THE PRODUCTION TEAM
GRAHAM TOWNSLEY - PRODUCER
EPISODE 1
Graham Townsley (Shining Red Productions) is an award-winning filmmaker and anthropologist. His films have been shown on PBS, National Geographic TV, the BBC, Channel 4, ARTE, and the Discovery Channel. In 2016, his two-hour PBS film Of Ants and Men about famed biologist E.O Wilson garnered awards and critical acclaim.
Graham started his career working on ethnographic films for the BBC and established himself in the documentary world with films like The Shaman and His Apprentice, based on his own fieldwork with a Peruvian Amazon indigenous tribe, and From the Heart of the World, about the Kogi Indians of the Sierra Nevada, Colombia.
LLEWELLYN SMITH - DIRECTOR
EPISODE 2
Llew (BlueSpark Collaborative) founded Vital Pictures, the award-winning independent Boston-based documentary company, in 2004 and served as President until 2012 when he co-founded BlueSpark Collaborative. Llew is an Emmy and WGA nominated, and duPont-Columbia, Peabody, and Hollywood Black Film Festival Best Documentary award-winning filmmaker, among other honors.
Llew was co-executive producer for the PBS series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? – a look at the surprising impact social and economic conditions have in determining health and longevity.
KELLY THOMSON - PRODUCER
EPISODE 2
Kelly Thomson (BlueSpark Collaborative) produces and edits documentary films with a focus on race, science, religion, and social equity including the Emmy-nominated, American Denial, DuPont award-winning Unnatural Causes, Raising Of America, and Herskovits At The Heart Of Blackness.
She most recently produced Poisoned Water for NOVA, winner of the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award, and nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy. She is currently directing her second feature documentary, Die Before You Die, which unveils female leadership in Islamic mysticism.
LAURENS GRANT - PRODUCER
EPISODE 3
Laurens Grant (Curious Child Films) is a 3-time Emmy and Peabody award-winning filmmaker, a Sundance Institute filmmaker fellow, and a voting member of both the Television Academy (Emmys) and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – Documentary Branch (Oscars).
Grant produced the Peabody and 3-time Primetime Emmy award-winning documentary Freedom Riders, both directed by Stanley Nelson and broadcast on PBS. She directed the Emmy-winning documentary Jesse Owens, the first full-length documentary about the African American Olympian, which aired on PBS’ American Experience.
DENISE DIIANNI - SERIES CREATOR AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Denise DiIanni leads research and development for GBH National Programming. Within this capacity, she spearheads cross-platform productions and new limited series for PBS primetime including projects such as Sacred Journeys, America After Ferguson, America by the Numbers, Point Taken, Third Rail with OZY, Mysteries of Mental Illness, Future of Work, and many more.
Earlier in her career, DiIanni was an award-winning producer, writer, and director for over two dozen documentaries for the NOVA Science Unit, as well as a Senior Producer and Executive Producer on limited series.
DiIanni was the founder of the WGBH Lab, the Filmmakers in Residence Program, and the ten-year multimedia initiative, Eye on Education.
LAURIE DONNELLY - CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Laurie Donnelly is the director of Lifestyle Programming and Executive Producer of New Program Development for GBH Studio Six. Laurie is a Peabody, James Beard, and Emmy and award winning Executive Producer who has worked with WGBH for decades on a broad range of national public television series, including, most recently, Mysteries of Mental Illness; Future of Work; H2O: The Molecule that Made us; Rare: Creatures of the Photo Ark with National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore, Lidia Celebrates America with Chef Lidia Bastianich, Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler, and I’ll Have What Phil’s Having with Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal.
Laurie has also created and launched 15 original national Public television series. She is also the Executive Producer for several ongoing award-winning national Public Television lifestyle series: Moveable Feast with Relish; Weekends with Yankee; Simply Ming with Celebrity Chef Ming Tsai.
SALME LÓPEZ SABINA - DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION
Salme López Sabina has led production for several groundbreaking and critically acclaimed films for public television including Latin Music USA, FRONTLINE, American Experience’s co-production of God in America, and the six-hour series Latino Americans, which aired Fall 2013.
Honing her craft within news and documentaries over the last ten years, Salme began her career in journalism where she worked for the most widely read newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico El Nuevo Día. Salme was born in Havana, Cuba and immigrated to the United States in 1992.