THE FILMMAKERS
DOUG BLOCK (Director, producer, camera) is a New York-based filmmaker whose work includes some of the most acclaimed feature documentaries of the past two decades.
Doug’s previous film, 51 Birch Street, was named one of the 10 Best Films of the Year by the New York Times, The Chicago Sun-Times and the Ebert & Roeper Show, and it was selected as one of the outstanding documentaries of the year by the National Board of Review, the Boston Society of Film Critics and Rolling Stone Magazine. The film garnered numerous awards, including Best Overall Program at the 2008 Banff Television Awards. 51 Birch Street screened at dozens of international film festivals, followed by a 9-month U.S. theatrical release. It aired on HBO, ZDF/Arte, Channel Four and many other stations worldwide.
Doug’s first film, The Heck With Hollywood! screened at over two dozen international film festivals before being released theatrically in the U.S. by Original Cinema. The film was broadcast on PBS and Bravo in the U.S., and throughout the world. His second feature was the Emmy-nominated film Home Page, a look at the early days of online culture. Called “Groundbreaking” by Roger Ebert, the film screened at the Sundance and Rotterdam Festivals and was broadcast on HBO, IFC and in Europe after a theatrical release.
His credits as producer include: Silverlake Life (Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Peabody, Prix Italia), Jupiter’s Wife (Sundance Special Jury Award, Emmy), Paternal Instinct (Best Feature Film – NY Gay & Lesbian Film Festival), A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory (top doc prizes at the Berlin and Tribeca film festivals) and The Edge of Dreaming, which aired on POV earlier this year. He is currently executive producer of the 2011 Sundance award-winner Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles.
Doug is also the founder and co-host of The D-Word, a popular international online discussion forum for documentary professionals.
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LORI CHEATLE (Producer) founded Hard Working Movies to produce innovative films with great stories, with a focus on feature documentaries. The films that she’s produced or directed have screened theatrically, in festivals and on TV in over 50 countries, and have been broadcast on HBO, PBS, Showtime, The Sundance Channel, Starz, Channel 4 UK, the BBC, CBC, Canal+, and other stations worldwide.
Lori produced Doug Block’s personal documentary 51 Birch Street, which was one of the best-reviewed films of 2006. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and screened at top international film festivals before playing for 9 months in US theaters. It was co-produced by HBO and ZDF/arte. The DVD is distributed by Image Entertainment.
Other documentary producing credits include: This Land Is Your Land (also co-directed), distributed by Argot Pictures. This Land screened internationally in theaters, festivals and at large-scale special event screenings. The film was featured in exhibits at Exit Art Gallery, the Silverman Gallery and it was selected for the 2006 Whitney Biennial; Dashiell Hammett. Detective Writer. (dir. Joshua Waletzky) a biography of the author, with David Straithairn, Kathleen Turner, Ring Lardner, Jr. The film was broadcast on American Masters and is distributed by Koch-Lorber Video; Producer and co-Director of From Swastika To Jim Crow (PBS) for Pacific Street Films, which screened at over 200 festival and special screenings, including The National Civil Rights Museum, Lincoln Center and MoMA; Summer in Ivye (dir. Tamar Rogoff/Daisy Wright); and others.
Together with Doug Block, Lori was Consulting Producer on the Emmy Award winning Have You Seen Andy? (dir. Melanie Perkins, for HBO); co-Executive Producer of American Harmony, which was nominated for a 2008 IDA Award for Best Music Documentary; and Supervising Producer of the web-based shorts series Essays in Documentary.
Hard Working Movies is currently producing a variety of projects on subjects ranging from politics to pop culture.
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MAEVE O’BOYLE (Editor) was born in Dublin, Ireland. In 1995 she received an honors degree in English and Drama Studies at Trinity College Dublin. After graduating, she moved to New York City to work in Television and Film Production. Over the next two years she worked her way up to becoming an editor mainly at New York Times Television. Some of her early editing work includes Women Docs for TLC, Declining by Degrees and History Detectives for PBS and Crisis Zone for National Geographic.
In 2004, Maeve took a year out to complete a Masters in Film and Television Production at Dublin City University, where she was awarded first class honors. Subsequent editing work includes Left of the Dial for HBO, which was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy for Best Documentary in 2006. She also worked for Icon Productions on a 10 hour documentary series called Carrier for PBS, a feature documentary entitled Victory over Darkness which premiered at the Heartland Film Festival in 2008 and Frontline: Heat for PBS, which won the 2009 Banff World Television award for best environmental documentary and the 2008 Overseas Press Club Whitman Bassow Award. She recently completed a job traversing the United States for Guardian Films UK, editing short pieces for the Guardian website on the 2008 US Election.
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H. SCOTT SALINAS (Composer) began his music career at the age of twelve playing with reggae and blues bands on the small island of St. Croix in the Unites States Virgin Islands. In 1993, he left his island home to major in music at Princeton University, where he discovered jazz and classical music. After graduating from Princeton University in 1997, he continued his education at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he concentrated in scoring for picture and graduated in 2001.
In 2002, Scott was named Grand Prize Winner in the Turner Classic Movies Young Film Composers Competition and in 2003 Scott moved to Los Angeles, where he has since composed music for over a dozen feature films. His most recent film work includes: Edison, an action thriller starring Kevin Spacey and Morgan Freeman; the Miramax comedy, Just Friends starring Ryan Reynolds and Amy Smart; and Independent Spirit Award Winner, Conventioneers. In addition to his film work, Scott has scored a variety of national commercial campaigns for major clients such as Coke, Sprite, and Phillips. In 2005, he won an AICP award for best musical arrangement of the Olympic theme, Bugler’s Dream, for the city of New York’s 2012 Olympic bid. Scott recently received both the 2007 CLIO and AICP awards for best musical arrangement for the Coca Cola Super Bowl commercial entitled, Videogame and the 2008 Cannes Lion for best use of music for Old Spice, Hungry Like A Bruce. This is the second film Scott has scored for Doug Block and Lori Cheatle, having previously written the score for 51 Birch Street.
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GABRIEL SEDGWICK (Associate Producer) grew up in Stockholm, relocated to Prague to study film at FAMU, and subsequently crossed the Atlantic to pursue a Masters in Film Production in New York. After receiving his degree, Gabriel directed and produced material for SVT, Swedish Television, as well as producing August the First (dir: Lanre Olabisi), a feature-length drama which screened at over 25 film festivals including the South by Southwest Film Festival and The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The film earned top prizes at the Milwaukee Film Festival, San Francisco Black Film Festival, and UrbanWorld Film Festival, as well as receiving an IFP Gotham Award nomination and screening at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
