Brave Storytelling with Heather Rae (FROZEN RIVER), Justin Chon (PACHINKO) & more

Heather Rae has produced such films as Academy Award–nominated FROZEN RIVER, Netflix originals TALLULAH AND DUDE, festival darling I BELIEVE IN UNICORNS, award-winning THE DRY LAND, and more recently, BULL, which premiered at Cannes. Rae has been recognized as one of Variety’s “Producers to Watch” and won the Piaget and Cinereach producers awards. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and serves on the Producers Branch Executive Committee. Rae is currently in a First Look deal with Amazon Studios and is an executive producer on the series OUTER RANGE, starring Josh Brolin. Rae also works as a narrative change strategist with the nonprofit organization IllumiNative.

Kimberly Peirce staked her place as a writer and director of singular vision and craft with her unflinching debut feature, Boys Don't Cry (Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevingy, Peter Sarsgaard), which earned numerous honors including Best Actress Oscar for star, Hilary Swank, Golden Globe, Independent Spirit, NY and LA Film Critics, and National Board of Review Awards. Co star, Chloe Sevigny was nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe and won the Independent Spirit Award and LA film Critic awards for Best Supporting Actress. Peirce won honors as Best Debut Director from the National Board of Review and the Boston Society of Film Critics. The film received the Best Film International Critics prize at the London and Stockholm Film Festivals, the Satyajit Ray Award, and was named “Best American Feature” by Janet Maslin.

Peirce subsequently co-wrote and directed Stop-Loss(Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Abbie Cornish, Ryan Phillipe), a topical and emotionally penetrating drama inspired by real-life stories of American soldiers, including her brother, fighting in Iraq. Peirce won the Hamilton Behind the Camera True-Grit and Andrew Sarris Directing Awards.

In 2013 Peirce directed Carrie (Julianne Moore, Chloë Moretz, introducing Ansel Elgort). The film won the 2014 People’s Choice Award for Favorite Horror Movie. The film was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and won for Best Young Actor.

Kimberly has directed episodes of acclaimed cable TV shows: John Ridley’s American Crime (Felicity Huffman, Regina King, Timothy Hutton, Lilly Taylor), AMC’s Turn (Jamie Bell) and Halt and Catch Fire (Lee Pace, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot Mcnairy), Manhattan (Rachel Brosnahan, Benjamin Hickey), History Channel’s Six (Walton Goggins) for which she won an Women's Image Award, Jill Solowayear’s I Love Dick (Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Hahn, Griffin Dunne), and Justin Simien’s Dear White People (Logan Browning). She is Executive Producer and Director of Impact at A&E.

She is next directing two films: This is Jane, the true story of the women who started the 1960’s Chicago illegal underground abortion ring, starring Michelle Williams and Untitled, a butch femme romantic, sex comedy.

A tireless activist for human and civil rights, Kimberly is a founding member of Reframe, an industry-wide effort to end discrimination against women and people of color. In 2018, she was honored with the Susan B. Anthony Award and the Women in Film Activism award. She spoke at the following venues on human rights, diversity, intersectionality and equality for gender identity and sexual preference: 2017 Park City Women's March; 2016 American Film Institute, 2015 Outfest, 2014 Yale Transgender Week, and 2013 Columbia Film School. She has received the GLAAD Media, Lambda Legal Defense, People for the American Way, Lesbian Anti-Violence Project and the OUTFEST Career Achievement Awards. 

She is a proud to be a Governor of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, head of the Diversity Committee, and Executive Board member of the Director's Guild of America, and a member of Time’s Up and the WGA.

Kimberly received her BA from the University of Chicago, her MFA from Columbia University Graduate Film and graduated from Sundance Institute's Writing, Directing, and Producing Labs.

Tyger Williams is a screenwriter best known for ​Menace II Society​, which debuted at the Cannes Film festival as part of the Director’s Fortnight selection. It was subsequently nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and went on to win an MTV Best Movie of the Year award. His other credits include ​The Perfect Guy​. He has since written or rewritten numerous film and television scripts. He is currently a writer on the SpringHill/Warner Bros and Netflix limited series ​Madam CJ Walker​. He recently wrote the feature thriller, ​Bad Influence​, for Broadgreen Pictures, based on his original pitch, and co-wrote a limited series for ABC Studios based upon the bestselling novel, ​A Slave in the White House​.  

Additionally, Williams is an Adjunct Professor in the Writing Division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and has served as a Creative Advisor for the Sundance Institute Labs in Utah, the Czech Republic, and Jordan. He has served as a Creative Advisor to the Laboratotio Novas Historias Screenwriting Lab in Brazil, conducted workshops for the Africa International Film Festival in Nigeria and served in Cairo as a Film Expert to the American Film Showcase, a Public Diplomacy initiative by the U.S. Department of State in partnership with the University of Southern California.

Williams is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and the Writers Guild of America, West. He attended the University of Utah and California State University Long Beach, where he studied film, television, and marketing.

Rudy Valdez is a Michigan-raised, Brooklyn-based filmmaker. He got his start as a camera operator on the Peabody Award-winning Sundance Channel series Brick City and has worked as a cinematographer for directors and producers such as Sebastian Junger, Whoopi Goldberg, Geeta Gandbhir, and Sam Pollard. Ten years in the making, Rudy’s directorial debut The Sentence premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, winning the US Documentary Audience Award. When not working you can find Rudy at the park with his wife and daughter.

Artist's Chosen Interview: 

Filmmaker Rudy Valdez on His Intimate Family Documentary, 'The Sentence'

Inspirational Resources/Recommendations: 

• My reset button is always documentary photography. No one person in particular - I will simply google documentary photography and go into a wormhole of images. 
• Pick your spots but I love talking to strangers. I love hearing peoples stories and more importantly their journeys. Everyone has a story. 
• TedTalks - I can watch TedTalks all day long - It's a constant reminder that there are people out there with big ideas and that we have so much to learn.

Sundance Archive Interview:

U.S. Documentary Competition: The Sentence

Justin Chon has quickly established himself as one of the industry’s top artists. Before PACHINKO, he most recently wrote, directed and starred in his original feature BLUE BAYOU, which sold competitively to Focus Features and premiered at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Chon plays the lead role opposite Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander. Mark O’Brien, Linh Dan Pham and Emory Cohen also star.

His previous film, GOOK, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the NEXT category. He also won an Independent Spirit Award as a top director to watch. Chon wrote, produced, directed and starred in the film, which received stellar reviews, earning a 94% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. GOOK was picked up for distribution by Samuel Goldwyn Films and opened with the best per-theater average among specialty films.

His follow-up film, MS. PURPLE, premiered at Sundance in the U.S. Dramatic Competition to great reviews and sold to Oscilloscope Pictures. The film opened exclusively in Los Angeles for its first weekend with the best per-theater average among specialty films, becoming the best opening in over a year, and second-best opening in five years, at the Landmark Nuart. Up next for Justin, he’ll be directing the pilot and second episode of the new Jason Momoa led Apple TV+ series CHIEF OF WAR.