Directors

Jenny Raskin is a New York-based documentary filmmaker who has produced documentaries for The Learning Channel, A&E, The Sundance Channel, The Discovery Health Channel, and Cablevision. She has a Masters in Cultural Anthropology with a specialization in Culture and Media from New York University. On Hostile Ground is her first feature documentary. She is currently producing Dangerous Journey, a documentary about maternal mortality in Afghanistan, and Videofreex! a documentary about a ground-breaking video collective of the 1970s.

Liz Mermin is a director/producer/editor based in New York, specializing in social-issue documentaries. ON HOSTILE GROUND was her first documentary feature. She recently completed THE BEAUTY ACADEMY OF KABUL, a documentary feature about a unique American aid project that provides a rare view into Afghan women's lives (the film, a BBC/Discovery co-production, premiered at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival). She has been making documentaries for television since 1999 - most recently AMERICAN TALENT, a 1-hour PBS special that profiles 10 presidential scholar in the arts. Other recent work includes REPORT FROM GROUND ZERO (producer & editor), ABC's anniversary special about rescue workers and the World Trade Center attacks, and PARKING LOT, a 6-part series about fan culture for Trio, also airing on Bravo. She has also made documentaries for Discovery, Court TV, Oxygen, and various non-profits, and directed/edited/wrote an award-winning series of PSA's for Court TV and the human rights group Speak Truth to Power. Mermin has a BA summa cum laude in literature from Harvard College and a Masters in anthropology and a Certificate in Culture and Media from NYU, where she was a National Science Foundation fellow. Before getting into production, Mermin wrote about film for a variety of academic journals and magazines. She first became interested in filmmaking as a Fulbright scholar in Dakar, Senegal, studying the local film industry. She continued her academic work on film at the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York before starting film production at NYU.

Producer

Catherine Gund, the founder of Aubin Pictures, is an award-winning film/videomaker, writer and organizer. Her media work focuses on the radical right, race relations, art and culture, HIV/AIDS, reproductive rights, the concept of democracy, and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues and has screened around the world in festivals, on public and cable television, at community-based organizations, universities, and museums. Her productions include Motherland Afghanistan; A Touch of Greatness; Making Grace; On Hostile Ground; Hallelujah! Ron Athey: A Story of Deliverance; When Democracy Works; Positive: Life with HIV; Sacred Lies Civil Truths; Not Just Passing Through; Among Good Christian Peoples; and Keep Your Laws Off My Body; as well as work with the collectives DIVA TV (co-founder) and Paper Tiger Television. She was the founding director of BENT TV, the video workshop at the Hetrick-Martin Institute for queer youth.