The Filmmakers

  • BANKER WHITE (Director/Producer) is a multi-disciplinary artist based in San Francisco. He is the director and producer of Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, which tells the story of a group of six Sierra Leonean musicians. 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. It was also broadcast on POV in North America, HBO Latin America and NHK in Japan. Banker also founded WeOwnTV, a collaborative filmmaking and storytelling project based in Freetown, Sierra Leone. This project is supported by Creative Capital, Freedom to Create, the Bertha Foundation and the Bay Area Video Coalition

  • ANNA FITCH (Producer/Co-Director) is an Emmy award-winning director with a background in natural history filmmaking and a degree in Entomology. She has produced and directed documentaries for National Geographic Television, TLC, Channel Four (UK), and PBS. Awards and nominations include: an Emmy Award for Best Documentary Directing for BugWorld: War of Two Worlds; a CINE special jury award for Best Environment and Natural Science Film for Bug Attack; and a VideoFest MCCLA Best Documentary award for ManMade: The Bra. Anna also directed the short narrative film, The Burning Wigs of Sedition (2010), featuring the Extra Action Marching Band.

  • DON BERNIER (Editor) is an Emmy nominated documentary editor. He has edited several programs for David Grubin Productions in New York, including episodes of the award winning PBS series, The Mysterious Human Heart and The Jewish Americans. In 2009, Bernier co-edited the PBS special, The Botany of Desire, based on author Michael Pollan’s best-selling book. He has cut several episodes of National Geographic Television’s popular Explorer series, including Mystery of the Disembodied Feet and, most recently, Gang War USA for Winton/duPont Films in San Francisco. In 2011, he finished editing the Peabody Award-winning bio, Eames: The Architect and the Painter, for American Masters on PBS.

  • SHALEECE HAAS (Co-Producer) has worked on the production teams of several short and feature-length documentaries for PBS including Extreme by Design (Kikim Media) and The Art of Doing It Yourself (KQED-TV). She is the director of the short documentary, Old People Driving, which was broadcast on PBS as part of the NewsHour/Economist Film Project, earned awards at the Phoenix and Los Angeles International Film Festivals, and is currently in distribution with New Day Films. Before turning to filmmaking, Shaleece worked as an editorial photographer and radio producer. She also had the honor of listening to hundreds of stories as a facilitator for the national oral history project, StoryCorps.

  • CHRIS RILEY (Outreach Coordinator) has over two decades of strategic planning, on the ground community organizing and social activism across issues of women’s rights, economic justice and LGBT civil rights; consulting for various political campaigns and organizations, and has recently served as Field Director for both MassEquality and Equality California; and transferring that field knowledge to work on films such as The Campaign, Out in the Silence, and Impact Stories.

  • BRITNEY ROQUE (Production Coordinator) is a Bay Area based, self-proclaimed film enthusiast and freelance writer. She graduated in 2010 from San Francisco State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Cinema Production. In 2011, she was an Associate Producer of the film too perfect, written, directed and produced by Julie Rubio. Britney is also a 2014 winner of the NextGen Arts Award, the Center for Cultural Innovation’s professional development program for California’s emerging arts leaders in the non-profit sector.