Nancy D. Kates produced and directed Brother Outsider: the Life of Bayard Rustin, with Bennett Singer. The film premiered in competition at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and as a special of the PBS series POV. It went on to win more than 25 awards worldwide, including the 2004 GLAAD Media Award.
Kates is the producer/director of the feature-length documentary Regarding Susan Sontag, which premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, where it received a Special Jury Mention. The film had its broadcast premiere in December 2014 on HBO to significant critical acclaim.
Kates received her M.A. from Stanford University's documentary film program. Her masters thesis, Their Own Vietnam, received the 1995 Student Academy Award in documentary, and was exhibited at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival among other film festivals. Kates has worked on a number of documentary projects as a writer, producer, and story consultant, and occasionally writes for The San Francisco Chronicle. In 2014, Kates was honored to be included in the OUT 100, OUT Magazine's annual list of the most intriguing LGBT Americans.
Born and raised in Chicago, Bennett Singer is an award-winning New York-based filmmaker. In addition to Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, which he produced and directed with Nancy Kates, Singer's credits include the Emmy and Peabody winning Eyes on the Prize II; With God On Our Side; and The Question of Equality, all broadcast nationally on PBS.
He was a consulting producer on Codebreaker, a documentary/drama on Alan Turing, and served for eight years as Executive Editor of TIME Magazine's Education Program. He has created curriculum materials and discussion guides to accompany dozens of film projects, including The Diary of Anne Frank, The Laramie Project, and The Amish.
His latest film, co-directed with David Deschamps and Leslie D. Farrell, is Electoral Dysfunction, a feature-length documentary that explores why America's voting system is broken -- and how it can be fixed. Hosted by political humorist Mo Rocca, the film had a dual premiere at the 2012 Democratic and Republican Conventions; aired nationally on PBS; was featured in the New York Times Op-Docs series; and won the American Bar Association's 2013 Silver Gavel Award, the ABA's highest honor for media projects that foster public understanding of the law.
Executive producer Sam Pollard's documentary and feature film accomplishments span nearly 30 years. He was a producer for Blackside, Inc.'s Eyes On The Prize II, for which he won an Emmy Award, and co-executive producer for Blackside's six-part series I'll Make Me a World: A Century of African American Art. His producing credits include Spike Lee's Academy Award and Emmy Award-nominated Four Little Girls; his editing credits include the feature films Clockers, Iron Mike, Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever, and Girl 6.