Theo Rigby is an award-winning director, cinematographer and photographer based out of San Francisco. He believes in the power of image and sound to create awareness and dialogue about the world's most pressing social and political issues. Rigby has focused on topics ranging from the War in Iraq to the justice system, and for the past decade has been focusing on immigration in the United States.
His last film, Sin País (Without Country) won a Student Academy Award, has screened in over 30 film festivals, and was broadcast on PBS's independent documentary series POV in 2012. His current project, Immigrant Nation, consists of a series of short documentaries about immigration issues, an immersive online storytelling platform and a series of live events across the United States.
Rigby also has a passion for education. He has taught undergraduate documentary photography, as well as starting and directing an after-school digital storytelling program for immigrant youth in San Francisco. He graduated with a M.F.A. in Documentary Film from Stanford University.
Kate McLean is a writer, reporter, and producer living and working in San Francisco. Her film Pot Country premiered at the Mill Valley International Film Festival in 2011, screened at Hot Docs 2012, won Best Documentary at the USA Short Film Festival and was a national finalist for the Student Academy Awards.
New media storytelling has been a passion of hers since 2007, when she attended the BAVC Producer's Institute, a MacArthur Foundation-sponsored residency dedicated to helping documentary filmmakers develop cross-platform approaches to storytelling. She has worked on a number of documentary films for PBS, including Botany of Desire, adapted from Michael Pollan's book of the same name. She completed her master's degree at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she received The Randy Shilts Memorial Award for Exceptional Reporting for an interactive project about high school violence in East Oakland, as well as the Hearst Documentary Award. Her written work has appeared in The New York Times.