FILMMAKERS

SHOFELA COKER  -  ANIMATION ARTIST

Shofela Coker is an illustrator and art director specializing in comics, digital sculpting, and look development. He comes from a family of artists originally from Lagos, Nigeria, which has greatly shaped his passion and artistic vision. Since graduating from the Memphis College of Art in 2009, he worked as a character artist at Robomodo, Sony Online Entertainment, and as an art director at Jam City in San Diego, CA. He and his siblings formed the Coker Co-op, a collective that creates comics, sculptures, and digital media. Shof is committed to telling distinctly African stories with a unique style.

AARON KOPP    DIRECTOR/PRODUCER

Aaron Kopp is an award-winning filmmaker and national Emmy-nominated cinematographer who grew up in the Kingdom of Swaziland. Aaron shot and co-produced the Academy Award-winning documentary about acid attacks in Pakistan, Saving Face. He was also cinematographer for the Sundance Audience Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated film, The Hunting Ground, about sexual assault on college campuses. He has worked across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, North America, and the South Pacific on films for HBO, Netflix Originals, National Geographic, Discovery, UK Channel4, CBS, CNN, and PBS. Aaron was awarded grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the Doha Film Institute for his feature directorial debut, Liyana, which has won more than 20 awards at international festivals including the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary at the LA                                                       Film Festival and the Knight Documentary Achievement Award.

AMANDA KOPP  - DIRECTOR/PRODUCER

Amanda Kopp is an award-winning filmmaker, photographer, and artist. She was producer and cinematographer for the short film, Likhaya, which won a Golden Palm, People’s Choice, and Best Documentary awards at international festivals. She also filmed for the Sundance 2015 premiered film, The Hunting Ground. Amanda’s photographic work has been published in the UK, US, Sweden, Germany, Russia, Pakistan, and Italy. For her feature directorial debut, Liyana, she was awarded funding from Shine Global and Fork Films and was the recipient of the 2018 Emerging Female Filmmaker Award from the Oxford Film Festival. Liyana’s festival and award highlights include the Grand Prize Award at both the Heartland Film Festival and the New York International Children’s Film Festival, as well as screening at the BFI London Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art in                                                           New York.

SAKHENI DLAMINI - PRODUCER

Sakheni Dlamini is a Swazi professional who holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Marketing from Simmons College in Boston. She has worked in both corporate and rural development settings, managing projects, facilitating discussions and implementing programs across Swaziland. Dlamini specializes in economic strengthening and has a passion for empowering women and students in their communities. LIYANA is her first film production.

ALBIE HECHT - EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Albie Hecht is a Co-Founder of Shine Global. Albie was most recently the head of the HLN Network. Prior to HLN he was the CEO of Worldwide Biggies, a digital studio creating transmedia content for film and TV. Before creating Biggies, Albie was President of Film and Television Entertainment at Nickelodeon, where he developed Spongebob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer and co-created and executive produced “The Kids Choice Awards.” As creator and President of Spike TV, Albie brought the UFC franchise to the channel. He won awards for his documentary “True Dads: the Story of American Fatherhood” with Bruce Willis. In the movies, he produced the Oscar®-nominated animated feature Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Shine Global’s first film, the Oscar®-nominated feature documentary, War/Dance, and the Oscar® winner Inocente.

DAVIS COOMBE - CO-EDITOR

Davis Coombe is an award winning editor, producer, and writer. His two most recent films, Casting JonBenet and Chasing Coral both premiered at Sundance in 2017, where Chasing Coral won the audience award for best documentary. Netflix has acquired both films. Davis produced and edited Saving Face, which won the Oscar for Best Short Documentary in 2012. He also edited Chasing Ice, which premiered at Sundance in 2012 and was shortlisted for an Academy award. Davis co-wrote and edited Keep On Keepin’ On (shortlisted for an Academy Award) and A Lego Brickumentary which both premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. In 2013 he won two national Emmys for Editing and Best Documentary at the News and Documentary Emmys.

GCINA MHLOPHE - STORY ADVISOR

Gcina Mhlophe was born and raised in South Africa. She has been writing and performing on stage and screen for more than 25 years. She has written many children's books as well as poetry, short stories, and plays. Her writings are published all over the world and translated into German, French, Italian, Swahili, and Japanese. Her work has received awards from BBC Africa Service for Radio Drama, The Fringe First Award in the Edinburgh Festival, the Josef Jefferson Award in Chicago, and OBBIE in New York.

DANIEL JUNGE - PRODUCER

Daniel Junge is an Oscar-winning (and 2-time nominated) and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker. His first feature-length film, Chiefs, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival and broadcast nationally on PBS. Iron Ladies of Liberia premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and aired on over 50 broadcasters worldwide including PBS and the BBC. They Killed Sister Dorothy won the Audience and Grand Jury Prizes at the South by Southwest Film Festival before broadcasting on HBO and earning a 2010 Emmy nomination for Best Investigative Journalism. Daniel’s film The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 2010. His film, Saving Face, won the 2012 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. Daniel’s two most recent films – Being Evel and A Lego Brickumentary premiered respectively at the                                                     Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals and opened in theaters in 2015.

PHILIP MILLER - COMPOSER

Philip Miller is a composer and sound artist from South Africa who works in many different media from live performance to film, video and sound installations. His long time collaboration with the artist, William Kentridge has gained him international recognition, especially for recent projects including Five Themes at the Tate Modern, London, the lecture-opera production Refuse the Hour, and the multimedia installation Refusal of Time exhibited at Dokumenta 13, Kassel, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Whitechapel Gallery, London. His live performance of the award-winning choral composition, Rewind, a cantata for voice tape and testimony, has been performed in London at the Royal Festival Hall, at Celebrate Brooklyn, New York, the 62 Centre, Williams College Massachusetts, as well as the Baxter and Market theatres in South Africa. He has scored                                                               numerous soundtracks to feature films and television programs including, more recently, his Emmy-nominated soundtrack to                                                         HBO’s The Girl, as well as Mary and Martha, directed by Philip Noyce, the Emmy-award winner, Miner’s Shot Down, the TV series                                                 The Book of Negroes, and the score for the first episode of the remake of the television series Roots by BET.

BRIDGET PICKERING - CO-PRODUCER

Bridget Pickering has been working in television, media and film for over twenty years and has produced some of the highest rated shows on South African television such as U Gugu no Andile, Monna wa Minno, Usindiso, Dreamworld, End Game, Sticks and Stones, Keeping Score, and Hustle. In 2004 she was the South African Co-producer on the Oscar nominated Hotel Rwanda. She is a Co- Producer of the feature film Taste of Rain, which was shown at the Durban International Film Festival in 2012, won a Best Film prize at the Festival du Film Transsaharien and screened on the cable network, MNET. Her most recent production is the feature film, The Chemo Club, a comedy heist film, which completed principal photography in August 2015. She is a Co-Owner and Director of Fireworxmedia, which is one of the most Awarded Companies in South Africa. Bridget spent the summer of 2014                                                 as a guest of the Producers Guild of America and at Revelations Entertainment developing her feature project, Saturn, which                                                         starts Principal Photography in July 2017.