OLE GJERSTAD, Co-writer, Director, Co-producer, trained as an anthropologist before entering journalism and filmmaking. He has lived and worked in Europe, North America and Africa. Many of his documentaries deal with human rights, justice and truth-seeking – from Mozambique to Brazil, Russia and the Canadian Arctic. His films have won many international awards. Ole is based in Montreal, Canada.
ERIN BAINES, Researcher and Co-writer, lives in close contact with the conflict in northern Uganda, having worked, researched and written about the area for the past six years. As Assistant Professor at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, Canada, and Research Director at the Justice and Reconciliation Project in Gulu, northern Uganda, Erin is the recipient of multiple grants from the MacArthur, Compton, Hampton and Guggenheim Foundations to explore local solutions to the LRA rebellion. Erin has written articles and books on conflict resolution and transitional, and she serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Transitional Justice.
JODIE MARTINSON, Assistant Director, has filmed and done research in Uganda, and is intimately familiar with the conflict there. A graduate student in Journalism at the University of British Columbia, she shot, wrote and edited the documentary “To The Tar Sands”. Jodie has worked as an intern and produced freelance pieces for several Canadian newspapers and radio.
LINO OWOR OGORA, Researcher, Field Producer, is the lead researcher of the Justice and Reconciliation Project in Gulu, Uganda. The project works with marginalized and war affected communities to strengthen locally owned approaches to reintegration of ex-combatants and the realization of justice and reconciliation in war torn northern Uganda through action oriented research. Lino holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Work and Social Administration from Makerere University. He has attended various transitional justice training sessions in Burundi, Canada, Sudan and South Africa. Theatre and music are his favorite pastimes for him, and throughout the course of his studies, he was involved in various music dance and drama activities at the schools he attended. During his time at the University, he was actively involved in musical theatre and was the chairman of the famous St. Augustine Choir from 2004 to 2005. He still volunteers as the program coordinator of a local community based organisation called the Community Musical Theatre Project for northern Uganda, striving to promote healing and reconciliation in Northern Uganda through the use of music dance and drama.
NORMAND MCKAY, Co-Producer, is a veteran executive in film production and financing. Normand began his career working for Canadian banks before joining the Montreal-based Astral media conglomerate, where he led re-organizations of finance and production departments. For the past ten years, he has worked as an independent financial and production management consultant in the wide-screen, documentary and animation industries.
JON KALINA has been a writer and broadcast journalist in television and radio for more than thirty years. He’s worked in English and French and been the host of both radio and television shows. His work has shown on the CBC and Radio Canada as well as History Canada, Life, PBS and other networks. He’s written and directed many television documentaries and worked as a story editor on many others. Mr. Kalina has also collaborated on books, written for magazines and taught journalism. He lives in Montreal with his wife and daughter.
KIM SARRAZIN GJERSTAD, Online Media Director, has been caught in the web for a decade. In 2002 he joined the UN to launch the pioneering Radio Okapi peace-keeping radio service on the Internet in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Three years later he joined the DRC-based science team of the Wildlife Conservation Society as Communications Director. His popular Congo Blog broke new ground and led Kim to work with organizations and foundations, helping them start their own blogs. In 2007 he joined SolutionSet in the Silicon Valley as Project Manager. He is now enrolled in the gaduate program at the Ecole supérieure du journalisme in Lille, France and consults as a developer for media outlets and other internet users.
PIERRE TREMBLAY directs fiction films (short and feature length), TV commercials and music videos. He is equally at ease as director, editor or director of photography. During his 12 years as an advertising photographer, Mr. Tremblay’s images received numerous awards and were used worldwide for ad campaigns and editorials (Air Canada, Alcan, 3M, Loblaws). Cadavre Exquis, a feature film for which he was the DOP, premiered at the opening ceremony of the Montréal Film Festival in 2006. Nudex, an experimental film featuring striking imagery, directed and shot by Mr. Tremblay, has been presented in film festivals in North America in 2007 and 2008. His short film, Je comme Jour, represented Canada at the Cinema Brut festival in Cannes in 2008.
For over fifteen years, ELIZABETH KNOW, through her company, Knoxpix, has been working as a freelance photographer. Her work is represented and sold throughout the world by agents Masterfile and Getty Images for advertising, annual reports, editorials and other media. In more recent years, she has concentrated on portraiture and travel imagery; Southeast Asia and India are current subjects of ongoing long-term projects. She is a contributing artist to the Art for Healing Foundation (a non-profit charity) that donates art to heath clinics and hospitals to help create more healing environments for patients. Her passion for clowning has recently led her to teach physical theatre and clowning to disadvantaged children in Southeast Asia through the non-profit social circus organization, Circus Action International. She continues to train as a therapeutic clown with the goal of teaming up with other social circus organizations such as Clowns without Borders and Dr. Clown in their efforts to use the power of clowning to transform the lives of children adversely affected by war, catastrophic natural disasters, and serious illnesses.
Who’s working on this