Archival Footage in Documentary Filmmaking

Davia Nelson is half of The Kitchen Sisters, producers of the du-Pont Columbia and James Beard Award-winning series Hidden Kitchens heard on NPR’s Morning Edition and two Peabody Award-winning NPR series, Lost & Found Sound and The Sonic Memorial Project. Their podcast, The Kitchen Sisters Present… is part of the Radiotopia collective from PRX. The Kitchen Sisters are also the producers of The Hidden World of Girls, heard on NPR and hosted by Tina Fey. Their current series, The Keepers, is about activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, and historians. Davia also co-wrote and co-produced the feature film Imaginary Crimes and was a casting director for 15 years.

A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in Film & Television, Violet Columbus previously co-directed a narrative short, Willy (2017). The Exiles, her first documentary feature, won the documentary US Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

For over thirty years, Emmy Award-winning filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have produced and directed critically acclaimed, multi-character documentary narratives that braid their characters’ individual personal stories to form a larger portrait of the human experience. Geller and Goldfine’s latest feature is HALLELUJAH: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song, which debuted in September 2021 at both the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals and is slated for worldwide theatrical release via Sony Pictures Classics in summer 2022. Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine were admitted to the Documentary Branch of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June 2014.

For over thirty years, Emmy Award-winning filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have produced and directed critically acclaimed, multi-character documentary narratives that braid their characters’ individual personal stories to form a larger portrait of the human experience. Geller and Goldfine’s latest feature is HALLELUJAH: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song, which debuted in September 2021 at both the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals and is slated for worldwide theatrical release via Sony Pictures Classics in summer 2022. Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine were admitted to the Documentary Branch of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June 2014.

Ben Klein previously made a short, Peace in the Nation (2016), and co-directed Willy (2017). He was the cinematographer on the Sundance Film Festival award-winning short Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver (2021). The Exiles is his first feature. He is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Penny Lane has been making award-winning, innovative nonfiction films for over a decade. Her body of work includes five features – most recently Listening to Kenny G, an HBO Original Documentary which premiered at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival – and over a dozen short films. A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, Lane has also received grants and awards from the Sundance Film Festival, Cinereach, Creative Capital, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Tribeca Film Institute, Wexner Center for the Arts, and many others. Penny has been honored with mid-career retrospectives at the Museum of the Moving Image, San Francisco DocFest, Open City Documentary Festival, and Cinema Moderne. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And yes, Penny Lane is her real name.