Producer, Director, Writer Frances Causey
I am a documentary filmmaker and journalist from a little high desert village in Southern Arizona. Many moons ago, I cut my professional teeth at the world’s first 24-hour news network, CNN, where I learned how to tell the world’s most important stories in just two minutes.In the trenches at CNN, I met lifelong friends and colleagues who taught me the value of hard work, integrity and the duty of bringing truth to power and holding that power accountable. Together, we won Emmy’s for our live coverage of the Oklahoma City and Olympic Park Bombings. Sharpening my management and storytelling skills at CNN made the leap to directing feature documentary films a little bit easier. I seem to make films that stare down the most important issues that we, our nation and the world must confront. I’ve been fortunate to direct documentaries for television and theatrical release including my latest documentary, The Long Shadow. My documentary, Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? which explores the last forty years of economic restructuring in the US that lead to the destruction of the American middle class was a New York Times Critic’s Pick and continues to be seen throughout the world. I was honored to accept the Women’s International Film and Television Jury Award on behalf of the Heist team. When I can, I love making films that benefit my local community. My short film, Ours Is The Land profiles the Tohono O’odham Nation’s fight to prevent an open-pit copper mine from being built on their ancestral lands in southern Arizona. I also directed There’s No Oodham Word for Wall which chronicles the O’odham’s opposition to a fortified international border wall proposed by President Donald Trump. In my filmmaking journey, I guess you could say I have become an accidental activist.I spend as much time as I can with my partner Cathy, my dog Chica, my cat HRH Sarah and my beloved horses, Wylie and Melodee whose gentle eyes and generosity calm my soul and inspire me to reach for further heights.
Producer Sally Holst
Producer Sally Holst, in addition to producing The Long Shadow, was the Executive Producer of Heist: Who Stole the American Dream which was a 2012 NY TIMES Critic’s Pick. Sally and “Shadow” Director Frances Causey have collaborated on previous film projects including their immigration documentary Papers, please! which triggered the idea for Heist. As a CNN Contributor, Sally’s credits include Hurricane Katrina and “Heroin Addicts In Their Own Words“. Her “Hannah’s Heart” foundation provides much needed natural disaster relief to hundreds of people across the United States each year. Sally is also a gifted photographer whose work has received widespread acclaim, appearing in selected exhibitions, galleries and private collections across the United States.
Editor and Co-Creator Maureen Gosling
Editor and Co-Creator Maureen Gosling, a filmmaker for more than 40 years, has worked as a director, producer, editor, sound recordist and distributor. Gosling produced and directed, with Chris Simon, the feature documentary This Ain’t No Mouse Music, on the life of American roots music record producer, Chris Strachwitz. Gosling directed, produced and edited Blossoms of Fire, feature-length, on the Zapotecs of Oaxaca, Mexico. Gosling is best known for her 20-year collaboration, as co-filmmaker, editor and sound recordist, with the late director Les Blank on more than two-dozen documentaries. Their best-known film is the British Academy Award winning “making of” classic, Burden of Dreams, on Werner Herzog’s filming of Fitzcarraldo in the Peruvian Amazon. Gosling is also a sought-after editor. Her current projects as editor include: A Dangerous Idea directed by Stephanie Welch; The Long Shadow, directed by Frances Causey. She is also co-filmmaker with Maxine Downs on Bamako Chic: Threads of Power, Color and Culture.
Producer Jed Riffe
Producer Jed Riffe is an award winning film director, producer and transmedia storyteller. Over the last twenty-five years Riffe produced a successfully released theatrical documentary, ten nationally broadcast public television specials including a four-hour TV series and four major interactive media programs. He is best known as the producer and director of the award-winning films Ishi, the Last Yahi, the true story of the man known as the Last Wild Indian in North America; Who Owns the Past?, the American Indian struggle for control of their ancestral remains; California’s ‘Lost’ Tribes which examines the impact of Indian gaming on Native Americans and their non-Indian neighbors and Waiting to Inhale: Marijuana, Medicine and the Law, the first documentary on the efficacy of medicinal cannabis. He and his company Jed Riffe Films + Electronic Media produced two of the four hour-long programs in the nationally broadcast California and the American Dream series including the award-winning films Ripe for Change and California’s ‘Lost’ Tribes. Most recently, Riffe executive produced director Mo Morris’ A New Color: The Art of Being Edythe Boone; director Emiko Omori’s To Chris Marker, An Unsent Letter; director Luke Griswold-Tergis’s Smokin’ Fish; director Stephanie Welch’s A Dangerous Idea: Eugenics, Genetics and The American Dream and is currently completing producing and post-production supervising on director Frances Causey’s feature length documentary The Long Shadow on the legacy of slavery.
Executive Producer and Co-Producer Cal Turner IV
Executive Producer and Co-Producer Cal Turner IV is a Kentucky native whose family started the Dollar General discount retail stores in 1939. Cal built a career in the music publishing industry from 1998 to 2013, when he decided to focus on his passion for filmmaking. Cal is also EP/Co-Producer of the groundbreaking mental health feature documentary, Is Your Story Making You Sick?, Co-Produced with Causey, Mark Pirtle, and Jennifer Turner. A screen adaptation of John Grisham’s The Testament is in production with Cal’s partners Mark Johnson of Gran Via Productions and Eric Geadelmann, Cal’s partner at Crowfly Picture Studios. Crowfly is in production with They Called Us Outlaws, a documentary series on the Austin music scene and KOCH FM in the 1970’s, a co-venture with the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. A devout Orthodox Christian, Cal enjoys spending his free time doing just about anything in the great outdoors with his beloved wife Jennifer and three teenaged sons.
Co-Producer Donald Goldmacher
Co-Producer Donald Goldmacher is a longtime filmmaker, social justice activist, and community psychiatrist with decades of experience observing, documenting and participating in social change. Donald co-produced and co-directed Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? In his first film, Do No Harm, he was a gadfly to the medical industrial complex and dared to investigate and expose the controversial marketing and research practices of the pharmaceutical industry. His 2001 documentary Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House, about two lesbian activists in New York City, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, won over 20 festival awards, and aired on HBO and television stations around the world.
Director of Photography Rogelio Garcia
Director of Photography Rogelio Garcia, brings a wealth of experience and creativity to The Long Shadow. Rogelio and Frances, longtime collaborators, worked together on Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? The idea for Heist came from their experience of being embedded in a human smuggling operation on the Arizona border. As a broadcast news photographer, Rogelio won multiple Associated Press Awards for Videography and Editing and one Emmy nomination in 2002. Rogelio is a Broadcast Television Production Adjunct Professor in the Journalism school at the University of Arizona.
Impact Producer Maria Judice
Impact Producer Maria Judice has fought for marginalized stories in film, TV and digital for over a decade. At her core she is a storyteller and lover of the written word. A CalArts alumna, Maria received her M.F.A. in Film/Video. Palm Trees won the Adrienne Shelly Award for excellence in directing and aired on BET’s Lens on Talent. Awards for best narrative film (Moonless) and screenplay (Orbiters) were also garnered. On the board of Bay Area Women in Film and Media, she works with within the film community to advance opportunities, curate platforms and connect artists/filmmakers for women-centered content. As program director of MATATU Festival of Stories, she leads a team that creates conversations and expands audiences around undistributed films of the African diaspora. Working as an Impact Producer she has brought social campaigns and outreach to films including The Last Black Man in San Francisco; A Girl Like Grace; Heist; The Long Shadow and Co-Produced Dreamstates with Anisia Uzeyman featuring Saul Williams.