FILMMAKERS
Judith Helfand
Director/Producer
Peabody Award winning filmmaker Judith Helfand is best known for her ability to use her quirky sense of humor, irony, personal storytelling chops and the power of transparency to tackle some of the most pressing issues of our time -- from toxic chemical exposure to climate change to the politics of “disaster.” Her films have premiered at Sundance and been nationally broadcast on PBS (POV), HBO and The Sundance Channel. BLUE VINYL received the Sundance Excellence Award in Cinematography and two Emmy nominations and its prequel, A HEALTHY BABY GIRL, won a Peabody. Helfand’s other long-form films include EVERYTHING’S COOL and THE UPRISING OF ‘34. Helfand has produced and directed shorts for Frankfurt Kurnit, The New York Times and most recently for 23&Me (Absolutely No Spitting).
Helfand is a field-builder who has helped reshape the documentary landscape by co-founding two critical organizations -- Working Films and Chicken & Egg Pictures. As Creative Director she helped design and lead Chicken & Egg Pictures’ mentorship and funding programs for nearly a decade, served as a Producer on the Oscar-nominated, Dupont-winning short, THE BARBER OF BIRMINGHAM and Executive Producer on the award-winning films SEMPER FI: ALWAYS FAITHFUL, PRIVATE VIOLENCE and HOT GIRLS WANTED. She continues to be actively involved as a Senior Creative Consultant. In 2007, Helfand received a United States Artist Fellowship, one of 50 awarded annually to “America’s finest living artists.” In 2016 she was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She has just completed LOVE & STUFF, launching in 2020. It is an intergenerational love story about mourning her mother and becoming a “new old mom” at the same time.
Helfand is currently the Bob Allison (Allesee) Endowed Chair in Media at Wayne State University. She taught documentary production at NYU’s undergraduate program for seven years, was filmmaker-in-residence at UW Madison in 2007 and 2009 where she taught environmental documentary production and co-taught and designed an intensive summer documentary boot camp for New School University. She lives in NYC with her five-year-old daughter Theodora and their beta-fish MaxiTaxI.
Fenell Doremus
Producer
In addition to producing COOKED: Survival by Zip Code, Doremus co-produced the Academy Award nominated and Emmy Award winning, ABACUS: Small Enough to Jail for PBS’ Frontline series. Doremus got her start working as an Assistant Editor on HOOP DREAMS and went on to serve as staff Producer at Kartemquin Films for the next eight years. She Produced and Directed A YEAR ON TEEN ST, a short documentary broadcast locally on PBS, following a teen theater troupe over the course of a year and was Segment Producer/Co-Editor of the groundbreaking multi-part immigration series THE NEW AMERICANS, broadcast on PBS’ Independent Lens and winner of multiple awards at festivals worldwide. She is currently producing END OF LOVE, a story about the dangerous intersection of technology, adolescence and porn. Doremus lives in Chicago, is an active member of the Documentary Producers Alliance and serves on the Board of Kartemquin Films.
Simeon Hutner
Editor
Simeon Hutner is a film editor, director, and producer with twenty-five years of film and television credits, including works shown at Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Telluride and many other film festivals, as well as on HBO, BBC, Bravo, A&E and PBS. He is currently editing the documentary feature My Ascension, about teenage suicide. He recently finished editing When We Walk, directed by Jason DaSilva, a follow-up to his award-winning film When I Walk. When We Walk will premiere at Hot Docs in April 2019. Simeon also edited the documentary Vessel, about the Dutch abortion activist Rebecca Gomperts and her organization Women on Waves. Vessel premiered at the SXSW 2014, where it won a Special Jury Award for Political Courage and the Audience Award. It was released theatrically in January 2015. Simeon also edited and co-directed Harlem Street Singer, a documentary feature about the influential blues and gospel musician the Reverend Gary Davis. Harlem Street Singer premiered at DOC NYC in 2013 and was released theatrically in 2014.
Additional selected credits include: editing on the documentary features When I Walk, Melting Planet and Blue Vinyl which premiered at Sundance in 2013, 2007 and 2002, respectively; editor and co-producer on Mentor (Tribeca premier, 2006) and editor on Chicks in White Satin, which premiered at Sundance and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1994. Simeon also directed the the documentaries No Humans Involved, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival; St. Mulekicker, which played in over 40 film festivals world-wide; Martyrs and Saints; and My Brother, Nathaniel. Simeon has received two MacDowell and two Yaddo fellowships. He has an MFA in Film Production from the University of Southern California, an MBA from New York University and a BA from Middlebury College.
David E. Simpson
Editor
David E. Simpson is a documentary filmmaker with three decades of experience. Films he has produced, directed or edited have garnered three national Emmys, a pair of Peabody awards, two DuPont-Columbia batons, an Oscar nomination, a Sundance jury award and best in category at countless festivals. He has worked in close association with Kartemquin Films since 1997.
An experienced director/producer, David considers editing the heart of documentary-practice and has chosen to spend the bulk of recent years in the edit room, crafting impactful works with talented collaborators. He is currently at work on City so Real, an episodic series directed by Steve James, that paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of Chicago through the lens of the 2019 mayoral election. David co-edited James’ prior work, America to Me, a groundbreaking 10-part series about race and education, which premiered at Sundance 2018 and aired on STARZ.
All told, David has edited some fifteen projects with Kartemquin Films (see partial list below). He co-edited the recently released Cooked: Survival by Zip Code; as well as Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, which received a 2018 Oscar nomination, won Best Documentary Editing at the Ashland Film Festival, and was termed “an exemplary piece of filmmaking” by Sight & Sound. With director Steve James, David co-edited Life Itself, about Roger Ebert, which screened at Cannes and Sundance, and won an Emmy for Outstanding Editing. He co-edited Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, which premiered at Sundance, aired on American Masters and won a Peabody.
Other key editing credits include: Frontline's Shtetl (grand prix - Cinema du Real), the Emmy-nominated NOVA: Mysterious Crash of Flight 201, Living in Tall Trees for WGBH/TV Asahi-Japan, episodes of Cold Case Files for A&E, and an episode of The People’s Century for BBC/PBS. David received a BA in Philosophy from St. John’s College, and an MFA in Filmmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has taught filmmaking at Northwestern University, the University of Minnesota and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Kathy Leichter
Engagement Strategist
Kathy Leichter is an award-winning documentary producer, director, impact producer, and engagement strategist with over thirty years of experience. She has designed and implemented numerous successful outreach and engagement campaigns for many social issue documentaries, and has produced over 300 impact events across the country featuring films about economic and racial justice, mental health, women, civil discourse, juvenile justice, and Jewish identity
Leichter directed/produced A Day’s Work, A Day’s Pay, in association with ITVS, which follows three welfare recipients in New York City, and designed/directed the film’s 5-year audience engagement campaign. Her most recent film, Here One Day, about mental illness and suicide, premiered at IDFA, won Best Doc and the Jury Prize at the Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival, and is now the centerpiece of a national screening initiative that Leichter designed and currently directs.
Eric Klinenberg
Author
Eric Klinenberg is Helen Gould Shepard Professor of Social Science and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (Crown, 2018), Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone (The Penguin Press, 2012), Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media (Metropolitan Books, 2007), and Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2002), as well as the editor of Cultural Production in a Digital Age, co-editor of Antidemocracy in America (Columbia University Press, 2019), and co-author, with Aziz Ansari, of the New York Times #1 bestseller Modern Romance(The Penguin Press, 2015). His scholarly work has been published in journals including the American Sociological Review, Theory and Society, and Ethnography, and he has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and This American Life.
Sparking democracy through documentary since 1966, Kartemquin is a collaborative center empowering filmmakers who create documentaries that foster a more engaged and just society.
The organization's films have received four Academy Award ® nominations and won several major prizes, including six Emmys, four Peabody Awards, multiple Independent Spirit, IDA, PGA and DGA awards, and duPont-Columbia and Robert F. Kennedy journalism awards. Kartemquin is recognized as a leading advocate for independent public media, and has helped hundreds of artists via its filmmaker development programs that help further grow the field, such as KTQ Labs, Diverse Voices in Docs, and the acclaimed KTQ Internship.
Kartemquin is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization based in Chicago. www.kartemquin.com
COOKED: Survival by Zip Code is a co-production of
Judith Helfand Productions and Kartemquin Films
MADE IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
Ford Foundation | JustFilms
The Center for Independent Documentary
MAJOR FUNDING PROVIDED BY:
Independent Television Service (ITVS)
Leo S. Guthman Fund
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The Fledgling Fund
Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program with support from
Open Society Foundations
JustFilms | Ford Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Marisla Foundation
The Putnam Foundation
The Dobkin Family Foundation
Park Foundation, Inc.
The Dorot Foundation
Lisa K. Chanoff & Matthew I. Chan/Rose Gold
Bertha Foundation
Fork Films, LLC
The Todd and Betiana Simon Foundation
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The Russell Family Foundation
Sarah & Timothy Cavanaugh
Beth B. Sackler
The Ettinger Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation’s Media Arts Fellowship
and many generous others…
