Lumo

PBS Premiere: Sept. 18, 2007Check the broadcast schedule »

Filmmaker Bios

Bent-Jorgen PerlmuttBent-Jorgen Perlmutt (Director/Producer/Cinematographer ) holds a B.A. with honors from Brown University (2001) and an M.F.A. with honors from Columbia University (2007). He served as the co-producer and additional editor of Control Room (Magnolia Pictures, 2004). He has also directed, edited, shot and produced short films for organizations including UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women), the U.S. Department of Education, WGBH Public Television (Boston), the Global Leadership Campaign and the Lincoln Center Film Society. In 2006, Perlmutt taught an undergraduate course on documentary filmmaking at Columbia University and worked with WITNESS as a film instructor for a local human rights group in northern Uganda. Perlmutt currently works as a correspondent at UNICEF, for which he recently produced four short films on child soldiers in the Congo. His latest fiction film, Les Vulnerables, was just selected to be the closing night short of the 2007 New York Film Festival.

Nelson Walker IIINelson Walker III (Director/Producer/Cinematographer) holds a bachelor's degree in American civilization from Brown University. He began his career as a writer, penning documentaries for the Discovery Channel, the History Channel and the PBS series "NOVA." His directorial debut, iThemba|Hope, aired on the Sundance Channel in 2005. Walker works regularly as a cinematographer for renowned documentary film company, Maysles Films, and is a founding member of the Maysles Institute, a nonprofit organization committed to using film to empower marginalized individuals and communities. He was the 2005 recipient of the Albert Maysles Award for Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking at the Dallas Video Festival.

Walker has worked extensively in Tibet, as a visiting instructor at Tibet University in Lhasa and as a contributor to the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library Project. In 2006, he traveled to the Kham region as a documentarian for the Kham Geotourism Project, an initiative launched by the University of Virginia, Machik and the Maysles Institute. Walker will complete his M.F.A. in film directing from Columbia University this fall. He lives in New York.

Louis AbelmanLouis Abelman (Co-Director/Producer) is a freelance writer living in New York. Lumo is his first film. After attending Brown University, where he majored in African history, he worked for the International Herald Tribune in Paris, for which he later wrote an op/ed about the war in the Congo. For the past two years, while working on Lumo he has been an editorial assistant at The New York Times and has posted variously on the Foreign, Metro, Society and Editorial desks.

Lynn TrueLynn True (Co-Director/Editor) graduated from Brown University with a joint degree in urban studies and architecture. She was an assistant editor for PBS, AMC and NBC News Productions before moving on to edit documentary and narrative films. Her editing credits include Chain Times Three (Museum of Modern Art), iThemba|Hope (Sundance Channel), and Asparagus! A Stalk-umentary (which won an American Documentary | POV "Art of the Documentary Pitch" grant at the Museum of Television and Radio Film Festival in 2005). Past projects have also screened on Current TV and at the Museum of Television and Radio, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Anthology Film Archives, the IFC Center, as well as at festivals and conferences worldwide. Recently, True traveled to the Kham region of Tibet to work on a documentary production of the Maysles Institute. She is returning this year to complete a short film about Tibetan nomads. She lives in New York.