MEET THE TEAM
Chelsea Hernandez | Director, Producer, EDITOR
Chelsea Hernandez is a 7-time Emmy winning Director, Producer and Editor in the Lone Star Region. These awards acknowledged her work on Arts In Context, a monthly documentary series produced by KLRU-TV, Austin PBS. Chelsea has directed and produced various feature and short documentaries including See the Dirt, which won Best Short Documentary at the 2013 Austin Film Festival. The film screened at multiple festivals across the country and internationally at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. She also co-produced the feature-length documentary The Road to Livingston, which was digitally distributed by FilmRise. Building The American Dream is Chelsea's feature directorial debut. She has been selected with the film as part of the Firelight Media Documentary Lab and NALIP Latino Media Market.
marisol Medrano | CO-Producer
Born in Mexico City and a graduate from The University of Texas at Austin, Marisol has produced projects that closely relate to the filmmakers’ cultural diversity and personal interest. She was associate producer for the Student Academy Award Winner Fatakra in 2011. She partnered with Amanda Glaser and her documentary, Hearts and Hooves, winner of the AOL Filmathropy Project Scholarship. Der Vater, a short Nazi film, shot in Bastrop, Texas and spoken in German, was an official selection of the Texas Filmmakers Showcase where it screened in Los Angeles and major Texas cities. Her latest coproduction is a short film, Plane Pretend, which is currently in postproduction. She has also participated in various short films, such as Borderland, recently selected for the Tampere Film Festival and San Diego Latino Film Festival.
ERIK MAUCK | director of photography
Erik Mauck began his career in media as a writer for a daily newspaper in central New Hampshire, before going back to school to study filmmaking. After graduating from Southern Illinois University in 2000, he worked on a documentary for PBS affiliate WSIL covering the life of former US Senator Paul Simon. After moving to Austin, Texas, in 2004, he began producing short documentaries covering the independent film community, which lead to a feature film titled Zombie Girl: The Movie. His film garnered buzz and premiered at Fantastic Fest and Slamdance Film Festival, later being distributed on Netflix and iTunes. His second documentary The Road to Livingston screened at numerous film festivals and was distributed by Film Rise. Most recently, he worked as a camera operated for Hector Galan's national PBD film Children of Giant. Erik works as a freelance camera operator and editor in Texas.
NINA VIZCARRONDO | ASSOCIATE PRODUCER, ASSISTANT EDITOR
Nina Vizcarrondo is a filmmaker and editor whose passion lies in non-fiction storytelling. She has worked on Sundance documentaries, Richard Linklater - Dream is Destiny (2016) and A Place at the Table (2012), and been an assistant editor for oscar-nominated editor Sandra Adair on Richard Linklater's most recent film. In 2015 she was also an additional editor on the documentary A Single Frame, which premiered at Austin Film Festival. She moved from New York to Austin 6 years ago to enroll in UT's film masters program, where she directed and edited narrative and documentary shorts, culminating in her thesis film, A Kind of Wild, a documentary about the raising and hunting of exotic game animals on Texas ranches. She's been hooked on filmmaking since she went Guatemala to conduct research for an undergraduate anthropology thesis, but spent most of her time filming what became the short doc, Maiz. Since then she has jumped at other opportunities to focus on Latin American and immigration issues, serving as co-cinematographer and editor on the documentary Naranjeros, about immigrant citrus workers in Florida and how the broken system strips away their rights.
JOANNA RABIGER | ASSOCIATE PRODUCER, WRITER
Joanna Rabiger is a leading specialist––carving out her niche since 2004––in writing funding proposals for documentary films, including story development and treatments. She works closely with directors, producers and production companies. She is also a gifted outreach strategist, who has written funded proposals for outreach (the Fledgling Fund, Pare Lorentz and MacArthur Foundation) for Andrew Droz Palermo and Tracy Droz Tragos’s award-winning documentary Rich Hill. Other with whom she has closely worked on treatments and proposals to raise funds include: Justin Schein, David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, Hemal Trivedi, Michael Collins and Marty Syjuco, Mat Hames, Mai Iskander, Erika Cohn, Matt Tyrnauer, Marc Smolowitz, Lily Henderson and Marc Silver. Her most successful grant writing project to date was for Michael Collins and Marty Syjuco’s Give Up Tomorrow (POV series: October 4, 2012) for which she is credited as Writing Consultant. For this film her proposals, written over several years, led to funding from: Jerome Foundation, Sundance, Gucci/Tribeca, and Independent Television Service. She also was instrumental in securing the filmmakers a large outreach grant from Bertha Foundation, UK, leading to the first ever Philippine Innocence Project. Joanna Rabiger lives in Austin, Texas and originally hails from London, UK. She is a fluent French speaker and has worked on several French language films.
MARIO TRONCOSO | CONSULTING PRODUCER
Emmy award-winning filmmaker Mario Troncoso is the Producer and Director of the documentary series Arts In Context, produced at KLRUTV, Austin PBS, home of Austin City Limits. Born in Madrid, Spain, he is now based in Austin where he works as a producer for KLRU. With extensive agency and production company experience, Mario has worked on productions across many formats over a period of 10 years ranging from advertising to documentaries and fiction. His film Clowns Never Lie has screened at festivals and showcases across the U.S. and Europe and was picked up for international TV distribution at Festival de Cannes 2012. Mario studied Film Production and Latino Media Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Nathan Felix | Music Composer
Nathan Felix is a self-taught, Mexican-American, composer for film and orchestra based in Austin, Texas. He began as the composer for 13-piece indie-orchestra, The Noise Revival Orchestra. His music has been featured on the BBC, MTV, PBS, NFL, NPR and various other national and international publications. His symphonies have been performed in the USA, Denmark, Portugal, Bulgaria and Mongolia. In 2016, Felix was featured on PBS for work on his 6-Piano project in which he restored six pianos for a concert featuring two new pieces. After the concert, Felix donated the pianos to schools in lower income neighborhoods in Austin. In addition to his recent work with orchestra, Felix served as an official music ambassador for the US in China and composed music for a series of PSA’s for an international campaign by LIVESTRONG to raise cancer awareness in China and Mexico.
Juan A. Izaguirre | Cinematographer
Juan A. Izaguirre is an Austin-based filmmaker that works in both the narrative and documentary realms of filmmaking. His recent projects as cinematographer include KLRU’s Lone Star Emmy Award-winning arts documentary series, Arts in Context, and as both director and cinematographer for the human rights documentary, Para Vivir, and black comedy, Midnight Lovin’. Juan’s work as director and cinematographer focuses on identity and its intersections with ethnicity, sexuality, and gender norms within our communities.
IVETE LUCAS | CINEMATOGRAPHER
Ivete Lucas was born in Brazil and started her filmmaking career in Mexico. At age 23 she received a grant from the Mexican Film Institute to direct her first short film ASMA, which was shortlisted for the Mexican Academy Awards and released nationally in select movie theaters. Since then she has written and directed award winning short films and documentaries, which have screened in festivals, museums and on PBS. She holds an MFA in Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin. Ivete also works as a video artist and is currently producing a feature film for the artist Keren Cytter. Her first feature documentary ONE BIG MISUNDERSTANDING, co-directed with Patrick Bresnan, is slated to be finished in 2016. Their latest short film THE SEND-OFF premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2016.
hector jamesson | intern
Hector has worn many hats throughout his professional experiences. Born in Monterrey, Mexico, he began his career as a movie critic for El Norte, before moving on to work as a copywriter for Grupo Cinco, one of Mexico’s top creative shops. He’s also worked as an assistant producer for Kenio Films and is currently producing and directing Tuttle Tale, a documentary featuring a beloved lecturer of the McCombs School of Business. A senior studying Film and Creative Advertising at the University of Texas at Austin, Hector plans to forge a career in the entertainment industry as a writer and producer.
BOARD OF ADVISORS
Hector Galan
As one of the most prolific documentary filmmakers working today, Hector Galán has contributed over forty hours of programming to major television series such as PBS Frontline and American Experience, and to cable networks, and PBS primetime. Galán has produced many critically acclaimed and award-winning independent films through his company Galán Inc. Television/Film founded in 1984 in Austin, Texas.
Galán theatrically released his feature documentary, Los Lonely Boys Cottonfields and Crossroads in 2006. Most recently, Galán completed production in the Middle East and Europe on a six-hour series, Ancient Roads from Christ to Constantine, a remarkable journey into early Christianity and recently premiered on PBS Children of GIANT, a documentary feature set in the West Texas town of Marfa, Texas that explores social issues throughout history, weaving a scenic exploration of the Academy Award winning film, George Stevens’ Giant, with contemporary interviews. Galán is a founding board member of the Independent Television Service (ITVS), and has served as a mentor of the CPB Producer’s Academy and the NALIP Producers Academy and on the PBS Content Committee. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America West and is also a frequent guest lecturer and keynote speaker at universities and national conferences throughout the country.
MARCY GARRiott
Marcy Garriott is an independent documentary filmmaker based in Austin, Texas. An electrical engineer and still photographer coming out of college, she was a telecommunications executive for 15 years before turning to filmmaking and social activism. Her director/producer credits include the award-winning documentary films SPLIT DECISION (PBS and First Run Features) and Inside the Circle (MTV and Cinema Libre Studios). Marcy produced The Lease of These, as well as the award-winning documentary An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story about a Texas man wrongfully imprisoned for 25 years for the murder of his wife (CNN and First Run Features.) Most recently she served as an Executive Producer on Peace Officer which won the Documentary Grand Jury and Audience Awards at SXSW 2015. Marcy is a former board member and President of the Austin Film Society.
Dawn Salas
Attorney Dawn Salas specializes in business immigration law. Salas has over 10 years of significant experience in assisting international businesses in managing and better understanding international assignments, as well as the employment of professionals on both a temporary and permanent basis in the United States. Salas has also successfully assisted numerous clients in obtaining permanent residency based on sponsorship by qualifying family members. She graduated with her J.D. from St. John's School of Law in New York in 2002. Since moving to Texas, she has practiced in the areas of criminal law, family law and immigration law.