Owsley Brown III was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He is a documentary filmmaker whose directorial debut, Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles, about the American writer and composer, Paul Bowles, won the Independent Spirit Award in 2000, the Hamptons International Film Festival 1999 Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature Film, and selection by the Berlin International Film Festival in 2000. His critically acclaimed second film, Music Makes A City, chronicled the commissioning project of the Louisville Orchestra in the 1950’s. Music Makes A City was awarded Britain’s Gramophone Award for Best DVD Documentary in 2012, and had its U.S. television broadcast premiere in January, 2014, on PBS stations nationwide. Owsley also co-produced the landmark documentary feature Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present, (Directed by Jeff Dupre and Matthew Akers) which won the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, a Grand Jury Prize nomination at the Sundance Film Festival, and a Peabody Award in 2012. Owsley’s third feature film as director and executive producer is Serenade for Haiti (Serenad pou Ayiti). The film is a seven-year study of Haiti over the years 2007-2014 as told through the perspective of the students and teachers of the Holy Trinity Music School in Port-au-Prince. Owsley is also devoted to the enrichment of the arts and education in his native city, and is currently co-producing a documentary film about Kentucky literary legend and environmental activist Wendell Berry, titled Look and See (directed by Laura Dunn). He is a host and producer of the Festival of Faiths, a founding board member of the Kentucky School of Art and an advisor to Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer on his Compassionate Schools Project. Owsley is also on the boards of the Sustainable Food Alliance, Center for Interfaith Relations and Roxie Theater in San Francisco.
Owsley graduated from the University of Virginia in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and their three children.
Anne Flatté, Producer/Director
Anne Flatté is a documentary filmmaker based in San Francisco whose recent work focuses on music and community. She is director/producer of Symphony for Nature (PBS, 2018) and is co-directing the upcoming feature documentary River City Drumbeat, currently in production. Anne is producer of the feature-length Serenade for Haiti (Serenad pou Ayiti), currently on a festival run (World Premiere, DOCNYC 2016), director/producer of the web series Music Makes A City Now (YouTube/PBS.org), and co-producer and editor of the original feature documentary Music Makes A City, (Directed by Owsley Brown III and Jerome Hiler, 2010). Music Makes A City was awarded Britain’s Gramophone Award for Best DVD Documentary, and had its U.S. television broadcast premiere on PBS stations nationwide. Her work on critically acclaimed and award-winning documentary films includes serving as editor on Monumental: David Brower’s Fight for Wild America (directed by Kelly Duane, 2004), What Do You Believe? and Daughters and Sons: Preventing Child Trafficking in the Golden Triangle (Directed by Sarah Feinbloom, 2003; 2005), and Devil’s Teeth (Directed by Roger Teich, 2004). Anne also produced promos for four seasons (2005-2009) of the ITVS documentary series Independent Lens, and was associate producer on Robert Townsend’s Behind Closed Doors (Showtime,1999).
Anne earned her masters in documentary film and video production from Stanford University in 1995, where she directed the award-winning shorts Interlove Story and Body of Tradition, Yahoo! Jerry and Dave’s Excellent Venture (1997), and Becoming Stanford (1999). Anne holds a bachelor of arts in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of California at Berkeley, 1990.
Christy McGill, Producer
Christy is currently producing Serenade for Haiti (Serenad pou Ayiti), the seven-year documentary film portrait of Haiti, its music and the journey of a classical music school in urban Port-au-Prince. A screenwriter, film producer and story editor, she has also served as a creative director for a variety of private companies and charitable organizations. Her work has included adaptation projects for narrative feature films, original television pilots, video shorts and the occasional magazine article. Serenade for Haiti (Serenad pou Ayiti) is the second feature documentary Christy has co-produced, following the award-winning eco-doc, Ghost Bird (directed by Scott Crocker), which took a multi-layered look at the possible sighting of an extinct species in a depressed region of rural America. Ghost Bird won critical acclaim from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and New York Magazine as well as winning the Southern Soul of Independent Film Award, and Golden Eagle Award from Cine 2010, and official selection by HotDocs, San Francisco Film Society, Mill Valley Film Festival, Hot Springs and Fiestival Internazionale del Film de Roma.
Christy graduated from Brown University with a bachelor of arts degree in American Civilization. She lives in the San Francisco bay area.
Marlon Johnson is a nine-time Emmy award-winning producer and director. He is currently co-director of the forthcoming feature documentary, River City Drumbeat, centered around the lives of people in a youth drumline in Louisville, Kentucky. He has worked on award-winning documentary films exploring music and cultural issues like Symphony in D (2017); Emmy winning Sunday's Best (2010) and Coconut Grove: A Sense of Place (2005). The Ford Foundation commissioned Marlon to direct the documentary Breaking the Silence (2006) which chronicled the rise of HIV infection in the Black-American South. Marlon served as Head of Production and Senior Producer/Editor for Plum TV and helped create TeleAmerica Broadcasting Network. His documentary Deep City: Birth of the Miami Sound (2014) aired nation-wide on PBS. Marlon is the recipient of the NEA South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship For Visual Media Artist award, which recognizes professional artists who are creating at the highest level of their craft. He has a B.S. in Communications from University of Miami.
Lyntoria Newton is an independent documentary filmmaker and creative producer in the SF Bay Area. Lyn has produced content for outlets such as The Boston Globe, PBA30, The University of Michigan, The Ford Foundation and others. Her work has shown at festivals across the U.S and internationally. She holds a B.A. from Hampshire College and an M.F.A. in Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University where she completed her thesis film, Hey Little Black Girl The short essay film explores black girlhood through the coming of age stories of four little black girls living in the SF Bay Area (Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, 2019). With support from the Ford Foundation, she is producing Basic Able, a satirical podcast devoted to disrupting ableist representations of disability. She is the Associate Producer on OBP’s forthcoming feature documentary, River City Drumbeat, co-directed by Marlon Johnson and Anne Flatté.
Jeff Boyette has been working in the film and video industry in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2007. Jeff began as an assistant and eventually staff editor at Remedy Editorial in San Francisco where he worked with a variety of corporate clients and assisted on a number of feature length documentaries. Jeff edited for Mark Decena, award winning director and founder of Kontent Films, on a number of short projects, and as additional editor on the feature length documentary, Watershed: Exploring A New Water Ethic For The New West. Jeff teamed up with Decena again to edit the feature documentary Not Without Us. Jeff has also worked with director, producer James Redford on several films including working as one of three editors on his HBO documentary Happening: A Clean Energy Revolution (2017). In 2015, Jeff was brought on as an editor for Serenade For Haiti, directed by Owsley Brown, (DocNYC, 2016). Jeff edited Symphony For Nature: The Britt Orchestra at Crater Lake (Ashland Independent Film Festival, 2018; PBS National Broadcast, 2019) as well as a multiple episodes in the Music Makes A City NOW series, directed by Anne Flatté. Jeff is currently editing OBP’s forthcoming feature documentary, River City Drumbeat, co-directed by Marlon Johnson and Anne Flatté.
Tina Tom is Office Manager and in-house graphic designer. Tina is responsible for day-to-day office operations, including facilities management, technology and information systems management, graphic design and accounting support. She is also a painter and mixed media artist. Her artwork focuses on the representation of natural elements in unnatural settings. She is currently working on a series of interactive fine art pieces that bring the viewer in as an accomplice in the manipulation of nature through artistic depictions. Her artwork has been exhibited in group shows throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
Tina earned a bachelor of arts degree in Arts Education from San Francisco State University. She lives in San Francisco, CA.
Vincent Tremblay is a filmmaker and musician based in Oakland, California, whose projects reflect an experimental approach to the outdoors and the arts. His short films have played in festivals across the U.S., and he has worked as a cinematographer, editor, and producer on films ranging from documentary to experimental.
Lauren Veen is a producer, shooter, and editor who works with independent, non-profit and corporate organizations throughout the Bay Area. Her documentary work tends to focus on subjects related to the arts, the environment, labor, the LGBTQ community, and immigration.
Outside of Owsley Brown Presents, she is co-editor of Resource Renewal Institute’s "Forces of Nature," an online video archive which preserves and shares the collective wisdom of environmental luminaries. She recently edited "The Long Ride," a film about the Immigrant Worker's Freedom Ride and the birth of the new Immigrant Civil Rights Movement. Lauren was also an editor for the recently released documentary "4 Wheel Bob," which tells the extraordinary story of an environmentalist's attempt to cross the Sierras in a wheelchair, and served as DP for "An Acquired Taste: The Journey of Young Locavore Hunters," which follows three teenagers who learn how to hunt as a way of connecting with nature, their sustenance, and themselves.
Lauren graduated from Brown University with a degree in History and holds a Masters in Education from Mills College. She taught in Bay Area public schools for six years before studying filmmaking at San Francisco State University. She is based in Oakland, California.