST premiered at Sundance, was released theatrically to critical acclaim and was broadcast worldwide, including PBS’s Frontline (LEF grantee). RAISING RENEE premiered at Full Frame and was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Arts and Culture Programming (LEF grantee).
Their most recent feature is OUR TOWNS for HBO. Other collaborations include Emmy-winning portraits of artists, including Chuck Close and Shimon Attie.
Jordan edited two episodes of the landmark civil rights series EYES ON THE PRIZE and dramas for AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE. She was Emmy nominated series producer of PBS’s POSTCARDS FROM BUSTER. Ascher is author of The Filmmaker’s Handbook, a bestselling text used internationally. He has taught narrative and documentary filmmaking, most recently as a visiting professor at Harvard. Ascher and Jordan have advised countless productions, and served as executive producers on DEEJ, which won a Peabody Award.
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Leila Philip
Producer Leila Philip is an award-winning author whose most recent book, Beaverland, is a New York Times Editor’s Choice and NPR Science Friday Book Club selection which The Wall Street Journal called “as full of charm and wonder as its beguiling protagonist.”
A Guggenheim Fellow, Philip has also been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She was a contributing columnist at The Boston Globe and teaches in the English Department at the College of the Holy Cross as the Brooks Chair in the Humanities.
The author of five books, Philip writes across genres, publishing essays, poetry, and theatrical script as well as journalism and narrative nonfiction. Her essays have been widely anthologized. Fluent in Japanese, she writes on Japan as well as about art and has been published in a variety of venues including Art in America and Art Critical. In 2017 and 2019, her theatrical script, Cardiff was staged in New York City and Cardiff. In 2017 she produced an art collaboration with Garth Evans titled Water Rising which led to a critically acclaimed book, then (with composer Shirish Korde) musical performances and a video installation which traveled internationally.
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David Shayne
Director David Shayne is a documentary film director, editor, and producer based in New York, NY, originally from Nashville, TN. He recently worked as an editor on LOVE HAS WON (2023), an HBO docu-series directed by Hannah Olson and produced by Elara Pictures. Previously, he produced and edited THE PARADISE NEXT DOOR (2021), a New York Times Op-Doc directed by Lance Oppenheim and produced by Darren Aronofsky. As a recent college grad, he was an assistant editor on SOME KIND OF HEAVEN (2021), a Sundance selection distributed by Magnolia Pictures. He has also directed a number of music videos.
David graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in Social Studies and a secondary in filmmaking (VES). There, he received an Artist Development Fellowship and was a librettist for the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. His senior film, a documentary short titled LEWISTON (2019), premiered at the Camden International Film Festival.