Watts Up! Demaria's Journey: The Crew

Belvie Rooks, Executive Producer

Director
Damani Baker, a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, was selected in 2000 by Filmmaker Magazine as one of "25 new faces in independent film". With a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Film and Television, Baker has been writing, shooting, and directing films for the past thirteen years. Baker's body of work includes documentary, short subject narratives, and public service commercial spots with clients that include, PBS, Mel Stuart Productions, Danny Glover's Carrie Productions, and The Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. Baker's awards include the Edie and Lew Wasserman Award, the Motion Picture Association of America Award, the Sundance Institute documentary fund and a nomination for the Rockefeller Artist award. Baker's work in film has taken him across the United States, Europe, India, the Caribbean and Africa. Baker's current independent documentary film, Grenada: A Dream Deferred revisits the events and circumstances of the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada. Baker is also guest professor at Sarah Lawrence College's Film and New Media Department.

Co-Producer
Marjan Tehrani is an independent director born and raised in Berkeley, California, 1974. She completed her BA at the University of Santa Cruz in Community Studies; a major dedicated to social change. She completed her MFA in Media Arts Production at the City University of New York with an emphasis in Documentary Filmmaking. In addition to working on documentaries, she has worked in the fields of photography and TV media production for VH1, WNYE and CSTV. She recently completed a project with WNYE-TV 25, a PBS affiliate, as a producer for a fourteen one-hours of a talk show, "AFTER SCHOOL", that features Public Schools and Teenagers in New York. Currently, she is producing a series on college sports life. Her Israel is Tehrani's directorial debut. Her Israel will premiere on the Sundance Channel in April, 2004. In addition, she has begun production for her second independent documentary, Arusi, with the opportunity to work with the well-established Iranian filmmaker, Dariush Mehrjui, who is acting as an advisor on the film.

Associate Producer
Dedan Gills, a poet, writer and former 60's activist, is an active member of one of the first urban eco-villages in the country. He is a member of the Los Angeles Permaculture Guild and a board member of the Watts Garden Club, a non-profit community-based organization that works with at-risk youth in South Central Los Angeles. He has recently worked as a counselor for the Mary Lind Foundation, a community-based healing and treatment center.

Article: Green Recovery and Spirituality: Seeding the Dialogue by Dedan Gills