our Production team
James Usmanov, Film Editor, Camera and Sound
a freelance filmmaker who has worked in the Film Industry in New York City for over 15 years. He has worked on numerous films and TV shows as part of the lighting team and enjoys the occasional opportunity as a cinematographer. James comes from a small country in Central Asia by the name of Tajikistan. He has lived in New York State for more than half his life. He attended Brooklyn College, where he found his direction in life as well as his better half. When James isn’t saving the world from bad filmmaking, he likes to spend time in his small garden among his plants, flowers and miniature houses, that he has convinced his children are occupied by elves.
Sheauyunn Usmanova, Sound Editor
graduated from Brooklyn College with a bachelorʼs degree in Film Production, She worked in the film industry for 8 years as a Production Sound Mixer and Documentary Director & Editor. She also documented multiple disaster relief efforts throughout the US and Haiti. She is now living with her husband and 2 daughters in the suburbs of New York City.
Caroline Luis, Graphic and Web Design
Caroline has been graphic and web designing professionally for eight years. She worked at digital design agency pooliestudios in Cologne, Germany for four years where she designed for startups and large online platforms and has since been freelancing.
Margarita Sullivan, Permissions
Established music professional with extensive experience in Rights & Clearances for film, television, and advertising.
Peter Hassinger, Writer/Voice Over
Peter Hassinger, author and screenwriter, is currently finishing a new novel and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Sally, and their two cats.
William Parsons, Camera
Bill has been photographing and videoing dance, people, and events for decades and has images in Dance Magazine, The Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Harvard Magazine, and an encyclopedia. He has edited and published 4 books of photographic images and has been published in international, judged photo publications. His clients include dancers, dance companies, studios, colleges, universities, and individuals. Contact Bill @maximalimage.com, www.maximalimage.com
Li-Ann Lim, Dancer, Speaker
Li-Ann Lim began her dance training at the Lexington School of Ballet in Lexington, MA and continued her dance studies at the Joffrey Ballet School. She has performed with Chen and Dancers (NYC), Rosanna Gamson/World Wide (LA), and more recently, Dance Currents Inc., Lorraine Chapman the Company (Boston) and North Atlantic Dance Theatre (Boston) Ms. Lim has served on the faculty of University of California, Irvine, Fullerton College, and Scripps College, teaching ballet, modern, and choreography. She holds a BA in Anthropology from Columbia University and an MFA in Dance from the University of California, Irvine.
Amy Geller, Consultant
Award-winning filmmaker, Amy Geller has dedicated over a decade and a half to producing films. Her work has been broadcast in the US and abroad and has screened at film festivals around the world. Her credits include: PBS/BBC broadcast docudrama MURDER AT HARVARD (2003), the Sundance Institute-supported narrative STAY UNTIL TOMORROW (2005), THE WAR THAT MADE AMERICA (2006), a four-hour PBS mini-series, LOVE AND OTHER ANXIETIES (2010), funder turned filmmaker Lyda Kuth’s personal documentary, and FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES: The Story of American Film Criticism (2009), which premiered at SXSW and was broadcast in Spain, France, Israel, and Japan and on the Documentary Channel. From 2012-2014, Geller served as the Artistic Director of the Boston Jewish Film Festival, where she received a Chai in the Hub Award for Jewish Leaders under 45. Her feature-length directorial debut THE GUYS NEXT DOOR, co-directed by Allie Humenuk, was released in 2016 and has been winning jury prizes and audience awards at film festivals across the country and was broadcast on PBS's The World Channel in October, 2018. She is currently producing and co-directing, along with husband Gerald Peary, the documentary THE RABBI GOES WEST, which will be released in 2019.
www.therabbigoeswest.com
Artist of the tree
Pam Levy
Pam Levy grew up drawing everywhere, including on the hall wallpaper. Equally important to her was dance, always as a student, once a member of a regional ballet company, and for decades now as a teacher. She happily finished majors in math and art history a Vanderbilt University. Toward the end, however, it became apparent to her that she’d been finding ways to make art at every opportunity. This led her to major number three at RISD and her life as an illustrator. Pam’s work appears in children’s books, magazines, book covers, films, corporate and institutional materials, and advertising.