Crew
Dina Ciraulo: Writer/Director
Ciraulo's short films have screened at the Telluride FIlm Festival, SXSW Film Festival, and the Hamptons Film Festival, among others. Drop aired on the Independent Film Channel and French television's CinéCinéma; Bayou was programmed on national tours of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands and distributed by Frameline; Touch won First Prize from the San Jose Sate Student Film Festival and was featured at the Pesaro Film Festival. Opal won the Robin Eickman Screenwriting Award, the Eric A. Takulan Memorial Screenwriting Fellowship, a FilmHouse Residency from the San Francisco Film Society, and an Individual Artist Grant from the San Francisco Art Commission. Opal was invited to the prestigious No Borders section of the IFP, and the Cannes Producers Network.
Rachel Benson: Producer
Benson was a line-producer on Katt Williams: American Hustle (2007), a live performance film that had national distribution, and assistant producer on Queensryche (2007), a concert film that aired nationally. Benson served as a member of the publicity team at the San Francisco International Film Festival and prior to her career in film she worked as a marketing executive in San Francisco and New York.
Jason Cohen: Producer
Cohen co-produced HBO’s Emmy-nominated Black Tar Heroin: Dark End of the Street, with Academy-Award winner Steven Okazaki and was a producer on his Emmy-winning White Light/Black Rain, an HBO documentary which screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007. Cohen’s commercial clients include Nike, Gatorade, Microsoft and Yahoo. He has worked projects on all seven continents logging time for all the major networks as well as PBS, BBC, Discovery and A&E.
Svetlana Cvetko: Cinematographer
Cvetko’s latest film, Inside Job, premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and is slated for theatrical release by Sony Pictures Classic this Fall. Other recent work includes the comedy (Untitled) starring Adam Goldberg, distributed by Goldwyn, and Miss Representation, an in-progress documentary featuring Jane Fonda, Rosario Dawson, Katie Couric and Nancy Pelosi among others.
Greg Sirota: Editor
Sirota is a staff editor at Lucas Film, where he’s edited over twenty-five documentaries. In addition, he edited the ITVS Tia and Marco, which screened at SXSW (2010). His work has been featured on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel. Sirota has an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a Faculty Commendation in Editing.
Terri Winston: Composer
Winston’s songwriting has been featured in commercials for Banana Republic, KRON-TV, and Steven Okazaki’s feature film The Lisa Theory. She is a two-time national finalist for the Lilith Fair Competition, an ASCAP songwriting award winner, winner of the Boston Music Award, and founder Women’s Audio Mission. As a performer she has shared the stage with the Flaming Lips, Third Eye Blind, PJ Harvey and the Pixies.
Neil Riha: Supervising Sound Editor
Riha has a long list of production credits, including production sound on Gus Van Sant’s Milk, Paranoid Park, and Last Days; Noah Baumbach’s latest film Greenberg, Will Smith’s The Pursuit of Happyness and Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown.
Dan Olmsted: Mixer
Olmsted’s most recent credit is Women, Art, Revolution, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. He has mixed sound for John Water’s Cecil B. Demented, Joan Chen’s Autumn in New York, Lynn Hershman-Leeson’s Strange Culture and several episodes of the POV and Independent Lens broadcast series.
Christy Kovacs: Assistant Producer
Kovacs is an artist and food educator. Kovacs has a degree in Anthropology from UC Berkeley, where she studied Ethnographic Film and produced several shorts. She combined her interests in art, film and food on Opal by creating many of the graphic elements for the art department and overseeing the catering menu. Kovacs co-founded Small Steps Cooking to teach children about sustainable nutrition.
Christine Crook: Costumes
Crook has designed costumes for many theater companies including the Aurora, Shotgun Players and Berkeley Playhouse. She won the Petté Award for Outstanding Costume Design for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. She recently completed an MFA in Costume Design from UC San Diego.
