ABOUT THE "AFROPOP" PRODUCTION TEAM
Series Producer -- An award-winning filmmaker, Phil Bertelsen works in both fiction and non-fiction. Most recently he produced and directed EveryOther, a social satire about racial identity that was featured in the PBS series Matters of Race. His last film, The Sunshine, won numerous awards and is included as part of the Full Frame Documentary DVD Collection. Bertelsen also wrote and directed Outside Looking In, examining transracial adoption in America and airing on public television. Additionally, he was a Writer/Director fellow at the Sundance Filmmakers Lab and has an M.F.A. from New York University where he won a Student Academy Award for his dramatic short Around the Time.
Series Director -- Producer/Director Duana C. Butler is an independent filmmaker based in Harlem, U.S.A. Ms. Butler has gained production experience working with directors Leslie Harris (”Another Girl on the I.R.T.”), Kathe Sandler (”A Question of Color”) and Cheryl Dunye (”The Watermelon Woman”). She is currently in production for her documentary feature “Harlem Stories”, an exploration of the effects of gentrification in the communities of Harlem, USA.
In “Harlem Stories,” Butler seeks to reconcile her conflicted feelings about the gentrification of her neighborhood of Harlem, NYC. The film documents her journey through a divided Harlem as she weighs the pros and cons of a process that is revitalizing this historically underserved community while at the same time displacing longtime residents and threatening the survival of its culture. The gentrification of Harlem is rendering vulnerable the very community that it was meant to uplift and strengthen as this process pits the well-to-do against working class, black against white, native against foreigner, and neighbor against neighbor — in the battle for the area’s future.
Series Editor -- Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, Producer, Director and Editor, has been committed to cultural and social issues documentary filmmaking for over a decade. Her editing debut was an Emmy-winning episode of WGBH’s Greater Boston Arts series, and she has continued to distinguish herself as both a producer and editor, having worked on numerous award-winning documentaries for public television and cable. Sabrina is the Co-Producer and Editor of Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a ground-breaking PBS documentary about manhood and gender politics in mainstream Hip-Hop. Currently, she is directing Common Ground: The Good Fight of Malik Rahim, about the former Black Panther’s daunting mission to save the Lower Ninth Ward section of New Orleans, and 180 Days, which examines the NYC Teaching Fellows Program through the eyes of three new teachers during their first year in the public school system. She is also producing several new media web projects around the issues of constitutional rights, and healthcare in minority communities.
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