Andrew Levine, Director and Producer
Andrew Levine has traveled the world and spent the past three years working on The Day My God Died. Andrew has worked in Hollywood with Norman Lear, Once Upon A Time Film Productions and at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. In 2000 he directed and produced The Price of Youth, a ten-minute expose chronicling the slave trade between Nepal and India. The short was produced with Witness, a human rights media organization founded by musician/activist Peter Gabriel. The film was released on the internet and Andrew presented clips from the film on the Oprah Winfrey show.

Andrew has a film studies degree from the University of Utah. He has written screenplays and has produced and directed short independent films, which have been shown at various film festivals. He originally hails from Boston, but has resided in Utah for the past 12 years.

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Geralyn White Dreyfous, Producer
Geralyn White Dreyfous has a passion for social issues and the unique role that the independent sector plays in fine-tuning democracy. She been the architect of many collaborations and has developed major financial support for both grassroots organizations and large institutions.

She began her career at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government where she helped design three major initiatives that secured $23 million dollars for the institution. She launched a for-profit consulting company, The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI), designed to proactively increase philanthropy by serving high net individuals, families, and corporations who wanted to align their wealth or corporate assets with their personal values, social concerns, and/or strategic business goals. In 1992 Geralyn was awarded a Lyndhurst Prize, an unrestricted $40 thousand stipend to support new and ongoing creative projects. She used the grant to sustain a five-year teaching journey at Harvard with visionary educator Robert Coles. While she has helped finance many PBS specials (including EYES ON THE PRIZE) The Day My God Died is the first feature-length film that she has produced.

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Winona Ryder, Producer and Narrator
With two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe award, Winona Ryder is one of Hollywood's most respected actors. As ?Jo? in Gillian Armstrong's highly acclaimed version of the Louisa May Alcott classic, Little Women, Ryder received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. The previous year she was Oscar nominated, and won the Golden Globe and National Board of Review Awards for Best Supporting Actress, for her performance in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence. Ryder also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Richard Benjamin's Mermaids.In 1999, Ryder starred in and served as Executive Producer on the critically acclaimed Girl, Interrupted, directed by James Mangold and based on the best selling memoir of the same title.

Named for her birthplace in Winona, Minnesota, Ryder grew up in Petaluma, California and began her career at age 13. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees to the American Indian College Fund, which is helping Native Americans preserve and protect their culture through education.

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Tim Robbins, Narrator
Tim Robbins made his acting debut in 1972 at the Theatre for the New City in New York City. In 1992, Robbins received critical acclaim for his portrayal of the amoral studio chief in Robert Altman’s THE PLAYER, a performance that earned him the Best Actor Award At the Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Globe Award. His starring performance in BOB ROBERTS also earned him a Golden Globe nomination. Other notable acting performances include: THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION for which Robbins’ received an Screen Actors Guild Award nomination; Robert Altman’s SHORT CUTS giving Robbins his second Golden Globe Award; the Coen Brothers’ THE HUDSUCKER PROXY; and Ron Shelton’s BULL DURHAM. He is currently filming Clint Eastwood’s MYSTIC RIVER, co-starring with Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon.

As a filmmaker, Robbins wrote, directed and produced CRADLE WILL ROCK, which debuted to a standing ovation at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. Robbins also wrote, directed and produced the highly acclaimed film, DEAD MAN WALKING, adapted from the book by Sister Helen Prejean. Robbins received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. The film also earned the Academy Award for Best Actress for Susan Sarandon and a nomination for Best Actor for Sean Penn. In 1982, Robbins co-founded the Actors’ Gang, the highly acclaimed and respected Los Angeles theatre ensemble dedicated to the production of wild, original and provocative theatre. He is currently its Artistic Director as it celebrates its 21st anniversary. This past summer Robbins performed in The Guys, a play about a fire Captain who lost eight of his men on September 11th.

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Tamera Martin, Editor and Consulting Producer
Tamera has been a documentary producer and Avid editor for over 10 years, editing/co-producing feature-length documentaries for PBS, Turner and Discovery and over 50 short-form/commercial programs for Fortune 100 clients and studios. Tamera’s 2000 centerpiece documentary, Without Lying Down: The Francis Marion Story was nominated by the Writers Guild of America and the Director’s Guild of America.

Tamera is Director of Video Symphony’s Post Studio Session and dedicates half of her professional hours to instruction and consulting. She brings a wealth of real-world problem-solving experience, story-telling/aesthetics and technical mastery together for the benefit of her students and clients.

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Cari Beauchamp, Writer
Cari Beauchamp is the award-winning author of Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood published by Scribner and University of California Press. Without Lying Down has been named Outstanding Book of the Year by the National Theater Library Association, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, one of the 100 Best Books of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and one of the Top Ten Biographies of the Year by Amazon.com. Cari co-wrote and co-produced the film based on the book, and was nominated for a Writers Guild Award for the documentary which is narrated by Uma Thurman and features Kathy Bates as the voice of Frances Marion. Cari also co-wrote the book Hollywood on the Riviera: The Inside Story of the Cannes Film Festival published by William Morrow. She is currently writing Joe Kennedy’s Hollywood for Knopf which will focus on the family patriarch’s running of three studios simultaneously in the late 1920s.

Cari has written on film and film history for a variety of publications including The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, Written By, Classic Images and Creative Screenwriting. She has been a reporter, a private investigator and served as press secretary to Governor Jerry Brown of California. She lives in Los Angeles.

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Basil Katsaounis, Director of Photography
Basil M. Katsaounis received a degree in Film Studies at the University of Utah. His director of photography credits include four feature films: This Ain’t Kansas, Breaking and Entering, She Lives By Night and An American Diner. He has shot innumerable short films, industrial and commercial projects, and his work has competed in many festivals, including the Milan International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival. The Day My God Died is his first feature length documentary. He lives in New York City.

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David Robbins, Musical Director
David Robbins has been immersed in music all his life. The son of Gil Robbins, a member of the folk group "The Highwaymen,” David grew up in Greenwich Village in the midst of many artists and performers that lived and worked there in the 60's and 70's. David has worked as a guitarist, songwriter, concert and studio engineer, composer, and theatrical sound designer in Los Angeles and New York. He brings all of those experiences and an ample reservoir of musical styles which he evocatively weaves into his compositions. His film scores have included orchestral, jazz, rock and ethnic/world music. Among other notable projects, David scored the music for "Bob Roberts," "Dead Man Walking" and “The Cradle Will Rock.”

In the score for The Day My God Died, David had the opportunity to enlist the talents of violinist Lili Haydn as well as one of India's premiere flute players Ronu Majumdar.

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Congressman Jim McDermott, Advisor
Jim McDermott made his first run for public office in 1970 and was elected a state representative from the 43rd legislative district in Washington. In 1974, he ran for state Senate, and subsequently was re-elected three times. In 1980, he received the Democratic nomination for governor, defeating the incumbent in the primary. In 1987, after 15 years of legislative service, Rep. McDermott decided to leave politics and continue in public service at a Foreign Service medical office based in Zaire, providing psychiatric services to Foreign Service, AID, and Peace Corps personnel in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1988, he returned from Africa to run for the U.S. House of Representatives and is currently serving his fifth term.

A physician, Rep. McDermott is especially interested in health care issues. He founded and chairs the Congressional Task Force on International HIV/AIDS and introduced the AIDS Housing Opportunities Act, a program enacted into law in 1990 authorizing $156 million for special housing assistance for people with AIDS. Congressman McDermott is leading the fight in the House of Representatives to guarantee all Americans comprehensive health care coverage.

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Matthew S. Friedman, Advisor
Matthew Friedman is the technical advisor for the Office of Health and Family Planning to USAid/Bngladesh. He is the author of The Gorkha Urn and Tara: A Fleshtrade Odyssey. He was born and raised in Newington, Connecticut. As a professional in the field of international health, he has worked in and traveled to over thirty countries. Prior to his two years in Bangladesh he lived for eight years in Nepal working against girl trafficking in Asia. He has been actively involved in several projects related to this important subject.

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