Arthur Pratt, Producer/Director
Arthur is a Sierra Leonean filmmaker and community leader based in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Arthur is a co-founder of the Sierra Leone Film Council, the country's first media makers' union. He has started and leads multiple community film and theater groups, collaboratively writing and performing numerous films and plays with ex-combatants, former child prostitutes and community members. He is a co-founder and manager of the WeOwnTV Freetown Media Center in Sierra Leone. He has numerous credits and awards for the films and plays he has produced. Film credits include: CHARITY 2010 (Writer/Director) which received festival awards at the Pan African Film Festival Los Angeles, Cinema by the Bay San Francisco, and Semana del Cine Experimental de Madrid, Spain. Black Sugar 2011 (Director, Writer, & Camera), They Resisted 2011 (Director/Writer), Hustler 2011 (Director, Writer & Camera), Gift of My Eyes 2012 (Camera & Editor), M'Pora 2012 (Camera & Editor)
Lansana Mansaray, a.k.a. Barmmy Boy Producer/Co-Director/Director of Photography
Lansana is a multi-talented director of photography, filmmaker and musician who lives in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Barmmy is a founding member and the current production manager at the Freetown Media Center. He has been honored by the British Council on numerous occasions and has been selected to travel abroad representing the creative youth of Sierra Leone to London, Hull, Copenhagen, Abidjan and Accra. Film Credits include: YOUTH 2010 (Director), CHARITY 2010 (Camera), They Resisted 2011 (Director of Photography) and Disability is Inability (Director of Photography, in production). He has worked as a cameraman and fixer on many award-wining international productions including Decisions (2011), Girl Rising (2013) They Are We (2014) and the Emmy award-winning, Meet the Africans: Many Rivers to Cross (2013)
Banker White, Producer/Co-Director
Banker is a multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker based in San Francisco. He is the director/producer of the award-winning documentary, The Genius of Marian, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS's award-winning series, POV, in September 2014. His work has been supported by the Sundance Documentary Fund, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacArthur Foundation, the Tribeca Film Institute, Impact Partners, LEF, DocSociety, SFFILM, the Center for Cultural Innovation, the Catapult Film Fund, and The Fledgling Fund. Banker also directed Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars (POV 2007). The film was nominated by the IDA for best feature in 2006; won grand jury awards at AFI Fest, Full Frame Film Festival and Human Rights Watch Film Festival; and earned audience awards at SXSW and Miami International Film Festival. Banker also founded the WeOwnTV Freetown Media Center, a collaborative filmmaking and storytelling project in Sierra Leone, which is supported by Creative Capital, Freedom to Create, The Bertha Foundation, and BAVC.
Anna Fitch, Producer/Co-Director
Anna is an Emmy award-winning director. Her natural history and science documentaries have aired on the National Geographic Channel, Channel 4 UK, and PBS. Awards, nominations and festivals include: BugWorld: War of Two Worlds (2003), Emmy Award in Best Documentary Directing, Delegates Choice Award - Wildscreen, and Best Science and Natural History Program finalist - Banff Television Festival. She co-directed the feature documentary the Genius of Marian (2013), which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on POV in September 2014. The film also received support from the Sundance Documentary Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tribeca Film Institute, Impact Partners, LEF, Britdoc, the Catapult Film Fund and The Fledgling Fund. Her narrative short, The Burning Wigs of Sedition (2010), was in competition at many festivals including the Seattle International Film Festival, SFFS's Cinema by the Bay, Revelation Film Festival Perth and Rooftop Films NYC. It also won the Best of Festival prize at the Black Maria Film Festival the Audience Award at SF IndieFest.