About the Producers
Marianna Yarovskaya: Director
Marianna Yarovskaya has over 18 years of experience working as a documentary
filmmaker focusing on ecology, history, political and social issues, including
researching shamans and Shamanism and during the total solar eclipse in the
Altai region of Russia at the end of 2008.
She field produced the China and Russia portions of Countdown to
Zero, a film about the state of nuclear weapons. She was the Head of Research the documentary
starring Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth (2006 Academy Award, 2006 Nobel Prize for Al Gore).
For
the segment of the film shot in China, Marianna already has a working
relationship with such NGOs as the Nature Conservancy and the Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge (CBIK). These groups continue to sponsor
participatory video projects in rural regions.
Additionally,
while living in Paris
in 2008, Marianna helped to produce the Panorama
du Cinéma Chinois de Paris. In that
capacity, she helped select contemporary Chinese films and ten classical
Chinese opera films to screen at the Max Linder Theater in Paris. She is also a Fulbright candidate for the
2010 US People’s Republic of China Award to write a script about Dongba shamans
in Yunnan province (letter attached).
Marianna
has produced films for National Geographic, the History Channel, Discovery
Channel, NASA and Greenpeace USA. She
spent three years doing videos and interviewing scientists at NASA, and three
years making films for National Geographic.
While carrying out this work, she traveled extensively and learned to do
research independently.
In 2008,
Marianna and her co-producer, Olesya Bondareva, traveled to the Altai region of
Russia with a small Prosumer camera to document the rehabilitation of Shamanism
in the post-Soviet era. They filmed practicioners
of Burkhanism (“white shamans”) in the village of Kyrkyk. There they felt the necessity to broaden
their documentation.
Other films by Marianna Yarovskaya:
Undesirables: Total Run Time 23
min, DVCAM
Undesirables is a documentary following the lives of runaway teenagers
in Russia. Produced in the year 2000, the film received
a Student Academy Award and a College Emmy Award, and was screened in
Cannes. Now, ten years later, the same
team of filmmakers – Marianna Yarovskaya, Olesya Bondareva, Bryan Donnell, and
Arthur Yee – join efforts to follow the shamans of the world and ask them
important questions about the shamans themselves and the changing world.
Holy Warriors: Total Run Time 33
min, DVCAM
Yarovskaya
and Bondareva started addressing issues of spirituality, war and religion in
today’s society in their next film, Holy
Warriors. The documentary studies
five former Russian soldiers who fought in wars from Afghanistan to Chechnya
and found spirituality as a result. It
chronicles the spiritual upheaval brought about by war, offering profound
insight into the resilience of the human spirit during trying times. It demonstrates the traumatic effect of
enlisting unwilling soldiers while raising questions about the links between
war and religion in the modern world.
One character in the film, a former army sniper who became a priest,
puts it best: "There are no atheists in a foxhole.” Holy
Warriors screened in 25 countries worldwide.
KEY CREATIVE PERSONNEL
Director of Photography - Bryan Donnell
Won
the Emmy Award for "Outstanding Cinematography in Reality Programming"
for A&E's Intervention. DP for a documentary produced by Participant
Media and Lawrence Bender, the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, and directed by Lucy Walker (Blindsight, The Devil's Playground). DP for The Elders, a documentary for Richard Branson’ Virgin
Unite about The Elders, a small alliance of diplomats including Jimmy Carter,
Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan. DP for Ghost Hunters International, the popular SciFi/SyFy series
about haunted castles around the world.
DP for Made
in LA, Emmy-award winning film about sweatshops in Los Angeles, California. Numerous materials for DVDs such as The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean,
and Hairspray, and
re-release versions of LA
Confidential, Friday,
Set It Off, and Nightmare on Elm Street. Currently shooting an HBO documentary in Dubai
following a group of kids from around the world for the International Quran
memorization competition.
Arthur Yee - Cinematographer
http://www.decemberpictures.com
Arthur Yee started December Pictures in 1999 to help
independent producers shed light to their projects. He was inspired by the power of documentaries
after being a subject in a PBS Frontline documentary. Now with 15 years of worldwide production experience
working for a wide range of projects for National Geographic, PBS, Discovery,
A&E, TLC, NBC, FOX, many corporate and nonprofit clients. Arthur brings sensitivity and a creative
passion to every shoot and uncompromising quality to every project.
Yana Gorskaya - Editor
Gorskaya's documentary credits
include the much acclaimed Spellbound (2003
Academy Award Nomination, Sundance Festival official selection), which follows
eight children on their way to the National Spelling Bee, and In the Name of Love, an exploration of
Russian marriage agencies executive produced by Sydney Pollack (for the
Discovery Channel). She also edited Sonny Boy, a documentary about Virgil
Frye, character actor, civil rights activist and Golden Gloves Boxing
champion. She also edited the feature Rocket Science (Sundance official
selection 2004). She received her B.A.
from Columbia University and her MFA from USC, both with numerous honors.
Researcher
in Russia - Alex
Kandaurov
Considered the top researcher in Russia for the past 20 years, Kandaurov
has done award winning work for all the major US studios. He is distinguished for his access to rare
footage and photographs from all over Russia.
Location Manager in China
Zhang Xu is a producer/director for the Beijing Television Arts
Center and president of the Beijing Association of Dongba Culture and
Arts. In 1990 she conducted several
investigations in the Lijiang area, interviewed Dongba priests and documented
various religious ceremonies. She has
produced a number of nationally and internationally acclaimed
documentaries. She has lectured at Beijing University,
Qinghua University
and other cultural societies on Dongba culture, and held exhibitions of
contemporary Na-xi paintings in China
and Germany.
Beijing Association of
Dongba Culture and Arts (ADCA)
ADCA
is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping preserve the ancient Dongba
heritage of China, and to actively promoting the understanding of Dongba
culture, arts and traditions. It has received national and international
acclaim for its exhibitions of rare cultural artifacts, photos, documentaries
and artwork. With the gradual waning of traditional Dongba influences,
the ADCA represents a significant step to reverse a process of loss.