Michael W. King

(Producer/Director)

Mr. King has had an incredibly successful career in filmmaking worldwide including numerous award-winning documentaries. His projects have tackled powerful and resonating social and cultural issues such as youth and gang violence, high school literacy, African-American History, and the Holocaust.

In addition to a BA in Government from Connecticut College Michael King has a postgraduate degree from the Amsterdam Academy of Arts in Feature Film Directing (Maurits Binger Film Institute) and an MA in Film Studies from the University of Amsterdam. He is a former member of the International Documentary Association and a current member of the Director Guild of America. He’s the recipient of the 2010 Connecticut College’s Harriet Buescher Lawrence ’34 Prize for his lifework in film and television.

Mr. King has produced, directed, and written documentaries, music videos, and feature films for the last 30 years.  In 1991, his MTV music video on Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech “I Have A Dream” received national recognition.  He later produced, directed, and wrote a PBS documentary in 1995 called “Making A Living the African-American Experience” featuring Joe Morton.

In 1999, his PBS documentary on ‘Youth Violence in America’ entitled “Bangin” won the 1999 Emmy and International Television and Video Association Awards for ‘Best Documentary’ and ‘Best Editing’ featuring Chuck D of Public Enemy. In 2007, he directed and produced a feature documentary entitled “Rapping with Shakespeare” at Crenshaw High School in South Central Los Angeles and was nominated for the 2008 A&E Spotlight Indie Filmmaker Award. In addition, he was the executive producer for an American Film Institute film, “Crenshaw Nights,”starring Vondie Curtis- Hall and Judd Nelson.

In 2011 King produced and directed “The Rescuers,” an international feature documentary featuring world-renown historian Sir Martin Gilbert, Stephanie Nyombayire, anti-genocide activist, and HRH King Charles III about 13 non-Jewish righteous diplomats that risked their lives, families, and careers, and went against their countries policies to save tens of thousands of Jews and other people during World II.  The documentary was nominated for the 2012 NAACP Image Award for Best Documentary and awarded Switzerland’s Carl Lutz’s Medal of Freedom Mr. King is currently filming the The Rescuers – Last Chance Project the remaining 35 righteous diplomats that weren’t covered in the first documentary. The film is in partnership with USC/Shoah Foundation and United State Department on Holocaust Issues.

Mr. King is an inspirational and motivating public speaker with respect to the holocaust, genocide, and other cultural issues in the world and he can provide perspective from almost a half century of experience all over the western world. When not making documentaries, King is an Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University, Sidney Poitier New American Film School, and is on the Board of Directors for GreasePaint Theater, located in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Details of Michael King Productions films can be found at MichaelKingProductionsllc.com.

Joyce D. Mandell

(Executive Producer/Producer)

Joyce Mandell is a successful businesswoman and philanthropist. She and her husband, Andy, co-founded Data-Mail, Inc., a direct mail marketing company that has operated as a family-owned business.

Joyce is a passionate documentary film producer, recently working with Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Michael King and world-renowned Historian Sir Martin Gilbert. The film, The Rescuers, premiered at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, winning multiple awards, and has been screened worldwide. Today, it resides with the prestigious humanitarian and educational organizations: Facing History and USC/Shoah Foundation.

Joyce has many philanthropic pursuits, focusing on community, education, and medical research. She is a benefactor of the Mandell Jewish Community Center; the Mandell Center for comprehensive MS care and Neuroscience Research, located at Mt Sinai Hospital; and the Mandell Academy for Teachers at the Connecticut Science Center,
Joyce is a member of the Board of Directors of St Francis Hospital and Medical Center and serves on the Strategic Plan and Medical Affairs Committees.

Joyce supports many institutions: the Boys and Girls Clubs of Hartford; Kingswood-Oxford School; The Greater Hartford Arts Council; The Bushnell; and Beth El Temple. The outstanding Film program, located at the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the newly formed Hartford Youth Orchestra, inspired by Rabbi Donna Berman and the Charter Oak Cultural Center, have become a model for underserved youth in urban cities such as Flint, Michigan. The HYO offers young Hartford residents the opportunity to add music to their lives at no cost to them or their families.

Joyce’s family remains her top priority. She lives in West Hartford with her husband, Andy, and has a loving relationship with her three children, their spouses, and eight grandchildren.

Irena Steinfeldt

(Historian/Narrator)

Irena Steinfeldt was born in Jerusalem and graduated from Hebrew University.

She worked with French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann on his monumental documentary “Shoah,” and in 1994 joined Yad Vashem, where she worked at the International School for Holocaust Studies, developing educational materials, coordinating seminars for educators from abroad, lecturing on Holocaust education, and participating in international workshops and conferences in Israel and abroad.

From 2001 to 2007, she served as the executive assistant of Yad Vashem’s chairman, and in March 2007 was appointed as director of Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations Department, where she was responsible for leading research into rescue cases, the coordination of the work of the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous as well as the creation of an online database of the Righteous Among the Nations, and various outreach programs, including exhibitions, educational programs, and publications.
Steinfeldt retired from Yad Vashem in June 2018.

Steinfeldt is the author of the educational unit “How Was It Humanly Possible? A Study of Perpetrators and Bystanders During the Holocaust” (Yad Vashem 2002) and co-authored an interactive multimedia program titled “Into That Dark Night” (Yad Vashem 2003). She is the co-editor of “The Holocaust and the Christian World” (Kuperard 2000, Continuum 2002, to be re-published in 2019 by Paulist Press) and “Our Living Legacy” (Yad Vashem 2003).

Tarina Van Den Driessche

(Director of Photography)

In 2001, Tarina Van Den Driessche received a BFA in Cinematography from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

It was in this setting that she developed her passion for visual storytelling through the use of camera movement and creative lighting. Van Den Driessche’s artistic efforts were rewarded in 2000 when she received a cinematography internship with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, then again in 2001 when she was selected to participate in the Sixth International Student DOP Workshop in Budapest, Hungry. These internships gave her the opportunity to study under renowned cinematographers James Chressanthis, ASC, Laszlo Kovacs, ASC, and Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC.

Van Den Driessche first discovered her passion for the visual arts in 1995, when she became a Combat Photographer in the United States Army Reserves. While serving 11 years as a camera operator in the military, she developed an ability to shoot in any adverse environment, whether it be on land, air, or sea. One of the highlights of her military career was a nine-month deployment to Bosnia, where her primary mission was to provide the Pentagon with visual documentation of all U.S. Army activities within the region.

Van Den Driessche has lived in Los Angeles since 2004. During that period, she has been the Director of Photography on 14 feature films, as well as on numerous documentaries and commercials. She has photographed noted film stars Armand Assante, Ed Lauter (“Blind Pass”), Steve Carell, Danny DeVito, Jason Alexander (“Don’t Give”), Elle Fanning, Danny Glover (“P.N.O.K.”), and Michael Madison (“Cosmic Radio”). She has also received two Best Cinematography awards at independent film festivals for “Pretty Rosebud” (2014) and “Lost in a Crowd” (2016).

In more recent years, Van Den Driessche has worked on television series, shooting two years on the documentary television series “The Art Of,”
an original series for Ovation TV. She even had the opportunity to combine her love for travel and food when shooting throughout the world on Andrew Zimmerman’s “Delicious Destinations.” She has been the Director of Photography for food (“Food Paradise”), true crime (“Up and Vanished”), and survival (“Naked and Afraid XL”) television series.

Due to her diverse background, Van Den Driessche can effortlessly transition from a handheld docu style to a studio setup on a dolly track. She believes that whether it’s a documentary or narrative film, an image is most powerful when it evokes a feeling, and that a cinematographer must use whatever knowledge they have to bring emotion to the screen, and in turn, to the audience.

George Artope

(Editor)

George Artope, a Chicago native, was born into the creative field. With both parents working in television, he gained exposure to the production and post-production process early.

Traveling frequently to Los Angeles and Europe as a youth provided him with opportunities to learn and work on commercial sets. He studied filmmaking at the University of Southern California’s (USC) School of Cinema-Television. Upon graduation, he began working in production on TV Shows, Music Videos, and Commercials before realizing his passion for editing. Editing shorts led to documentaries and feature films. Artope worked at Cucoloris Films in 2002 and left in 2004 to create his editing company, Eye Edit, a creative freelance editorial company located in downtown Los Angeles. Artope feels that editing is the backbone of film, and his specialties lie in storytelling, emotion, and music sensibility.

Since 2004, Artope has built up an impressive reel of independent films, commercials, documentaries, and music videos. His films have garnered many awards including a 2021 Emmy “Winner” for “Hollywood’s Architect.” He continues to enjoy collaborating with filmmakers to bring compelling stories to audience worldwide. .

Melissa Holt

(2nd Unit DP)

Melissa Holt grew up in New York’s Hudson Valley making Super 8 “Mr. Bill” movies with her uncle. She later attended Drexel University and, through a co-op program, PA’d on Terry Gilliam’s “Twelve Monkeys.”

This experience solidified her love for filmmaking and she moved to L.A. to pursue cinematography at AFI. Through the school’s independent study program, Holt learned cinematography, dramaturgy and the European style of filmmaking (making movies with limited budgets and resources) from DP Slawomir Idziak (“Bleu,” “Black Hawk Down”) in Switzerland.

Holt is known for her cinematography, camera operating, and still photography work in film and television. Her film,“Watercolors” premiered at HBO’s Outfest, where she won for Best Cinematography. Her other DP work includes comedic sketches for “Chelsea Lately,”  “The Weekly Show,” and “Jimmy Kimmel,” and SFX for the upcoming David Lynch film, “The Happy Worker.” In 2017, Holt won an Emmy Certificate for her DP work on “Entertainment Tonight.”

In addition to her scripted work, Holt has DP’d documentaries for Biography, PBS, ESPN and theatrical release. A documentary that she shot additional cinematography for, “No Subtitles Necessary” was nominated for the Palme D’Or at Cannes and short listed for the Academy Awards. She directed and DP’d interviews and musical segments on location in Cambodia for the documentary “Winds of Angkor” and DP’d “Until They’re Gone,” about landmines and their removal.

Now a budding film director, Holt recently wrapped the music video “Desperate (On and On),” by Serious and the Girls, which is available on most streaming services, including Music Choice and MTV worldwide. She continues to operate and DP on TV shows, and recently wrapped shooting for a Belgium documentary about social media influencers. She and her husband, with several other industry colleagues, have opened an Enhanced Environments stage in NYC called “The Car Stage.” As a side gig, Holt manages two rock and oll bands: Serious and the Girls and Theadora Z. and The Tropical Hookers.

Keegan Luther

(Special Projects)

Keegan Luther is a young, up and coming filmmaker who is passionate about telling inspirational, human stories. He has wanted to pursue filmmaking all of his life.

From co-founding a now award-winning video production club at his high school to having two of his films in the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival, Luther has made that dream a reality. He attended Arizona State University and pursued a degree in Film and Media Production. While at school, he directed 10 award-winning short films, worked with Emmy-winning creator Kristin Atwell, became an associate producer on a new unscripted show for Hoplite Entertainment, and worked in development at Hutch Parker Entertainment. When he graduated from ASU, he created an entertainment company with his fellow alumni called Random Stuff Entertainment. The company provides the next generations of filmmakers a platform to show off their early work and gives them promotion and support to make their dreams come true. Luther’s goal was to give those who come after him the opportunities he did not have.

Luther is also an avid actor and writer, including having a play of his published by Samuel French Publishing. His passion for telling stories surrounding the triumph of the human spirit led him to “The Rescuers,” and he is currently in charge of Special Projects on the “Rescuers – Last Chance Project.” Recently he has been a part of music videos and directed a commercial for Unifimoney, as well as a part of John Mader’s upcoming documentary about space health and the journey to Mars.

Christopher Melendrez

(Assistant to the Producer)

Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Christopher Melendrez has always held an interest in the arts, specifically music and film, and in the filmmaking process.

He went to Arizona State University, studying Film and Media Production – Producing, and graduated summa cum laude in the spring of 2020.

During his time at ASU, he worked on various film projects, both for school and for himself, and in various roles. He helped revamp the Maroon and Gold Entertainment Club at ASU, taking on social media roles, then taking over the role of secretary. Melendrez produced three award-winning short films his senior year at ASU, including a western that was shot in Old Town Tucson.

Recent projects since graduating from ASU include multiple music videos with local Phoenix bands, a couple of different shorts, and working on “Rescuers – Last Chance Project.”. Melendrez plans to work on narrative features in the future and looks to create works that can inspire and entertain.