TEAM

Lana Lovell - Director

Lana Lovell began directing in earnest five years ago, after years of working as a researcher and producer for the Discovery Channel, CTV News and Kensington Communications Inc.

Lana’s most recent documentary is Resilience: Stories of Single Black mothers. Her other documentary titles include The Incomparable Jackie Richardson, which was completed in 2008 for Bravo Television and received accolades for capturing musical performances, and Underground, the award winning short which premiered at Hot Docs in 2006. Ms. Lovell has also directed for the series Literature Alive and Heart Beat for Bravo Television.

In addition to directing, Lana is active in the documentary community. She is on the board for DOC Toronto and the national board of the Documentary Organization for Canada, where she facilitates workshops on pitching and effective storytelling.

Lana is a Toronto-based documentary filmmaker. She has a degree in anthropology from York University and studied Visual Anthropology at Manchester University.

Lisa Valencia-Svensson  -  Producer

Lisa Valencia-Svensson is a documentary film producer based in Toronto.  Her first film, the short docu-poem Borderless directed by award-winning filmmaker Min Sook Lee, tells the story of undocumented workers inside Canada's borders.  Borderless has been screened at 15 film festivals in Canada, the USA, and Korea.  It was broadcast on Vision TV and found educational distribution in Canada and the USA.  Her second film was the short documentary Sedition on youth and freedom of expression, also directed by Min Sook Lee.  Commissioned by PEN Canada, Sedition has played at film festivals in Canada, the US and the UK.

Since January 2007, Lisa has been working at Storyline Entertainment, where she has just finished producing Resilience: Stories of Single Black Mothers.  She also has a number of documentary projects in development, including The House That Herman Built which was pitched at Hot Docs and the Good Pitch Silverdocs in 2010, and Storage Dreams, an international co-production.

Lisa has a background in finance, community media, and research work.  She plans to continue working on film projects which explore political issues and socially relevant themes, and which encourage audiences to view their world through a constructively critical lens.

Ed Barreveld  -  Executive Producer

Ed Barreveld has been making films since 1986 when he first joined Canada's Oscar-winning National Film Board’s Ontario Studio. He has been an independent filmmaker since 1996, producing mostly point of view, auteur driven documentaries for broadcasters such as the CBC, BBC, A&E, and TVAsahi.

In 2000, Barreveld co-founded Storyline Entertainment Inc. and produced the award winning feature documentaries Aftermath: The Remnants of War and Shipbreakers.  In 2004, Barreveld became the sole principal of Storyline Entertainment. That same year, Storyline released Bruce & Me (an Australian-Canadian co-production) and Whale of a Tale, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.   Barreveld's projects, Hitler’s Canadians and The Secret of the Snake Goddess (a Canada/Germany/Greece co-production) aired in 2007 and his Gemini nominated feature documentary Tiger Spirit premiered at Hot Docs 2008.2009 saw the release of It’s a Teen’s World: Wired for Sex, Lies and Power Trips, and My Toxic Baby (a 2009 Toronto International Film Festival selection). Resilience:  Stories of Black Single Mothers and The Real M*A*S*H will be released in 2010.  Barreveld is based in Toronto, Canada.

Iris Ng  -  Director of Photography

Iris Ng is a graduate of Film and Video Production at York University with a background in still photography, visual art and music. She began her cinematography career by shooting her first independent feature film while studying at York and has since worked on narrative, experimental, and documentary films which have been exhibited around the world.

She has collaborated with artists on film pieces and installations including Without Persons by Luis Jacob, Circa 1960 by Chris Curreri, and Purfled Promises by Oliver Husain as well as she directed and shot he short documentary, Point of Departure which has screened at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and Punto de Vista in Pamplona, Spain. Her other recent cinematography credits include, My Toxic Baby by director Min Sook Lee, and Weston Public, a new media documentary by Sarah Sharkey Pearce.

Currently, Iris is working on The Stories We Tell with director Sarah Polley and Defying Destiny with director Giselle Portenier. 

Ricardo Acosta  -  Editor

Ricardo Acosta immigrated to Canada from his native Cuba in 1993.  Before coming to Toronto, he studied and worked with the world renowned Cuban Film Institute in Havana.  For the past twelve years Ricardo has edited both documentary and dramatic films, which have been shown around the world.

His outstanding work has contributed to the making of several award-winning films including: Tiger Spirit directed by Min Sook Lee (Gemini Donald Brittain Award for Best Social/Political Documentary Program), Shooting Indians, A Journey With Jeffrey Thomas directed by Ali Kazimi (Genie Award nomination for Best Short Documentary); Unbound directed by Claudia Morgado (Berlin Film Festival Award for Best Short Film); Spirits of Havana produced by the NFB (Genie Award nomination for Best Documentary); The Take directed by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis (Gemini nomination for The Donald Brittain Award for Best Social/Political Documentary Program & for Best Picture Editing in a Documentary Program or Series); and Runaway Groom directed by Ali Kazimi (Gemini Donald Brittain Award for Best Social/Political Documentary Program).

Ricardo was chosen to be a fellow by the Sundance Institute in 2006 for the Documentary Film Editing and Story Laboratory.

Sanjay Mehta  -  Location Sound Recordist

Sanjay Mehta started his career in recording sound at the age of 15 working for an Oscar winning sound recordist on feature films. Since then his love of sound and travelling has taken him from the sound stages of Toronto to the far corners of the planet working on documentary films. He has won Gemini awards for his work on Primitive Entertainment's McLuhan's Wake and Rhombus Media's  Beethoven's Hair.  Recent travels have taken him to DPRK (North Korea), and the Russian Far East working on Storyline Entertainment's Tiger Spirit.  When not calibrating his ears listening to vinyl records, Sanjay can be found printing photos in the darkroom.

Sammy Yi  -  Location Sound Recordist

Sammy Yi is a freelance sound recordist based out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada for the last 12 years and has been fortunate to be part of many outstanding projects. 

Sammy specializes in recording sound on location for documentaries,  that have included travel all around Budapest, Italy, Japan, Korea, United States as well as Canada.

In addition to documentaries, Sammy has also worked on numerous reality, lifestyle, docu-dramas, corporate videos and features.

 

Ken Myhr  -  Composer

Ken’s musical life began listening to his father play jazz stride piano and sing barbershop. After a few lessons he taught himself to play electric guitar and spent his early life making a lot of noise whenever and wherever possible. This lead to performing on concert stages worldwide from The Royal Albert Hall to the David Letterman Show. More recently he has created scores for over 90 films including Love, Hate & Propaganda (CBC), Geologic Journey (The Nature of Things), My Toxic Baby (Storyline), Diamond Road (Kensington), earning a Golden Sheaf Award and multiple Gemini Nominations in the process. For more info, go to www.kenmyhr.com.

Daniel Pellerin  -  Post Production Sound

Daniel Pellerin is one of Canada’s finest recording and re-recording mixer/engineers, sound designers and music supervisors.  He has worked with a who’s who of Canadian filmmakers such as Atom Egoyan, Clement Virgo, James Cameron, Shelley Saywell, Min Sook Lee, Michael Kot, Ron Mann and Bruce MacDonald.  He has been nominated for 10 Genie Awards of which he has won three (Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, Istvan Szabo’s Sunshine and Clement Virgo’s Love Come Down).  He has been nominated for 16 Gemini Awards, for which he has won two (Musicians in Exile and Under the Piano). He has worked extensively with Storyline Entertainment and he was the supervising mixer for Min Sook Lee’s Tiger Spirit.