James Blue – Executive Producer
James Blue is a seasoned, award-winning television and documentary producer and executive. He is the owner and chief creative officer of Storyboard Pictures, a New York-based production company. In July, the company executive produced the inaugural United Justice Coalition Summit for Jay Z’s Rocnation. James most recently served as Head of Smithsonian Channel and Senior Vice President of MTV News and Documentaries within Paramount Global’s MTV Entertainment Group. Under his leadership, Smithsonian Channel partnered with Oprah Winfrey’s HARPO Productions on The Color of Care, a multi-platform documentary project on racial disparities – exposed by the COVID crisis – in the delivery of healthcare in the United States. James and his team created a number of programs currently in production, including The Exhibit, an art competition reality show produced in partnership with the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. For Smithsonian Channel and the MTV Entertainment Group, James oversaw the development of some 150 annual hours of documentary and informational programming.
Geoff Arbourne – Producer
Geoff Arbourne is an Emmy award-winning producer and founder of Inside Out Films. An independent and enterprising production company built around a global community of filmmakers operating out of the U.K. and South Africa. Geoff continues collaborating successfully with the talent they have worked with and welcomes
new relationships by celebrating international stories and independent voices.
A recurring theme in work with directors – e.g., Maya Zinshtein, Rob Lemkin, Gordon Main, Mahdi Fleifel, Brett Wallace – is focusing on the visionary in cinema. Often controversial, always provocative, our films stand as our statement of intent.
The new creative partnerships are with debut writer Carne Ross, Mexican director Diego Quemada-Diez (The Golden Dream), debut Palestinian director Ali Al-Arian, and producer Robyn Slovo (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Morvern Callar). Geoff is an affiliate of PACT, EAVE, and BECTU in the U.K.
IN PRODUCTION
London Recruits by Gordon Main (theatrical release in early 2023)
Blindspot by Ali Al-Arian and David Rikker (in production)
American Union by Brett Wallace (in production)
Men in the Sun by Mahdi Fleifel (in development)
Brett Wallace – Producer/Director
Brett Wallace is an artist and filmmaker who explores work, technology, and the greater economy. He holds a BFA from the University of Massachusetts—Amherst, an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and is an alumnus of Harvard Business School.
In 2016, he founded Amazing Industries, a part-artwork, part-company that reimagines a future with fair and equitable work for all.
His most recent short film, ‘Truckers,’ a story about truck-driving mavericks on the open road, was screened at the Socially Relevant Film Festival. The film was also exhibited in “The Question of Intelligence: AI and the Future of Humanity” at the Parsons School of Design and was a finalist for the 2020 Lumen Prize in moving image.
His work has been reviewed by The New York Times, Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, ARTnews, Artnet, Artslant, and Hyperallergic.
Brett has been filming American Union in Alabama since 2021.
Christy Denes – Editor
Christy Denes is an editor with over 20 years of experience cutting documentary films and episodic series for Netflix, PBS, Amazon, Starz, CNN, and independent producers. Her work includes Bring Your Own Brigade, a feature documentary that premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, Turning Point: the Bomb and the Cold War, streaming on Netflix in 2024, and MAKERS: Women in Politics, an episode of the Emmy-nominated PBS series.
Denes seeks out projects focused on human rights, social justice, education, and the arts. While in college in the early 1990s, she joined a student organization supporting labor unions, including participating in strike picket lines, and she has been an activist for justice and solidarity ever since. In 2018, she was one of the founding members of the Alliance of Documentary Editors, a working group that campaigns for best practices within the industry while improving members’ career sustainability.
Miriam Cutler – Composer
Three-time Emmy-nominated Composer Miriam Cutler has an extensive background in scoring for independent film & TV projects, as well as two circuses. Her passion for documentaries has led to a focus on non-fiction award-winning and festival favorites. She wrote the scores for RBG (CNN) and Dark Money (PBS), which both premiered at Sundance 2017, and Love, Gilda (CNN), which premiered at Tribeca 2018. All three films had theatrical releases, with RBG being one of the highest-earning documentaries ever. RBG was nominated for an Oscar and four 2019 Primetime Emmys (1 for score), winning 1 Emmy. Love, Gilda was nominated for two Primetime Emmys (one for score) . Other highlights include BAFTA-nominated Lost In La Mancha, Emmy winners One Last Hug, Vito, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Desert of Forbidden Art (score also nominated); Oscar-nominated shorts Poster Girl and Kings Point; Emmy nominated Ethel, Thin, and Pandemic: Facing Aids. Sundance Special Doc Jury Prize winners American Promise and License To Kill.
