The Filmmakers

Kerry Candaele, Producer, Writer and Director
Battle Hymns Productions, LLC

Candele was born in Vancouver, Canada and grew up in Lompoc, a small working-class town on California’s central coast.

He has produced and directed several documentaries, including Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and Iraq For Sale for Brave New Films. He has also collaborated with his brother on the documentary, A League of Their Own, about their mother’s experience in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. This documentary was later turned into a blockbuster hit by Columbia Pictures with the same title starring Tom Hanks, Madonna, and Geena Davis.

His latest film is Following The Ninth: In The Footsteps of Beethoven’s Final Symphony, which follows the impact of the Ninth across the globe. A work in progress, For The Love of Music, captures the experience of thirty young conductors who have come to the middle of Maine to both learn their craft, and to discover themselves while learning how to communicate music through a baton, and most importantly, through themselves. Kerry has also made films for the Raiford Rogers Dance Company of Los Angeles, the Festival of Sacred Music (UCLA), and other organizations.

Kerry attended California State University Chico, U C Santa Barbara, and Columbia University where he was a Richard Hofstadter Fellow and President’s Fellow in U.S. history. He has also worked all over the world (including China, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Jordan, South Africa, Gaza, and the West Bank) for the Democracy Council www.democracycouncil.org, an NGO dedicated to peaceful reform in developing nations.

Kerry is the author of two books on United States history, and has written articles and opinion pieces for both scholarly and popular publications such as USA Today, Symphony Magazine, Irish America Magazine, and the Huffington Post. Having made music making a passionate hobby, he has written and released two CDs for Battle Hymns Records, and has produced a CD for Western Beat, a collection of Los Angeles-based singer-songwriters www.battleymnsrecords.com

Kirt Eftekhar – Executive Producer, Worldwide Distributor

Eftekhar is the CEO and founder of Venice, California based, Ocule Films, a distributor of high quality fiction and nonfiction programming to worldwide broadcasters, including CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, SHOWTIME NETWORKS, USA NETWORKS, HBO, VH1,DREAMWORKS, LIONS GATE FILMS, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INTERNATIONAL, DISCOVERY NETWORKS, CHANNEL 4, FIVE TELEVISION, BSKYB,  ZDF, FRANCE 5, NHK, SVT, SBS and STAR TV. In addition, Eftekhar has produced and developed many projects with top Hollywood talent including John Badham, Bruce Beresford, and Forest Whitaker. Prior to starting Ocule, Eftekhar served as Vice-President of Distribution and Production at Keller Entertainment Group and also as Vice-President of Acquisitions at Pop.com/Dreamworks.

In addition, Eftekhar has teamed up with Richard Abramowitz, the renowned indie film distribution consultant to launch a new specialized independent film distribution company, Area23a.  Area23a will be a bi-coastal independently owned company focusing on event driven documentaries, with a special emphasis on social issue and music performance pieces.

The new distribution model will offer new ways for films to reach audiences across the country, receiving theatrical exposure through festivals, as well as art-house, cinematheque, university and museum bookings. The company will initiate a “value added cinema” exhibition circuit with a mission to expand the relationship between filmmakers and audiences throughout the country.

Oliver Herder-Executive Producer.

Mr. Herder has produced several films as the CEO of B-Side Films, a film company located in Hamburg, Germany.

Ali Eckert-Executive Producer.

Mr. Eckert is a painter, graphic artist and film maker. He and Oliver Herder operate B-Side Films, a Hamburg-based film company.

Jeffrey Abelson-Editor

is an editor, writer, and documentary filmmaker, whose last PBS film was Drawing Fire, about three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Paul Conrad (narrated by Tom Brokaw).

He started his career producing, directing, and editing over 50 high profile music videos tied into major movies (resulting in eight #1 MTV hits). He pioneered and popularized the hybrid ‘movie/music-video’ format (from Ghostbusters to Terminator-2), resulting in this dual-use art form becoming a staple of movie marketing campaigns — while at the same time triggering the trend of major feature film directors crossing over into music-video — by producing movie/music-videos with Taylor Hackford, Brian DePalma, Ivan Reitman, Garry Marshall, Tobe Hooper, and others.

In recent years, he’s been developing music-driven movie and television projects with artists ranging from Dylan to Diddy (at HBO, Showtime, Disney, and elsewhere) — while also producing, writing, and editing documentaries.

Aside from his artistic endeavors, Abelson is also a political activist of a rather different kind.  He’s recently launched a non-profit project called Song Of A Citizen — in collaboration with an array of prominent thinkers and artists — to produce innovative web videos and other new media to try to spark a radical upgrade in what it means to be a fully engaged and effective citizen in modern times.  Abelson also writes regularly about this subject as a contributing blogger to the Huffington Post — with other pieces published in the LA Times, NY Times, and major national major blogs.

But his first love is music, and his main medium is film.  With Following The Ninth’s ambitious mix of transcendent music, intoxicating visuals, and inspiring themes of ordinary people using art to overcome political repression, and using the 9th to cope with tragedy and celebrate the resulting joy, Abelson in the edit chair feels like home sweet home.

Courtney Messenbaugh-Producer

After spending years in the world of finance and investment banking, Courtney finally followed her passions and has been writing, fundraising for a variety of political and nonprofit causes, film, and publishing. She regularly contributes to http://MotherProof.com as an automotive journalist, and as such has gained an improbable love for racing high-performance cars around the track. She has entered the world of book publishing and is the Publicist for the soon-to-be-released book Hard Money. Courtney has long been a music enthusiast and Following The Ninth immediately grabbed her imagination.

Coutney attended Vanderbilt University, where she studied French and Business Administration. She also has a Masters degree  in Public Affairs from the University of Colorado, spending most of her time there studying the catalysts and effects of international economic development.

Courtney lives in Colorado with her husband, two young children and one very old, but very sweet, dog.

Jody Becker-Producer

Jody Becker is an award-winning documentary film, radio and newspaper journalist. Her work has been featured in the New York Times.com and the Atlantic.com. Her most recent documentary film airs this spring on PBS, was a 2009 selection at nine festivals, and continues to screen at venues around the world. As an an on-air reporter and producer at Chicago Public Radio for a decade, her work was frequently heard on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as the highly acclaimed business show, Marketplace. Jody’s reporting in the public interest was recognized with a distinguished Knight Fellowship at Yale Law School, where she earned a Master’s Degree in Law.  Jody also holds degrees from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Michigan. She lives in Santa Monica, CA.,  with her family.

Chris Bottoms, Director of Photography

Chris Bottoms has several decades of film and video production experience in New York, Los Angeles, and across the globe. After attending The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, Chris has shot numerous feature films, commercials, music videos and documentaries, and trained under the legendary cinematographers Matt Mahurin, Crescenzo Notarile, and Matthew LeBatique. He is a member of The International Cinematographers Guild.

Nick Higgins, Director of Photography

Nick has spent the best part of the last three decades living everywhere except his Scottish birthplace; most notably Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Brazil and now LA. Along the way he picked up Portuguese, an AFI Masters in Cinematography and an ITVS Independent Lens award for a film he made with his film-making partner in crime aka DOUBLE DOG FILMS director Kristina Robbins. Nicks camera work in Vietnam and Mali for the feature documentary A POWERFUL NOISE premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2008. Other highlights include the National Geographic’s MY BRILLIANT BRAIN. Robert Greenwalds IRAQ FOR SALE, Lonely Planet’s DOWNTOWN LA, a series of documentary style TV commercials for THE HEAVYWEIGHTS advertising agency and other credits on the BBC, PBS, TLC and the Discovery Channel.