Phil Bertelsen

An award-winning filmmaker, Phil Bertelsen works in both fiction and non-fiction. His narrative feature debut, Rock the Paint, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival where it received the Creative Promise Award. He produced the Peabody Award-winning Chisholm ’72 – Unbought & Unbossed. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, it was broadcast nationally on public television. His first film, Around the Time, was a drama honored with several awards, including a Student Academy Award while his next film The Sunshine also won numerous festival awards including a Director’s Guild East Award.
Additionally, Bertelsen wrote and directed Outside Looking In, an hour-long documentary examining transracial adoption in America airing on PBS. His most recent film, Beyond the Steps Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, aired on PBS as part of Great Performances’ “Dance in America” series. Bertelsen holds an M.F.A. in Film from New York University and a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University.
 

Becca Bender

Becca Bender began her career working on narrative features such as America’s Sweethearts and Tortilla Soup.  After sampling many different roles in the world of Hollywood fiction, she moved to New York and crossed into documentary. She found a love of archival research on PBS’s Frontline episode Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, and from there became the associate producer of the heavily archival, Peabody Award-winning Chisholm ’72 – Unbought & Unbossed, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. 

Chisholm ‘72 was broadcast on public television as part of the POV series, as was her next project as associate producer, the award-winning Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela. Most recently Bender co-produced Beyond the Steps, which aired on PBS as part of Great Performances’ “Dance in America” series.  She graduated from Vassar College with a B.A. in Film Production/Studies.
 
 
 
   
 
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