BEN SELKOW, DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/
CINEMATOGRAPHER

Ben Selkow is the director, producer and co-cinematographer of Buried Above Ground. The documentary film explores the stories of three Americans living with the harrowing burdens of PTSD—a combat-wounded Army Captain returning from Iraq with a Purple Heart, a native New Orleanian who barely escaped Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, and a child abuse, rape and domestic violence survivor. While the film’s characters fight on different roads to recovery, Buried Above Ground takes the realities of living with PTSD out of the shadows and allows audiences to experience the emotional, social, and financial costs of this growing mental health epidemic.

Recently, Ben was selected as a Fellow for The Carter Center’s 2010-2011 Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. The fellowship program is part of the Carter Center's Mental Health Program, which works around the world to reduce stigma and discrimination against people with mental illnesses and to decrease incorrect and stereotypical information. The program also seeks to increase access to mental health services and inform mental health public policy. Ben also was selected to participate in The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma’s 2010 conference entitled “When Veterans Come Home: A Workshop for Working Journalists” at The Carter Center in Atlanta, GA. The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, a project of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is dedicated to informed, effective and ethical news reporting on violence, conflict and tragedy.

Ben Selkow produced Prayer for a Perfect Season (HBO, 2011) with director Marc Levin. This feature-length documentary is the gripping account of the 2010-11 boys’ basketball season at St. Patrick High School in hardscrabble Elizabeth, New Jersey, as they rise to become the #1 team in the country. Through emotional personal crises, public scrutiny and the school’s financial woes, the film captures the intersection of two forces – the soaring media interest in the big game and the decline of Catholic school programs. The Washington Times said, “Prayer clothes the players and coaches in humanity we typically forget.” The New York Daily News called it, “An engaging story…the drama here runs deep” and the New York Post simply called it: “Splendid”

For Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Television and Discovery Channel, Ben was the post producer for two episodes of Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero, a six-part documentary series that followed the men and women reshaping Ground Zero, looking at the emotional and complicated processes of both rebuilding, while at the same time honoring those who lost their lives and their families.

From 2009-2011, Ben produced the feature documentary film The Carrier for first-time director Maggie Betts. The film is about a young mother Mutinta, a Zambian subsistence farmer in a polygamous marriage who has just learned she is HIV positive. Newly pregnant, Mutinta does everything she can to protect her unborn baby while navigating complicated family dynamics and village politics. The Carrier sculpts a sensitive observational portrait of one woman's struggle leading up to her newborn's birth. The film premiered at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival in the World Documentary Competition, was selected for the 2011 IDA Docuweek’s Showcase, premiered internationally at the Zurich International Film Festival, won Best Documentary Award at the Lone Star Film Festival and was a selection of the Watch Docs Human Rights Film Festival.

Ben was the director/producer/director of photography/writer of A Summer in the Cage, a feature-length documentary about bipolar disorder that premiered on Sundance Channel in October 2007 and is being distributed for home video by Indiepix Films, for educational sales by 7th Art Releasing and Cinetic Rights Management (CRM) for all digital rights. A Summer in the Cage won the 2009 Mental Health America Media Award in the Documentary Category. The film also received an honorable mention at the 2009 Voice Awards and was nominated for a 2008 Prism Award for Bipolar Disorder Depiction by the Entertainment Industries Council. A Summer in the Cage has screened internationally in film festivals and partnered with mental health groups to bring awareness and community to those patients and family members coping with mood disorders.

In 2007, Ben was honored as one of 50 Non-Fiction Filmmakers at the Current TV/Fader Films Symposium “A Day of Dialogue and the Future of Non-Fiction Film," featuring keynote speaker former Vice President Nobel Prize honoree, Academy Award winner and Current TV founder Al Gore, as well as luminary documentarians Barbara Kopple, Albert Maysles, Alex Gibney, and Marc Levin.

Ben first became interested in film after seeing his mother, a psychologist, being featured in the National Film Board of Canada documentary L’Interdit (1976), about an alternative commune for treating schizophrenics in Canada. Ben is a member of the Independent Film Project (IFP) the International Documentary Association (IDA), as well as being fiscally sponsored by the IDA. Ben was born in Montréal, Canada and is a dual-citizen.

Ben holds Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Film Studies and African-American Studies from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut where he received the W.E.B. Du Bois Academic Award for Overall Excellence. He received a certificate from the School for International Training in Tanzania, East Africa.

He resides in Brooklyn, NY.

FLÀVIA DE SOUZA, CO-EDITOR

Flàvia de Souza has worked as an editor in New York City for the last ten years on several documentary films and television programs. Flavia recently completed editing The Carrier for director Maggie Betts. The film will premiere in the World Documentary Competition section of the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival Previously, she co-edited In 500 Words or Less, a film about four high-school seniors as they navigate the college admissions process, which premiered at the Austin Film Festival in 2009. Flàvia also edited Adopted, a documentary film that examines trans-racial adoption through two stories and When the Spirits Dance Mambo, a film about the impact of African religious practices in Cuban culture, which premiered at the Havana International Film Festival in 2003. Flàvia's work for television include, Getting In: Kindergarten (The Learning Channel, 2007) and World Wedding (Discovery, 2003). Previously, she had been an associate editor with Susanne Rostock on Stealing the Fire, which follows an unbroken chain of events and personalities connecting Hitler's atomic bomb program, Nazi gold, and today's nuclear weapons black market, and premiered at the 2002 Human Rights Film Festival in New York.

Before becoming an editor, Flàvia worked as photographer in her native Brazil. She holds a bachelors degree in Industrial and Graphic Design from Rio de Janeiro's State University (UERJ) and a MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts.

DANIEL LAWREN, CO-EDITOR

Daniel Lawren is one of the Co-Editors for Buried Above Ground. Previously, he was an editor for Esther Podemski’s The Peasant and the Priest, a documentary dealing with issues of globalization and their effect on the Italian landscape; namely Human Trafficking and Agri-business. The film was sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts. Daniel also has been an editor for Consuelo Mack Wealthtrack, a financial news program for PBS. He edited a feature-length documentary on the epidemic of HIV within teen communities of color entitled America's Shadows, directed and produced by social activist Tchaiko Omawale.

More editing credits come from his work at Bad Boy Films, where he worked on the Citizen Change voter registration drive for Sean "Diddy" Combs, as well as a documentary on the world of mix-tape DJ's. Daniel’s other post-production work includes Assistant Editor positions on two films which were official selections at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival: The Lost Son of Havana for Hock Films, which won Best Film at the 2009 Baseball Film Festival, and then aired on ESPN, as well as Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio’s Cropsey for Ghost Robot Films. Daniel graduated from Wesleyan University in 1999.

JOHN MIMS, CO-EDITOR

John Mims has been collaborating with Ben Selkow for the last 10 years in documentary film and television production. John served as one of the editors on a feature-length documentary entitled 32 hours, 7 minutes, directed by Cory Gravid about the legacy of the U.S. Express – once known as the “Cannonball Run” – and specifically of Alex Roy, one of the best of the current generation of outlaw drivers, as he sets out to break the record time set on the last such illegal race nearly a quarter century ago. Mims was the editor and co-writer for Ben Selkow’s A Summer in the Cage, which premiered on cable television’s Sundance Channel in 2007 and is released on home video by Indiepix Films.

Prior to these films, Mims edited two other feature documentaries: The Voyagers, a profile of Brooklyn-based artist Ward Shelley and his walking sculpture project; and Slammed From the Street, a showcase of urban league basketball highlights and profiles of its dominant players. He has also edited several other programs including: ThinkNOW, an experimental short examining the effects of commerce on the psyche and an hour segment for Beyond the Glory on Fox Sports Net and Hock Films.

Currently, John is a senior editor and producer at UNICEF Television, and has worked with the organization since 1998, producing and editing numerous PSA’s, short features and news reports. Before becoming an editor, John was a fine arts painter, holding a Bachelor of Arts in Art from the University of California-Berkeley.

JOEDAN OKUN, CO-PRODUCER

Joedan Okun is the Co-Producer for Buried Above Ground. Concurrently, he is the Associate Producer for Margarett Betts’ documentary Mother to Child, an intimate look at prevention of mother to child HIV transmission in urban and rural Zambia. He most recently worked as the Associate Producer on A Summer in the Cage, a feature-length documentary that aired on the Sundance Channel in October, 2007 and is being distributed by Indiepix Films for home video. Previously, he worked on Onward Christian Soldier, a documentary about domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph.

Joedan has worked in different capacities on a variety of documentaries, including the Academy-Award nominated feature documentary, Sound & Fury, the Academy-Award nominated documentary short Why Can't We Be A Family Again? and the 2003 American Experience historical documentary The Pill. Joedan graduated with Honors from Wesleyan University.