Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, directed by Lucy Walker, tells the remarkable story of Lhakpa Sherpa who, as a girl denied an education, concealed her gender to work in the mountains. She became the first Nepali woman to summit Everest before immigrating to the US where she’s raised children as a single mother and climbs in pursuit of a better life.
Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival 2023
Coming to Netflix in 2024
The limited series adaptation of Michael Pollan’s bestselling book How To Change Your Mind launched on Netflix on 12 July 2022. This series is the culmination of two years of collaboration with scientists, patients and practitioners who have found healing in psychedelic medicines – plant or compound.
AWARDS
2023 News & Documentary Primetime Emmy Awards (Nomination) – Outstanding Graphic Design and Art Direction: Documentary
Weaving a story about what we discover when we push beyond loss, Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements is a deeply personal memoir by Irene Taylor about a deaf boy growing up, his deaf grandfather growing old, and Ludwig van Beethoven as he went deaf and wrote his iconic sonata.
Moonlight Sonata premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2019 and is now available on HBO.
Back from war in Afghanistan, a young British soldier struggling with depression and PTSD finds a second chance in the Amazon rainforest when he meets an American scientist, and together they foster an orphaned baby ocelot.
Directed and Produced by Melissa Lesh & Trevor Frost
Produced by Alysa Nahmias, Joshua Altman
AWARDS
2023 News & Documentary Primetime Emmy Award (nominations) –
Outstanding Nature Documentary
Outstanding Direction: Documentary
Outstanding Music Composition
This summer I worked with director Irene Taylor Brodsky on The New York Times Op-Doc, Between Sound and Silence, exploring the impact of technology on the deaf experience through the eyes of young deaf adults. Irene has a unique perspective on sensory augmentation, being the mother and daughter of deaf people who each wear cochlear implants. The Op-Doc was born out of a longer film Vermilion Films produced earlier this year, The Listening Project.
Roles: Producer
BETWEEN SOUND AND SILENCE February 24th, 2023Tahria
After being taken away from her parents as a baby by the state and given up for adoption, singer-songwriter “Cami” Jenni Alpert went searching for her birth father. She finally finds him: homeless, toothless, addicted. And a musician, just like her.
Homeless: The Soundtrack follows their first tentative months together, reunited as father and daughter, playing music as they go.
Directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky and produced by Vermilion Films & Chockstone Pictures.
Roles: Producer, Additional Editing
Awards:
Special jury mention – Tribeca Film Festival 2018
Best short film – Nantucket Film Festival 2018
HOMELESS: THE SOUNDTRACK February 16th, 2023Tahria
Intimate and raw, The Life Story explores the moments in a woman’s life that pulls them into, and out of, sex trafficking. The film series for NoVo Foundation, which sits on its own online platform, launched in January 2018.
The Great Human Race is a series produced by National Geographic Studios, which follows the path of human evolution from our origins 2.5 millions years ago in the horn of Africa all the way to the beginning of the first civilizations in the American Pacific Northwest. The series premiered in February 2016 and will air internationally on the National Geographic Channel.
I was associate field producer and photographer on episodes shot on location in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Turkey, Mongolia and the US.
In February of 2014 I worked with MediaStorm and Neighborhood Centers Inc. in Houston to produce two short films highlighting the integral role work plays in the lives of individuals.
As part of a collaboration between National Geographic Adventure and Destination Canada, Andy Maser and I were sent on assignment to Quebec City for an urban adventure in the summer of 2017. This city was a blast for a long summer weekend – the food, culture, and natural environment just outside the city is lively, exotic and yet accessible for any traveler, no matter your speed. I co-directed and shot this project with Andy. Our editor was Chris Cresci.