Filmmakers
Mike Seely – Director, Producer, Cinematographer
Director/Cinematographer Mike Seely has produced, directed and photographed dozens of cross-cultural and international documentary projects. His work has been broadcast in the US and screened at festivals worldwide including Slamdance, Tribeca, Toronto International Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. His 2010 film The Most Distant Places about a rural hospital project in Ecuador is in distribution through New Day Films. As a freelance cinematographer and producer, he works with independent directors, non-profit, broadcast and commercial clients such as National Geographic, MTV2, Frontline World, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Facebook and Williams-Sonoma. Recent DP credits include: Hard Earned (prod. Kartemquin Films, Al Jazeera America broadcast 2015), Code: Debugging the Gender Gap (Tribeca 2015), and Daughters of the Forest (ITVS/PBS broadcast 2015). In 2005, he completed his MA in documentary film production at Stanford University, and for 2010 he received a Fulbright grant to work in Lodz, Poland on a project exploring the Polish documentary film tradition.
John Kane – Editor, Co-producer
Editor John Kane is an Oakland, California-based freelance editor of feature documentaries, investigative news, and commercial work. John edited Informant for director Jamie Meltzer; the feature-length film has won five awards, including the Grand Jury Prize at DOC NYC and Best Editing at Salem Film Fest. John also edited The Most Distant Places (dir. Mike Seely) — a film about doctors working in remote areas of Ecuador — and was additional editor on True Son, which premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. His journalism and corporate clients include Al Jazeera America, National Geographic Channel, Facebook, and Adobe, and his work has twice appeared in New York Times Op-Doc videos. Left in Baghdad, a film he co-directed, was broadcast nationally on the PBS series "Independent Lens" in 2008. John lived and worked in Mexico City for two years and speaks fluent Spanish. He holds an MFA in Documentary Film & Video from Stanford University and a BA in English Literature from Swarthmore College.
Diya Guha - Associate Producer
Diya was born and raised in Kolkata, India. She grew up in a family with a very strong academic conviction about the intrinsic value of education and the deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that can come through its pursuit. She studied economics at Sophia College in Mumbai, then joined a world-renowned advertising and media company called Mindshare. Diya then completed her MFA in Creative Strategy at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Following her first short documentary, “The Mural,” that won over 50 awards worldwide, she currently has a residency at San Francisco Film Society working on the feature documentary, “Moses.”