BIOS / MEET THE TEAM
Enrique Krauze, Executive Producer
Enrique is a historian and essayist born in Mexico City in 1947. From 1977 to 1996 he served as Deputy Editor of Vuelta magazine, edited by Octavio Paz. In 1991 he founded the publishing house Clío, which produces books, documentaries and television series about Mexican History including México Siglo XX (1998-2000), México Nuevo Siglo (2001-2010) and Clío TV (2011 to date). In 1999 he established Letras Libres magazine. As a writer, he has pursued several genres: biography, literary and historical essays, and interviews. Since 1985, he has written for Dissent Magazine, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books and The New York Times. His most recent work is Redeemers. Ideas and Power in Latin America (2011), which was published by Harper Collins. In 1990 he became a member of the Mexican Academy of History. In December 2003, the Spanish Government conferred him the “Gran Orden de Alfonso X, El Sabio”, and in April 2005 he was inducted as a member of El Colegio Nacional in Mexico. On August 2008, the King of Spain granted him the “Gran Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Católica”. In 2010, the Mexican Government conferred him the Premio Nacional de Historia. In 2012, The Interamerican Press Society distinguished with the Gran Premio Chapultepec and Caballero Bonald Foundation awarded him the International Essay Prize Caballero Bonald for his book Redeemer.
Alvin H. Perlmutter, Executive Producer
Al is the Director of the Independent Production Fund. He has produced highly acclaimed information programming for over 30 years. Mr. Perlmutter’s television programs have aired on PBS, the commercial networks and cable in this country and have also been broadcast throughout Europe and the Far East. Prior to forming his own company, Mr. Perlmutter served as NBC News Vice President where he was responsible for all network documentaries and news magazine programs and earlier as Director of Public Affairs Programming and Program Manager of WNBC-TV, New York. He has been the recipient of every major broadcasting award including six national prime-time Emmys, the Peabody Award and five Ace Awards for excellence in programming on cable television. He was executive producer of the highly innovative public affairs magazine series, The Great American Dream Machine (PBS), and he was also the co-executive producer of Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers (PBS). His more recent productions include Muslims, a two-hour Frontline special, and God and Government, also for public television.
Micah Fink, Director/Producer/Writer
Micah is an award-winning producer and director specializing in international affairs, human rights, public health, and the environment. In addition to directing and producing Beyond Borders, he is currently a co-executive producer for Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project.
Over the last fifteen years, he has directed two feature films, The Abominable Crime, an award-winning feature film anti-gay violence in Jamaica, and Mann V. Ford, a feature documentary about a Native American community living on a failed Federal Superfund site, as well as dozens of TV and web documentaries for clients including CNN, ABC News, National Geographic Explorer, National Geographic Wild, HBO, PBS Wide Angle, PBS Frontline, The Teaching Channel, The Independent Production Fund, The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and The Climate Reality Project.
Micah learned the ropes of documentary production working for several years as a coordinating producer at Wide Angle, the PBS International Affairs series, and as an associate producer on several films for PBS Frontline. His work has been recognized with three Emmy nominations, two Cine Golden Eagle Awards, a Silver Screen award, an International Film and Video Award, an Amnesty International Human Rights Film Award, a Japan Society Fellowship, and a Kaiser Media Health Fellowship. He holds a MS in Journalism from Columbia University and a BA in Comparative Literature from Cornell University. He is currently on the faculty at the Graduate Program in Social Documentary at the School For Visual Arts in NYC.
Karen K.H. Sim, Writer/Story Consultant
Karen began working in documentaries as an editor on Maro Chermayeff’s Juilliard for the PBS series American Masters. She then further honed her skills in storytelling by working with Frontline producer/director Ofra Bikel, editing a number of her films, including Emmy award-winning An Ordinary Crime and The Burden of Innocence. Since then, she has written, produced and edited numerous award-winning films, and in 2014, she won the Sundance Film Festival Documentary Editing Award for her work on Watchers of the Sky, directed by Edet Belzberg. Most recently, Sim edited and co-produced for Liz Garbus on Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Beyond Borders is the third collaboration between Sim and director Micah Fink.
Tom Hurwitz, ASC, Director of Photography
Tom is one of America’s most honored documentary cameramen. He has photographed films that have won 4 academy awards and several more nominations (most recently for Dancemaker and Killing in the Name). His television programs have won literally dozens of awards, including 2 Emmy Awards, Dupont, Peabody, Directors Guild and film festival awards for Best Documentary, over the last 25 years — most recently were Emmy Awards for Best Documentary Specials for the PBS show Jerome Robbins and the PBS series Franklin, on which Hurwitz directed the photography. Other award-winning films and programs include: Valentino: The Last Emperor, Harlan County USA, Wild Man Blues, My Generation, Down and Out in America, The Turandot Project, Liberty, Dolley, Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero for PBS; and I Have a Dream for ABC; and Questioning Faith for HBO. In addition, films that he has directed have won the Cine Golden Eagle (for Bombs will Make the Rainbow Break) and have been shown in festivals around the world. He is also a founding member of the faculty of The MFA Program in the Social Documentary, at New York’s School of Visual Arts.
Brittany Kaplan, Editor
Brittany has been working on documentaries since 2009, when she assistant edited on FRONTLINE: Digital Nation at Ark Media, and PA’d on Oscar-winning Inside Job. Since then, she has edited on many PBS documentaries, such as Ken Burns' Cancer: The Emperor of all Maladies, and Henry Louis Gates’ Peabody-winner, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. Most recently, she has edited short documentaries at CNN’s new startup, Great Big Story. Beyond Borders is the first feature documentary she has edited, and she is thrilled to be part of such an important project. Brittany is a Vassar College graduate in media studies and history.
Nancy Kennedy, Editor
Nancy has edited several award-winning films, including Sundance Grand Jury winner Why We Fight (2005), For The Bible Tells Me So (Sundance Festival 2007), Einstein’s Letter (Emmy for best doc series 2006), Riding the Rails, and Thank You and Goodnight, both Sundance award winners. She has also co-directed and edited several independent documentaries, including Who Does She Think She Is?, Bluegrass Journey and Who’s On First? Her most recent projects are the feature documentaries When The Drum Is Beating, Orchestra of Exiles, and Gregory Crewson: Brief Encounters. Her many editing credits include work at all the major networks on such television series as Great Performances, American Experience, 60 Minutes, American Masters, Saturday Night Live, and National Geographic Specials, among others.
Joseph Schroeder, Line Producer
Joe has managed the production of highly acclaimed educational and informational programming for several years. Beginning with The Independent Production Fund’s CINE-award-winning God in Government in 2004, Joe has specialized in the logistics of documentary filmmaking. After the success of that special, he moved on to coordinate production for the company during its next two endeavors, The Mystery of Love and A Brief History of Disbelief, both of which aired on public television. He then briefly left the company to manage the production of four National Geographic Channel specials for Marabella Productions – The Secret World of Fireworks, Earth Without the Moon, Finding the Origins of Life, and Man-Made Disasters. Since his return to IPF in 2010, he has handled all the logistical and financial components of the company’s latest three productions, including Beyond Borders: Undocumented Mexican Americans. In his current role, he continues to coordinate and facilitate all aspects of production and post-production for the company, while also contributing to several other elements of the business.
Raúl Octavio Paz Pastrana, Field Producer
Raúl is a 2013 CINE Golden Eagle Award Winner and a 2013 IDA Award Nominee. Raul’s previous work includes Rezonomics, which premiered at Mexico City’s DOCSDF Film Festival and The Art of Remembrance, which premiered at the Sheffield Doc/Fest 2011 and was a Nominee for the Student Academy Awards. His last film OME: Tales From A Vanishing Homeland was filmed on location in the Amazon rainforest and was funded by the 2011 Princess Grace Foundation Award and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund. Raúl graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts in Social Documentary Film from the School of Visual Arts in New York City where he received the 2012 Paula Rhodes Memorial Award for exceptional achievement in social documentary Film.
Tara Nadolny, Associate Producer
Tara has worked an associate producer, assistant editor, researcher, coordinating producer, and post production supervisor on a variety of documentary projects of all shapes and sizes. In addition to Beyond Borders, she has worked on features such as the award-winning The Abominable Crime, television series such as King of the Road and the emmy-nominated Gaycation, and web content like Al Gore's Climate Reality Project. Tara studied German language and Film and Media at Queen's University, and holds a masters degree in Media Studies from the New School. She presently works as the coordinator for current series production at the Viceland network.
Amanda Harberg, Composer
Amanda is an award-winning composer working in both film and contemporary classical music. She has been commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Sound All Around series, the Dorian Wind Quintet, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Albany Symphony and the New York Youth Symphony, among many other ensembles and individuals. Her works have been performed internationally by many orchestras and performing groups. Awards include the 2016 National Flute Association’s Newly Published Music award, a 2014 NJS Council on the Arts fellowship, a Fulbright/Hays Fellowship, the NY Youth Symphony’s First Music Award, a NYS Council on the Arts fellowship, and Juilliard’s Peter Mennin Prize for outstanding accomplishment. Harberg received her BM and MM from the Juilliard School. Her music is published by Theodore Presser Company. Harberg lives with her family in Glen Ridge NJ, where she is the founder and artistic director of the Music in Montclair series.
Molly Schwartz, Graphic Designer
Molly Schwartz was born in New York City, raised in Oklahoma. She earned her BFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by a semester studying art, language, history and mountains in Nepal. After school she studied art conservation & restoration of works of art on paper, learning about qualities of paper and the cumulative effects of time. In Los Angeles she learned digital effects and time in fractions of seconds. She has lived in Chicago, Katmandu, Los Angeles, and since 1999, Brooklyn. Schwartz shows her animated videos, drawings and interactive works in public art commissions, installations, exhibitions and festivals worldwide. In May 2011 she completed her MPS graduate degree in visual programming and physical computing at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, with a Dean's Fellowship. She was awarded a Research Residency position for the 2011-2012 year at ITP.
She art directs, designs, animates, composites, codes, and creates special effects. Molly Schwartz was the lead designer and animator for the documentary film Watchers of the Sky (directed by Edet Belzberg), which won a Sundance Special Jury Award for Animation in January 2014. Recent film projects include CANCER: Emperor of All Maladies (Barak Goodman and Ken Burns), CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap (Robin Hauser Reynolds), Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (Stanley Nelson), A Good Job: Stories from the FDNY (Liz Garbus), Back on Board (Cheryl Furjanis) and The Abominable Crime (Micah Fink). Schwartz is an adjunct professor teaching at NYU's ITP.
Viviana Motta, Production Supervisor, Mexico
Viviana is the Production Director of Clío TV. Since 2004, she has produced more than 200 documentaries broadcast in Mexico in the series México Nuevo Siglo, México Siglo XX, Clío en el Bicentenario y Clío TV. She also collaborated in the production of Mexican Revolution for The History Channel.
Canek Saemisch, Field Producer, Mexico
Canek is a producer, art director and set designer. He has produced more than twenty documentaries for Clío TV. He received the Ariel award for Best Art Design of the movie Zurdo by director Carlos Salces. He has designed sets for theater and the visual concepts for different shows. He also directs the Ernst Saemisch association.
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