ABOUT FILMMAKERS
The Earthkeepers
Mitch Teplitsky
Gabriel Lantz
Mitch Teplitski is a producer, based in Bloomington, Indiana since 2017, after spending most of his life in New York City, with long stints in Peru (the country, not the Indiana town), where he made several documentaries. He was marketing director at Lincoln Center and studied marketing at University of Pennsylvania.
Gabriel Lantz is a producer/director/editor and Emmy-nominated videographer for television, documentaries and branded content. His credits include projects for PBS/WTIU, MTV an educational video about climate change in China and a documentary-in-progress about yoga pioneer Amrit Desai.
From Sundown to Sunrise
Pat Wisniewski
Tom Desch
Pat Wisniewski is a former steelworker from Chicago’s South Side and a two-time Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. Her previous films include The Lively One, Shifting Sands and Everglades of the North, which appeared on PBS.
Tom Desch (producer/director) was raised among the cornfields of Herscher, Illinois (population 1,600) and credits his upbringing in this rural community on the fringe of Chicago’s influence as the inspiration for his films, including the Emmy-nominated An American Home and Everglades of the North, that take a look at our relationship with our natural and built environments.
Pat is based in Valparaiso and Tom lives in Chicago.
From Sundown to Sunrise
Pat Wisniewski
Tom Desch
Pat Wisniewski is a former steelworker from Chicago’s South Side and a two-time Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. Her previous films include The Lively One, Shifting Sands and Everglades of the North, which appeared on PBS.
Tom Desch (producer/director) was raised among the cornfields of Herscher, Illinois (population 1,600) and credits his upbringing in this rural community on the fringe of Chicago’s influence as the inspiration for his films, including the Emmy-nominated An American Home and Everglades of the North, that take a look at our relationship with our natural and built environments.
Pat is based in Valparaiso and Tom lives in Chicago.
From Sundown to Sunrise
Pat Wisniewski
Tom Desch
Pat Wisniewski is a former steelworker from Chicago’s South Side and a two-time Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. Her previous films include The Lively One, Shifting Sands and Everglades of the North, which appeared on PBS.
Tom Desch (producer/director) was raised among the cornfields of Herscher, Illinois (population 1,600) and credits his upbringing in this rural community on the fringe of Chicago’s influence as the inspiration for his films, including the Emmy-nominated An American Home and Everglades of the North, that take a look at our relationship with our natural and built environments.
Pat is based in Valparaiso and Tom lives in Chicago.
Hometown Media
Ryan Gleeson
Ryan Gleeson is a documentary filmmaker based in Chicago. Born in Richmond, raised in punk rock, and moved to tell stories of people from the Heartland, Ryan found his home at Kartemquin Films and has spent the last eight years there helping craft stories about real people in and around the Midwest. He served as co-editor on Atlanta Documentary Film Fest’s Jury Award-winning Raising Bertie, post-production supervisor on Oscar-nominated films Minding the Gap, Abacus, and Edith + Eddie, as well as editor and post-production supervisor on many other documentary features, shorts, non-fiction television and special featurettes. In 2016, Ryan was selected by Sundance Documentary Lab as a contributing Editor Fellow for 2019 Peabody Award nominee Whose Streets?, an intimate look at the community of Ferguson, Missouri following the death of Mike Brown at the hands of the Ferguson police.
In his spare time, Ryan runs a pop-up pizza restaurant from his living room, a practice he describes as quicker to develop and make than long-form documentary.
From Sundown to Sunrise
Pat Wisniewski
Tom Desch
Pat Wisniewski is a former steelworker from Chicago’s South Side and a two-time Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. Her previous films include The Lively One, Shifting Sands and Everglades of the North, which appeared on PBS.
Tom Desch (producer/director) was raised among the cornfields of Herscher, Illinois (population 1,600) and credits his upbringing in this rural community on the fringe of Chicago’s influence as the inspiration for his films, including the Emmy-nominated An American Home and Everglades of the North, that take a look at our relationship with our natural and built environments.
Pat is based in Valparaiso and Tom lives in Chicago.
Larry from Gary
Dan Rybicky
Dan Rybicky is a Gary, Indiana-based award-winning filmmaker and professor who produced and co-directed ITVS/Kartemquin Films’ critically-acclaimed feature documentary Almost There, which was shot on location in Northwest Indiana and screened at festivals around the world before being distributed theatrically, digitally, and on public television in 2016. Dan’s most recent short documentary about health care Accident, MD received a favorable review in The New Yorker before being broadcast nationally on PBS/Independent Lens in January 2019 and premiering online in February as a Vimeo Staff Pick.
Dan received his BA at Vassar College and his MFA at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts before beginning to work with and consult in various production capacities for Martin Scorsese, John Sayles, and John Leguizamo. Dan was recently a consulting producer on The Area, which premiered in April 2018 at the Full Frame Documentary Festival, and Dan is currently producing Genius of a Different Hue, a new feature documentary about the history of black advertising in development with Kartemquin Films.
From Sundown to Sunrise
Pat Wisniewski
Tom Desch
Pat Wisniewski is a former steelworker from Chicago’s South Side and a two-time Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. Her previous films include The Lively One, Shifting Sands and Everglades of the North, which appeared on PBS.
Tom Desch (producer/director) was raised among the cornfields of Herscher, Illinois (population 1,600) and credits his upbringing in this rural community on the fringe of Chicago’s influence as the inspiration for his films, including the Emmy-nominated An American Home and Everglades of the North, that take a look at our relationship with our natural and built environments.
Pat is based in Valparaiso and Tom lives in Chicago.
Raised in Contrast
Chad Perdue
As principal of DevLab Creative, Chad Perdue spends most of his days giving clients the digital tools to meet their business and organizational goals. The company’s primary focus is professional video production, website design and development, and social media campaign strategy and execution.
Chad views each client’s needs as a chance to tell their unique story. With a degree in film and video and the inquisitive mind of an anthropologist, documenting diverse cultural perspectives is something Chad has often considered. While Raised In Contrast is his first short film, the opportunity from Indiana Humanities allowed him to exercise his creative mind and explore these often sensitive topics to help bring some context to the state of our society with hopes that real understanding may take place.