Filmmakers
peter bratt
producer, writer & director
Peter Bratt is an award winning screenwriter and independent filmmaker whose first feature Follow Me Home premiered in competition at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival and won the Best Feature Film Audience Award that same year at the San Francisco International Film Festival. In 2009, he and his brother Benjamin produced, La Mission, a feature film shot on location in their hometown of San Francisco. La Mission, which Peter wrote and directed,premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and was the opening night film at the 2009 San Francisco International Film Festival, the 2009 New York International Latino Film Festival, and the 2009 Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles. For his work on La Mission, Peter received the prestigious Norman Lear Writer’s award and was one of 10 American independent filmmakers selected by Sundance and the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities to launch Sundance Film Forward – a program that uses film and conversation to excite and introduce a new generation to the power of story. Peter is currently the co-writer and director of Dolores, a feature documentary about the life of controversial activist, Dolores Huerta -- a film he is co-producing with Brian Benson and Grammy Award winning musician, Carlos Santana. Peter is also a San Francisco Film Commissioner and a long time consultant for the Friendship House Association of American Indians, a local non-profit serving the Bay Area’s Native population.
carlos santana
Executive producer
Carlos Santana is a Mexican American musician, who pioneered a fusion of rock and Latin American music. He is a multi Grammy Award winner and recognized as one of the greatest guitar players in the world. He is a native San Franciscan and DOLORES is the first film he’s helped to produce.
Brian Benson
Producer
Brian Benson is an award-winning Bay Area producer and assistant director with over three dozen films and hundreds of commercial projects under his belt. After his film Haiku Tunnel screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001 he was awarded the prestigious Sundance Producing Fellowship. Brian co-produced Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s film Howl and assistant directed Peter Bratt’s La Mission and Marielle Heller’s Diary of a Teenage Girl, starring Kristen Wiig and Alexander Skarsgård. As writer/director, he has just completed his 9th short film in an award-winning film series, he is writing a musical feature film which he will direct and he teaches a course in Film Production and Financing at San Francisco State University.
Jessica Congdon
Co-writer/editor
Jessica Congdon produced, co-wrote & edited the documentary films Miss Representation and The Mask You Live In with Jennifer Siebel Newsom, which premiered at Sundance in 2011 and 2015. Other editing highlights include the documentaries Race to Nowhere, DesertRunners, Speed and Angels, Motherland, The Bronzer; and the narrative features Big Girls Don’t Cry and Sundance award winner Dopamine. Jessica is a founding editor of Umlaut Films in San Francisco, and her commercial work has received numerous editing awards, including the Cannes Lions awards. She grew up in Washington, D.C., received her degree from UC Berkeley, and studied film at the Art Institute of Chicago
Benjamin Bratt
Consulting Producer
Benjamin Bratt’s diverse career has successfully spanned film and television for more than 25 years. In 2010, Bratt won Cinequest's Maverick Spirit Award for his work as producer and star of the San Francisco indie hit, La Mission. Written, directed and produced by his brother Peter Bratt, the locally produced film garnered much critical praise, winning a Best Indie Film nomination from the NAACP, a GLAAD award nomination, and multiple Imagen Awards, including two for Best Picture and Best Actor. Bratt’s distinguished filmography includes the critically acclaimed films Piñero, for which he was lauded for his striking, haunting, and “career defining” performance as the poet-playwright-actor Miguel Piñero; Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, which received five Academy Award® nominations and a Screen Actor’s Guild Award for Ensemble Cast. Television audiences perhaps best recognize Bratt from his Emmy-nominated role as “Detective Rey Curtis” on NBC’s long-running drama Law & Order. He recently starred in 24: Live Another Day alongside Kiefer Sutherland, and the A&E drama series The Cleaner, for which he also served as Producer. A veteran of nearly 30 films, Bratt’s other work of note includes Curtis Hansen’s The River Wild opposite Meryl Streep; Blood In, Blood Out for director Taylor Hackford; Clear and Present Danger opposite Harrison Ford; the beloved comedy Miss Congeniality with Sandra Bullock; and the theatrical adaptation of the acclaimed novel Love in the Time of Cholera, co-starring Javier Bardem. Next up, Bratt can be seen starring in The Infiltrator with Bryan Cranston, the Marvel Comics hit Doctor Strange and the upcoming TV drama from Lee Daniels, Star, for Fox midseason 2017.
Jesse Dana
Director of Photography
Jesse grew up in art classes. He was drawing and painting from before he can remember. By high school his love of visual arts grew to include printmaking, graphic design and photography, leading to national recognition. When he was 20, Jesse discovered filmmaking. Soon after, he dropped all other pursuits, becoming immersed in the world behind the lens. Since then Jesse’s work has focused on the transformative power of images. His commercial works have earned four Emmy Awards, and his documentary work has garnered a national News and Documentary Emmy nomination. Many of his projects have appeared in festivals all over the world including Sundance, Tribeca and Cannes. Jesse has always been drawn to filmmaking that inspires change. Among his other projects, he has spent 8-years co-producing and shooting, Life After Life, a documentary on the impact of mass incarceration. This work led him to co-found a film school in San Quentin Prison and a pilot program that empowers at-risk youth with filmmaking tools in Oakland California.
ALPITA PATEL
Co-Producer
DOLORES is Alpita’s second film with producing partners Peter Bratt and Benjamin Bratt and their company, 5 Stick Films Inc. She was drawn to 5 Stick because of its commitment to social consciousness and awareness and her belief that she has something to add to that mix.
Patel’s credits include La Mission, starring Benjamin Bratt and written and directed by Peter Bratt. La Mission won 4 NALIP awards and was nominated for a NAACP Image Award. Patel also co-produced MISS INDIA AMERICA written by Meera Simhan and directed by Ravi Kapoor.
Patel started her entertainment industry career in the ICM Mailroom, she was promoted to Motion Picture Talent Agent after transferring to the William Morris Agency. During Patel’s tenure as an agent she worked with actors including Alfre Woodard, Radha Mitchell, Josh Brolin, Anne Hathaway, Alessandro Nivola, Patrick Stewart, Liev Schreiber and Benjamin Bratt.
Patel received her degree from the University of Wisconsin. She currently resides in Los Angeles.
Jennifer petrucelli
Archival Producer
Jennifer Petrucelli has worked as a producer in film and television for nearly 20 years. Recently she wrote, produced and conducted extensive archival research on a series of historical documentaries for Lucasfilm. Topics of these documentaries ranged from Artstotle to Mata Hari to General John Pershing. The films appeared on the History Channel in 2008. Jennifer also wrote and produced the Lucasfilm feature documentary Double Victory about the Tuskegee Airmen, and served as co-producer on Manifest Destiny, a three-part series on U.S. foreign policy, which was broadcast on public television in 2012. In 2014, Jennifer co-founded Sub-Basement Archival with colleague, Rachel Antell - who served as Archivist on Dolores.
In addition to her documentary work, Jennifer has worked as a Producer on feature projects at Industrial Light + Magic, as well as on commercial productions for Publicis & Hal Riney and Actual Films. Jennifer earned a Masters degree in Documentary Film from Stanford University and a BA in History from Cornell University.
Bob edwards
sound design & re-recording mixer
Robert C. Edwards is a sound designer, editor and re-recording mixer at Skywalker Sound. In his twenty-seven years at Skywalker, Bob has contributed his audio engineering and mixing skills to major motion pictures, independent films, documentaries, television, internet projects and film scores. Bob supervised, sound designed and mixed the soundtrack for the 2015 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Dramatic selection Songs My Brothers Taught Me, as well as two feature-length documentaries selected for Sundance 2014 – Marmato and This May Be The Last Time. For Sundance 2013, he supervised, sound designed and mixed the narrative feature Fruitvale Station, which won both the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Filmmaking and the Audience Award. He also supervised the sound for Beasts of the Southern Wild, which won the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Filmmaking at Sundance 2012. For both the Redford Center and James Redford's KPJR Films, Bob sound designed and mixed a variety of documentary and narrative films, including Watershed: Exploring A New Water Ethic for the New West, Paper Tigers, Toxic Hot Seat, The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia, Quality Time and Spin.
mark kilian
original music
South African born Mark Kilian has had a successful and eclectic film scoring career since moving to Los Angeles in 1994. He is most known for his ethnic flavored scores like the oscar winning Tsotsi, Traitor, Rendtion, Bless Me Ultima, and Before The Rains. His most recent scores include Revenge Of The Green Dragons (executive produced by Martin Scorsese,) John Carpenter’s The Ward, Trust Me (Clark Gregg, Felicity Huffman, Sam Rockwell, William H Macy,) Seal Team 8 (Tom Sizemore,) Repentance (Forest Whitaker,) and Pitch Perfect for which he has a platinum album for soundtrack sales. His TV work includes HBO’s 41, ABC’s Killer Women and Daybreak. He has also written music for many TV commercials including Apple, Toyota, Budweiser, American Express and Microsoft. He has 3 albums out under the name ‘The Gravy Street’ which have received airplay in Los Angeles and also 2 albums with the electronica duo ‘Ape Quartet.’
brooke wentz
music supervisor
Brooke Wentz is a recognized industry expert in the areas of copyright licensing, music supervision and world music. She runs The Rights Workshop, a music supervision and rights clearance company where she has overseen music on over a hundred independent and documentary films, and authored the book, Hey! That’s My Music. Prior, she ran ESPN’s music department, won a Billboard Award and oversaw A&R Administration for Arista Records. She recently founded Seven Seas Music, a unique platform to discover, listen and license international music. Brooke is a native San Franciscan who graduated from Barnard College and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
