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 KEVIN BURGET kburget@wideiris.net |
Founder of Wide Iris, Kevin Burget has been writing, directing, editing shooting and producing in the commercial and nonprofit worlds for over 20 years. His shorts and documentaries have aired on PBS and garnered top honors at festivals across the U.S. and internationally, including Rotterdam, Bilbao, and the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival; and have screened at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. He formed Wide Iris in 2000 to gather the talents of working filmmakers to create pieces promoting social justice, environmental sustainability and the arts, particularly in the byways of the nonprofit world.
Kevin has recently taught film at The New School in New York City, and holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.F.A. in filmmaking from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. His screenplay for the feature film, BEECHER, is in development. |
 NELSON HUME nhume@wideiris.net |
Nelson Hume is a Director/D.P. He graduated from NYU Graduate Film School in 1990 where he received the WTC Phillip Johnson Fellowship Award. In 1998 he co-wrote and directed SUNBURN, a feature film starring Cillian Murphy and produced by Jean Doumanian. The film had its world premier at the Galway International Film Festival where it won 2nd prize for Best First Feature and went on to screen at the Toronto International Film, Newport Film Festival and Seattle Film Festival. He is currently in development on his next feature film, BLUE LIPS, also starring Cillian Murphy.
Nelson’s work as a D.P. includes, most recently the TLC documentary series, LITTLE PEOPLE BIG WORLD, and the feature documentary THE WORLD ACCORDING TO SESAME STREET which premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and was produced by Partisan Pictures. Other present shooting work includes OSWALD’S GHOST and HOLLYWOOD VIETNAM, (directed by Robert Stone) and WANDERLUST, (directed by Bob Pulcini & Shari Berman). Nelson lives in Lower Manhattan with his wife Melissa and his son Milo. |
 LESLIE McCLEAVE lmccleave@wideiris.net |
Writer-director Leslie McCleave’s narrative debut feature film Road, is an eerie, environmentally-themed road movie, which will be released in theaters via Seventh Art and air on Showtime this fall. Road premiered at the 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival where the film was awarded the jury prize for Outstanding Performance.
Leslie’s award-winning short films include Avenue X, Blixa Bargeld Stole My Cowboy Boots, starring Michael Imperioli and Meeting Marty, the first film to be production-financed by Sundance Channel. Her films have screened at over 60 film festivals and venues worldwide including the Berlin International Film Festival, New Directors/New Films at the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), Lollapalooza, Sundance Channel and FilmFour (UK) and received top awards at the Sundance Film Festival, Locarno International Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, SXSW and the Kudzu Film Festival. She has an M.F.A. in film production from New York University, and is a Sundance Institute screenwriting and directing fellow. Leslie has worked as an independent television producer for Sundance Channel and PBS affiliate WLIW in New York. Her films have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital Foundation, New York State Arts Council, and New York Foundation for the Arts. She received a 2005 IFP Radziwill Documentary Grant for her current work in progress, a documentary feature on seminal gospel performers the Blind Boys of Alabama. She teaches film production and screenwriting at New York University, The New School and Brooklyn College. |
 ISMAEL RAMIREZ iramirez@wideiris.net |
A graduate of NYU MFA program, Colombian born, NYC raised, Ismael Ramirez has worked as a New York based cinematographer for the past fifteen years. His work is diverse and has led him far afield, from a gender issue narrative shot in Tunisia, produced by ArtE, to a fishing documentary shot off the coast of Oregon for the BBC. Most recently, he has just finished principle photography on a feature mockumentary film, “Celluloid #1”, which he co-scripted. Ismael brings a film formation, and a verite sensibility to modern digital cinematography.
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 SARAH SCHENCK sschenck@wideiris.net |
In 2004, Sarah Schenck was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for producing “Virgin,” a $65,000 feature with Robin Wright Penn and Elisabeth Moss. “Slippery Slope,” currently in post-production, is her first feature film as a writer/director. She has written three other screenplays. Her short films as writer/director have won prizes in the U.K. and Belgium.
She field produced the New York City segment of “The College Track,” a documentary about access to college for low-income students that aired nationwide in 2005 on PBS. Since then, Sarah has made three documentaries for Project Renewal, NYC’s largest non-profit providing services to the homeless, as well as numerous industrials for corporations such as British Telecom Americas. Sarah received her B.A. in Art History from Bryn Mawr College and her M.A. in Political Economy from Stanford University. Before she became a filmmaker, Sarah served for six years as the New York City Comptroller’s Senior Advisor for Education Policy (under both Liz Holtzman and her successor, Alan Hevesi) after working on public education policy for the 1992 Clinton/Gore presidential campaign. Prior to that time, she worked for The New York Times in Rio; was a fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art lecturing on fifteenth century Flemish painting; worked as a product testing guinea pig for Procter & Gamble in Paris; and cared for patients in Mother Theresa’s hospitals in Calcutta. |
 EVA AXELRODeaxelrod@wideiris.net |
Eva Axelrod is an award-winning producer/writer whose work has appeared on PBS, The Learning Channel, New York Times TV, ABC, National Geographic TV. Drawing on many years of experience, she specializes in the areas of science, health, technology, and the environment. Eva won an Emmy award for the documentary Killer Virus that aired on The Learning Channel. Also for TLC, she produced Transplant: the Clock is Ticking, a documentary nominated for a Cable ACE award. She has also been honored with two CINE Golden Eagles, Gold Apple from National Educational Media Network, Pinnacle Award from American Women in Radio and TV, and a Gold Medal from International Film and TV Festival of New York. For the popular award-winning PBS series, Innovation, she produced 20 half-hour programs covering cutting-edge advances in science, technology, health and the environment. She also produced segments for the PBS series, The Next Generation; Close to Home: A Moyers Report on Addiction; An American Christmas with Charles Kuralt. Eva has produced educational videos for schools and museums, including the Nature Museum-Chicago Academy of Sciences, Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Grand Teton National Park. More recently, she created a segment for the PBS children’s series, Planet H20, and collaborated on We Also Dance, a documentary about blind dancers. She teamed up with the American Museum of Natural History and Environmental Defense Fund to create the award-winning multimedia traveling exhibition, Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast. Featuring videos, interactive computer programs and displays, the exhibition received the American Association of Museums Curators Award. •Member: National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, National Association of Science Writers, American Association of Museums. •Education: Columbia University, NYU, The New School. |
 MARK VOELPEL mvoelpel@wideiris.net |
Mark Voelpel has directed over 40 commercials, three award-winning short narrative films, a documentary, and an interactive narrative anti-Bush propaganda piece which can be viewed at www.ourfuture.us. Mark has also been the cinematographer on 25 short narrative films, 2 feature length narrative films, 1 feature length documentary (the well-traveled and nationally screened, ONE NATION UNDER GOD), and the academy award winning THE STRANGE CASE OF BALTHAZAR HIPPOLYTE.
Mark is in the midst of production on his self-produced documentary, URBAN STORYTELLING, which is about how ancient oral storytelling traditions survive today in our cities. The focus of the documentary is on the traditions of West African storytellers (griots or jelis) and how those traditions live on in African American communities. In addition to producing and directing his own films, Mark is a professor in the Film Department at Brooklyn College where he teaches screenwriting, videography, and editing. Mark has a BA from Harvard, and an MFA in Film and Television Production from NYU. Mark studied extensively with Ross McElwee, Vlada Petric, Beda Batka, Roberta Hodes, and Nat Boxer, among others. |
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