The Filmmakers
Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt (Director/Producer)Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt is a New York-based filmmaker. He served as the co‐producer and additional editor of CONTROL ROOM (Magnolia Pictures, 2004), as well as the associate editor of VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR (Acolyte Films, 2008). He wrote, directed, and produced LES VULNERABLES (2007), the closing night short of the 2007 New York Film Festival and had its international premiere at the 2008 Berlinale. It also won a grand jury prize at the 2008 AFI Dallas Film Festival and the "Focus Features for Best Director" award at the 2008 Columbia University Film Festival. Perlmutt has made short films all over the world for organizations including UNICEF, UNIFEM, the New York Academy of Medicine, HEAL Africa (Eastern Congo) and ZENU (Cameroon). He has taught filmmaking courses at Columbia University and for WITNESS in Northern Uganda. He is a member of the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures and is one of Filmmaker Magazine's 2008 "25 New Faces of Indie Film." He is also a recipient of a 2008 Sundance / Sloan Commissioning Grant for which he is currently developing a feature film about a Cuban American cell phone consultant who gets roped into the black market in Havana and must decide where his loyalties lie. Perlmutt holds a BA in English Literature from Brown University and an MFA in Film Directing from Columbia University. (PHOTO)
Nelson Walker III (Director/Producer) Nelson began his career in film writing documentaries for Discovery Channel, History Channel, and PBS's NOVA. His first film iThemba|Hope -- a documentary about an HIV+ choir from South Africa -- aired on Sundance Channel in 2005. Nelson's recent work has been focused in Tibet. He has worked as a visiting instructor of filmmaking at Tibet University in Lhasa, is a contributor to the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (www.thdl.org), and co-founder of the Kham Film Project with Lynn True. Through the Kham Film Project he has facilitated various participatory video projects, and is currently working on documentary film that chronicles a young nomadic Tibetan family living in uncertain times. Nelson is a recent graduate of the Film Division at Columbia University School of the Arts, and works with the Maysles Institute in Harlem. (PHOTO)
Louis Abelman (Producer/ Co-Director) is a writer focused on creative nonfiction. Apart from serving as assistant director for a UNICEF project in the Congo, this is his first film. After attending Brown University where he majored in African History, he worked for the International Herald Tribune in Paris, where he later wrote an editorial about the war in the Congo. For the past two years while working on LUMO he has been an editorial assistant at the New York Times, posted on the Foreign, Editorial, and Society desks, among others, and is now working as an assistant producer for the Times web site. He traveled to Kabul, Afghanistan in the fall 2008 to work on an independent documentary project, blogging about the experience here. (PHOTO)
Lynn True (Editor/ Co-Director) is a New York-based filmmaker and editor. After graduating from Brown University with a joint degree in Urban Studies and Architecture, Lynn began her film career as an assistant editor on documentary programs for NBC News and PBS. Her work as a producer and editor has screened at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art and been broadcast on stations including PBS, Sundance Channel and Current TV. Lynn has traveled throughout the Kham region of eastern Tibet as a documentarian for the Kham Geotourism Project, a collaborative initiative between the University of Virginia's Tibetan Himalayan Digital Library and the Maysles Institute and she co-founded the Kham Film Project, an organization that uses filmmaking to contribute to the quality and diversity of Tibetan cultural representation. She is currently directing a feature-length documentary about a young nomadic family living in Kham. (PHOTO)
Executive Producer-Africa
Lyn Lusi was born and educated in England, and went to Congo in 1971 as a missionary teacher with the Baptist Missionary Society. She married Dr Jo Lusi in 1974, while she was seconded to the Scripture Union to work in schools in Congo. After their marriage, she worked in school and hospital administration in Nyankunde, Zaire for 19 years, before joining MAP International in Nairobi as Resource Development officer. The war prevented her from joining Jo in Congo in 1996; instead, Lyn set up the Community Based Rehabilitation program for CBM in Rwanda, and worked on her Masters Degree in Human Resource Development and Training. In 1999, she joined DOCS HEAL Africa in Goma as Program Manager.
Sound Designer
Sound Mixer
Jeffrey Yellen
Online Facility
Final Frame, NYCOnline Editor
Will Cox
Associate Producers
Danielle Wolfe
Katherine Wright
Interns
Veena Ireen Khan
Marta Ruperez
