Creator, Writer, Producer email: valarie@dwf-film.com
Valarie Kaur is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, advocate, and public speaker. A third-generation Sikh American, she uses strategic storytelling to advance social action campaigns on racial justice, immigration reform, religious pluralism, and gender equality. Her critically acclaimed documentary film Divided We Fall (2008) on hate crimes after Sept 11th has inspired national grassroots dialogue.
Valarie has clerked on the Senate Judiciary Committee, traveled to Guantanamo to report on the military commissions, and advocated on behalf of Latino residents in a campaign against racial profiling in East Haven, CT. She has been invited to speak on her work in 200 U.S. cities and media outlets such as CNN, NPR, the New York Times, and the BBC.
Valarie earned bachelors degrees in religion and international relations at Stanford University, a master’s in theological studies at Harvard Divinity School, and a law degree at Yale Law School, where she teaches visual advocacy as founding director of the Yale Visual Law Project.
In 2011, she joined Auburn Theological Seminary as the director of Groundswell, a broad-based initiative to spark and empower the multifaith movement for justice.
Valarie has been called “a woman of extraordinary courage and vision,” an“inspiring millennial,” and “one of the most exceptional speakers/thinkers“in the emerging generation of public intellectuals. She takes all as compliments that reflect a superb team of collaborators and thinkers in each of her projects.
Director, Producer email: sharat@dwf-film.com
Sharat Raju has won more than twenty awards as a filmmaker since graduating with honors from The American Film Institute’s renowned directing program. His Masters Thesis film, American Made, quickly became an international phenomenon as it tore through the film festival circuit in 2004-05, winning awards at Tribeca Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest, AFI Fest, and from BAFTA. American Made aired on PBS’s Emmy Award-winning program “Independent Lens” from 2006-2010.
Sharat followed up his thesis short by directing and producing Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath, a five-year project that reunited the core team from his thesis film.
In 2007 Sharat was selected as a Film Independent Directing Fellow and then earned a spot in ABC Network’s prestigious Director’s Guild of America Directing Fellowship through 2009. He spent time learning to direct episodic television by shadowing on the sets of Desperate Housewives, Cavemen, October Road, Boston Legal, Greek, and Samantha Who. In 2010, he was invited to the Berlinale Talent Campus as an up-and-coming filmmaker from the US.
Sharat’s most recent film Worker Drone launched in April 2011 as an episode of “FutureStates” – a PBS-funded science fiction anthology series – that he wrote, directed, edited, and co-produced. Worker Drone explores the consequences of outsourcing war and the video-gaming of modern conflict.
Originally from Chicago and a graduate of the University of Michigan, Sharat lives in New Haven, Connecticut where he serves as Filmmaker-in-Residence and Teaching Fellow at the Yale Visual Law Project – an initiative he co-founded at Yale Law School that brings together documentary filmmaking and legal scholarship into a new form of visual knowledge production. He helped shoot, edit, and produce two films, Alienation and Stigma – both of which deal with legal aspects of racial profiling in immigration and in stop-and-frisk practices in Black and Latino neighborhoods of New York City.
Sharat began his career as an assistant to legendary casting director Mali Finn, learning performance and directing while working on a variety films including The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, and 8 Mile.
Tour Director email: jodi@dwf-film.com
Jodi graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Anthropology in 2001. Since that time, her peripatetic ways have led to many adventures in the U.S. and abroad. She interned at the Chicago Humanities Festival in the autumn of 2002 before beginning a year-long tour of service with AmeriCorps*NCCC in 2003.
Much travel and many stories later, Jodi now lives in Princeton, New Jersey. She worked as a research assistant on Divided We Fall, was a production associate on Jonna’s Body, please hold, and has appeared in numerous short films that you will never see.
Jodi presently serves as the project manager for Groundswell at Auburn Theological Seminary.
Cinematographer
Matthew is a Los Angeles based cinematographer whose works include dramatic features and shorts, documentary features, television, music videos and commercials. Matthew’s recent credits include Cheyenne, a high-definition series for MTV, The Red State Diaries for Comedy Central starring comedian Lewis Black, and The Callback, a dramatic feature.
A native of Vermont, Matthew’s undergraduate work was in film studies at the University of Rochester and University of Paris III. He earned an M.F.A. in cinematography from the American Film Institute in 2003. At AFI, he photographed his thesis film, American Made, which went on to win numerous national and international awards and was shown on PBS’s Independent Lens in May 2006.
In making Divided We Fall, Matt worked with First Camera Assistant Don Presley.
Director of Research email: jessica@dwf-film.com
Jessica graduated from Stanford University in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in international relations and Latin American studies, where she led anti-poverty and peace activism on campus. Following graduation, she worked for a year through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps as a legal assistant to elderly Latino immigrants in San Francisco.
Jessica worked for two years as a lobbyist with NETWORK, a Catholic Social Justice Lobby in Washington DC, where she advocated for just immigration policy, affordable health care for all, and reduction of US military aid to Latin America. Jessica has completed a joint degree in law and social work at Fordham University in New York City.
In making Divided We Fall, Jessica worked with Research Assistants Allesandro Bresba, Ilina Chaudhuri, Jodi Elliott, Simran (Andrea) Gill, Mandeep Singh Gill, Steve Singh Gulati, Rachel Messer, Rekha Radhakrishnan, Sadaf Siddique, and Ayala Tamir.
Jessica blogs regularly for Groundswell.
Composer
Eric is a graduate of Harvard University and the Film Scoring Certificate Program at UCLA. His composing credits include The Skywalkers, Just, and Divided We Fall.
Eric works as laboratory manager for the former President of California Technical Institute and Nobel laureate David Baltimore, whose lab was recently awarded a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant for novel therapies against HIV and other diseases.
Divided We Fall is Eric’s first feature length film score.
Production Manager
After graduating from Brigham Young University in Utah with degrees in film production and business management, Marcus worked for PBS television in Utah and then at the newsmagazine Dateline NBC in New York. He earned an MFA in producing at the American Film Institute.
Marcus created and operated the highly successful online casting company, HollywoodCasting.net. He recently finished production on the feature documentary, Megarexia.