Good Fortune

PBS Premiere: July 13, 2010Check the broadcast schedule »

Filmmaker Bios

Landon Van SoestLandon Van Soest is the director/producer of the award-winning Walking the Line, a feature documentary about "vigilantes" along the U.S.-Mexico border. The film has screened at film festivals around the world and been broadcast in six countries. Van Soest began his career in New York with Big Mouth Productions during production of the breakout NBC documentary Deadline and the documentaries Arctic Son (POV 2007) and Election Day (POV 2008). He subsequently worked for PBS, National Geographic and The Learning Channel at Engle Brothers Media. Van Soest founded Transient Pictures with Jeremy Levine in 2005 and has produced original content for such clients as the Sundance Channel, Working Films, United States Artists and the Dramatists Guild. He is also co-founder, with Levine, of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering a vibrant filmmaking community in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lives.

Van Soest is currently producing The Legacy Project, a 10-part video series profiling theater legends including Edward Albee, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim, for the Dramatists Guild, and House of Rath, a documentary about an eccentric home designer in the midst of New York City's mortgage crisis, for Cactus Three. He holds a bachelor's degree in nonfiction film production from Ithaca College and has completed extensive research on economic development in East Africa with the School for International Training. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts to begin production of Good Fortune.

Jeremy LevineJeremy Levine's work has been screened in dozens of film festivals around the world, broadcast nationally in six countries and recognized with several awards for production and human rights. He partnered with Van Soest as director/producer of Walking the Line and worked as an editor on Everything's Cool, a feature-length documentary that premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Levine is also directing and producing the independent television documentary House of Rath and The Legacy Project for the Dramatists Guild. In 2006, Levine volunteered at the Educational Media Agency in Addis Ababa, where he produced educational videos for Ethiopian schools. He also works closely with Working Films, a nonprofit outreach group that links cutting-edge documentary films with activist organizations. He received a bachelor's degree in documentary production from Ithaca College, where his work was nominated for a Student Academy Award. Levine co-founded Transient Pictures and the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, a nonprofit organization that supports independent filmmakers in Brooklyn, N.Y., with Van Soest.