Peace Productions Founder JACKIE RIVET-RIVER
began her film career in Chicago at the Fred A. Niles Communications
Center (now Harpo Productions) and was the first female in the Midwest
Chapter of the Director's Guild of America.
Among the projects she has written, produced and directed are: Where
Is Dead? for Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Films, that won a
Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival and 12
additional awards nationally; Planned Parenthood's 50th
Anniversary, dozens of half-hour specials for NBC and ABC television
that included latchkey children, battered women, programs for persons
with AIDS, civil rights for gays and lesbians, protesting the School of
the Americas, and children of war; an ABC-TV Network
special for the National Council of Churches Someone is Listening:
Teens From Crisis to Caring with host Walter Payton; an anti-nuclear
film If The World Goes Away Where Will the Children Play? narrated by
James Earl Jones with an original score by Martin Rubenstein played by
the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Peace Like A River, aired on PBS-TV
with hostess Ellen Burstyn and others.
In addition, she is committed to hiring women and minorities, an ideal that remains a priority in her organization.
|
JOHN LYONS
is an EMMY® award winning documentary filmmaker. A graduate of
Chicago's Columbia College, he has produced, directed, shot and edited
films in various areas of the humanities, often taking him around the
country and the world. The first film he co-produced and co-directed, Too Flawed to Fix: The Illinois Death Penalty Experience, completed in 2001, was widely acclaimed and the recipient of several awards. He is also an accomplished photographer.
In
addition to his professional work, he also has a long history of
advocacy for human rights. For several years, John served as the
Illinois State Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator for Amnesty
International, often speaking around the state and country on death
penalty and human rights issues. He also served on Amnesty's National
Steering Committee and the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death
Penalty Board of Directors. In 2007 he founded Advocate Audio Visual, a
production company that serves the legal defense community. He also
teaches film and video in the Chicago Public School system. He lives in
Chicago with his wife Jessica and daughter Catie.
|
|