Last night at around 11:30 pm or so, we clicked the submit button on the California Council for the Humanities Production Grant. Weeks of work on the application - the proposal itself, DVDs of sample work and trailer, securing advisors and mentors, securing a letter of interest from KQED’s Truly CA, revising resumés, full project budget, and more - came to a close.

And it felt great. And here’s hoping.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to provide bios for our Humanities Experts (required by the CCH grant), as well as our documentary mentors. Here they are, in all their glory:

HUMANITIES ADVISORS

Eric Holt-Giménez assumed the position of executive director of FoodFirst/Institute for Food and Development Policy in 2006. Eric is the author of the latest Food First Book, Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture, which chronicles the development of this movement in Mexico and Central America over two and a half decades. He has also worked for the Bank Information Center in Washington, D.C. where he served as the Latin America Program Manager. In 2002, after spending three decades in Central America, Eric returned to the University of California at Santa Cruz to complete a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies.

Jessica Prentice is an author, professional chef, and co-owner/operator of Three Stone Hearth, the first Community Supported Kitchen in the country. She brings together creativity and imagination with a deep respect for traditional cuisine and time-honored culinary practices. Through her work, she seeks to provide a model for how communities can feed themselves in a way that is satisfying and health-supportive on all levels: delicious, environmentally responsible, and grounded in wise nourishing traditions. Most recently, Jessica has worked as the Director of Education Programs at the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, where she conducted Farm Tours of some of Northern California’s most ecologically oriented farms and ranches. She has also taught live cooking demos, and hosted panel discussions around issues of sustainable agriculture. 

DOCUMENTARY MENTORS

Les Blank is a renowned documentary filmmaker and founder of Flower Films. He is primarily known for his portraits of traditional American musicians, as well as eccentric and poetic pieces about subjects as varied as tea (All in this Tea), garlic (Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers), gap-toothed women (Gap-Toothed Women), and the filming of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (Burden of Dreams). His films are generally about people who, in many ways, live at the fringes of society. He has won numerous awards, including the 1982 British Academy Award for Best Documentary, the 1985 Sundance Special Jury Award, the 1996 Sinking Creek Best of Festival – and in 1990 he was awarded the American Film Institute’s Maya Deren Award for outstanding lifetime achievement as an independent filmmaker. 

Dan Noyes is a journalist and Secretary for the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley. In 1977, Noyes co-founded the CIR along with Lowell Bergman and David Weir, in an effort to elevate the quality of in-depth investigative reporting being done by the major news outlets. Dan’s work has appeared in the New York Times, PBS Frontline, 60 Minutes, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and Mother Jones. He developed three CIR documentary projects on illicit gun trading, as well as CIR’s first TV story for ABC’s 20/20 newsmagazine, that, in 1979, exposed how the fundraising arm of the United Nations’ International Year of the Child was a front for gunrunning and drug smuggling. 

Deborah Kaufman is an award-winning documentary producer, director, and writer. Her films include Thirst, Secrets of Silicon Valley, and Blacks and Jews, which premiered at Sundance in 1997. She has served as Director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, which she also founded, and has served on the Board of the California Council for the Humanities, Amnesty International USA, and the New Israel Fund. She is also a California Bar-Certified Lawyer and graduate of the University of California Hastings College of Law.