E-TEAM

Katy Chevigny is an award-winning filmmaker and is currently a partner at Big Mouth Productions. She directed the film ELECTION DAY (2007) which premiered at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in 2007 and was broadcast on POV in 2008. With Kirsten Johnson, she co-directed DEADLINE, an investigation into Illinois governor George Ryan's commutation of death sentences. After premiering at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, DEADLINE was broadcast on NBC to an audience of over six million, in an unusual acquisition of an independent film by a major network. It was nominated for an Emmy Award and won the Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award, among others. Chevigny also directed JOURNEY TO THE WEST: CHINESE MEDICINE TODAY, a feature-length documentary about traditional Chinese medicine and its influence in the West. She has produced several acclaimed documentaries: ARCTIC SON, INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY, NUYORICAN DREAM,BROTHER BORN AGAIN, OUTSIDE LOOKING IN: TRANSRACIAL ADOPTION IN AMERICA, and (A)SEXUAL. Chevigny’s films have been shown theatrically, on HBO, Cinemax, POV, Independent Lens, NBC, and Arte/ZDF, among others and have played at film festivals around the world, including Sundance, Full Frame, SXSW, Sheffield and Berlin. She is also a co-founder of the media arts organization, Arts Engine. Most recently, she produced PUSHING THE ELEPHANT, which premiered on Independent Lens in 2011.

Ross Kauffman is the director, producer, cinematographer and co-editor of BORN INTO BROTHELS, winner of the 2005 Academy Award for Best Documentary. Kauffman began as a documentary film editor, and then spent several years at Valkhn Film and Video Inc., a post-production company where he worked on a wide variety of films for HBO, WNET/Thirteen, National Geographic and The Discovery Channel. In 2001, Kauffman formed Red Light Films to direct and produce BORN INTO BROTHELS, a documentary about the children of Calcutta’s prostitutes. It was accepted to over 50 film festivals worldwide and has since received over 40 awards, including National Board of Review Best Documentary 2004, LA Film Critics Best Documentary 2004 and the 2004 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award. Kauffman is currently working on a variety of projects, including: EXPOSURE, a scripted television series following the lives of five present day photojournalists around the globe and the documentary WAIT FOR ME, chronicling the story of a mother’s spiritual and emotional search for her son who went missing twenty-three years ago. Other projects include: IN A DREAM, the story of the Philadelphia mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar which was shortlisted for the 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; and PROJECT KASHMIR, a documentary that takes viewers into the war-zone of Kashmir and examines the conflict from emotional and social viewpoints.

Ross filmed a number of the E-Team missions embedding with them in Syria and Libya and traveling with them to Moscow, Paris, Berlin, Geneva, and beyond.

Marilyn Ness is a two-time Emmy Award-winning documentary producer. She produced Katy Chevigny and Ross Kauffman’s feature documentary E-TEAM and Johanna Hamilton’s feature documentary 1971, both premiering in 2014. She is currently a partner at Big Mouth Productions and produces and directs feature length documentaries as well as short films for non-profits. She directed and produced the documentary feature film BAD BLOOD: A CAUTIONARY TALE that broadcast nationally on PBS in 2011 and was the centerpiece of a campaign to reform blood donation policies in the U.S. Prior to that, Ness spent four years as a producer for director Ric Burns, collaborating on four award-winning PBS films: ANSEL ADAMS, THE CENTER OF THE WORLD, ANDY WARHOL, and EUGENE O’NEILL. Ness’s other credits include films for TLC, Court TV, and National Geographic. Ness’s films have received funding from the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Sundance Documentary Fund as well as other innovative sources. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons and currently teaches Producing Documentaries at Columbia University School of the Arts Masters Film Program.