Election Day

PBS Premiere: July 1, 2008Check the broadcast schedule »

Filmmaker Bio

Katy ChevignyDirector Katy Chevigny is an award-winning filmmaker who runs the nonprofit media organization Arts Engine and its production arm, Big Mouth Films, in New York. Her credits include the acclaimed Deadline, an investigation into Illinois Governor George Ryan's commuting of death sentences, which she co-directed with Kirsten Johnson. After premiering at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, the film was broadcast on NBC, was nominated for an Emmy and won the Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award. She also directed the feature-length Journey to the West: Chinese Medicine Today. Chevigny has produced five award-winning documentaries: Arctic Son (POV, 2007), Innocent Until Proven Guilty, Nuyorican Dream, Brother Born Again and Outside Looking In: Transracial Adoption in America. She is currently in post-production on The Dishes, the story of a punk rock band that juggles family and careers in Chicago.

Maggie Bowman
Producer Maggie Bowman is an independent producer and director. Prior to producing Election Day, she associate-produced Unfinished Country, a film about Haiti's 2006 presidential elections for the PBS series Wide Angle; served in multiple production capacities on the Big Mouth documentaries Arctic Son (POV, 2007) and Deadline (Sundance 2004, NBC); line-produced the documentary short Dimmer (Sundance 2005); and produced segments for the Brian Lehrer Show on New York Public Radio. Bowman is currently directing the Catholic stories for The Calling, a four-hour series for PBS (Fall 2009) that follows Americans entering the clergy in four different faiths over the course of a year. She recently field-directed a story for an upcoming film about motherhood in America for ARTE (France) by Redglass Pictures.

Prior to her work in film, Bowman was a union organizer and consultant for five years, working on campaigns with taxi drivers in the Bronx, nurses in Chicago, and home health aides in Brooklyn, among others. She graduated from Carleton College with a degree in American Studies and after many years of living in New York, she recently relocated to her native Chicago.

Dallas Brennan Rexer
Dallas Brennan Rexer is currently an independent producer with several documentary projects in production and post-production. While at Big MouthProductions/Arts Engine, she produced five award-winning documentaries: Deadline, Arctic Son (POV, 2007), Election Day, Outside Looking In and Journey to the West: Chinese Medicine Today.

Rexer served as a line producer for Sony Music's Bruce Springsteen — The Seeger Sessions documentary, and worked as a production coordinator on OUR HOUSE: A Very Real Documentary about the Kids of Gay and Lesbian Parents (directed by Meema Spadola) and in other capacities for documentary filmmaker Jennifer Fox.

Rexer serves as a researcher, writer, advisor, judge and consultant with numerous institutions, directors, film festivals and production companies and is currently working on a book project. She is a 1997/98 Fulbright Scholar and conducted research on television programming in Trinidad. Her reviews have appeared in American Anthropologist and the International Institute for the Visual Arts. Rexer, who grew up in Monroe, Maine, is a graduate of Swarthmore College's Philosophy Department and lives in Manhattan with her husband and two sons.

Penelope Falk
After receiving an MFA in film production from the University of Texas at Austin, editor Penelope Falk moved to New York City to pursue a career in film. Since 1994, she has worked primarily as a documentary editor. She started her career on Jennifer Fox's groundbreaking series, An American Love Story. Since then, her editing credits include A Letter Without Words (premiered at Sundance Film Festival), Bombay Eunuch (winner of the New York Gay and Lesbian Film Festival), Stagedoor (debuted at the New York Film Forum), and Toots Shore: Bigger Than Life (premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival). She has also done numerous films for television. These credits include Afghan Stories (the Sundance Channel), Uncle Sam Wants You (A&E), Escuela (PBS) and Unfinished Country (PBS).

Featured in the pages of Rolling Stone, Spin, Guitar Player and Musician magazines, composer John Kimbrough has become known as much for his musical versatility as he has for his unique sound and style.

After five records and extensive touring as the frontman and creative force behind the band Walt Mink, John decided to branch out, and in recent years has devoted much of his time to scoring for film, TV and radio. In 2000 he won an Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Music and Lyrics for his song "Up to You" from the show Nickellennium for Nickelodeon, and in 2001 he was nominated for a British Independent Film Award for best original score for the film Jump Tomorrow.

His songs have been featured in both movies and T.V. commercials, and his compositions can frequently be heard on the nationally syndicated NPR program This American Life. In 2005 his new band, Valley Lodge, released their first record, songs from which were used in the FOX T.V. pilot Pool Guys. The record has also seen airplay on nationally syndicated radio, including Adam Curry's top-rated weekly podcast. In the summer of 2006 he composed the music for the opening of the MTV Video Music Awards, as well as the Tenacious D "Friendship" song from the same broadcast. His latest film, What's Your Point Honey? will be released in summer 2008.