Meet the team behind Kramer & Sons:
Brandon Kramer, co-director/co-producer
Brandon is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, educator and a co-founder of Meridian Hill Pictures, where he directs the studio’s independent films and develops MHP's Community Video Storytelling media education curriculum, a standards-based approach for teaching documentary filmmaking to diverse populations. Brandon is co-director of the award-winning short documentaries Porchfest (2011) and Community Harvest (2010), executive producer and media teaching artist on the award-winning youth documentary Life as a Collage (screened at the 2011 AFI SchoolDocs and the San Francisco International Film Festival). Brandon has presented on participatory filmmaking at the Media That Matters Conference, Yale University, AFI's Silverdocs, MHZ's ShortiCon and the Corps Network's Annual Conference. Brandon has served as a reviewer for the President's Committee on the Arts & Humanities National Youth Program Awards, the highest honor in the country for after school youth arts programs. Prior to forming MHP, Brandon taught documentary filmmaking to youth at ten middle schools across the country for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ ‘On Location’ national tour. Brandon holds a Bachelors Degree in Film Production and Cultural Anthropology from Boston University.
Lance Kramer, co-director/co-producer
Lance is a multi-disciplinary storyteller and respected arts leader, with background in documentary filmmaking, education, journalism and community organizing. Lance is a co-founder of Meridian Hill Pictures, where he produces the studio’s independent documentary films; develops new partnerships; and spearheads outreach and engagement strategy. In 2014, Lance received the prestigious DC Mayor's Arts Award, recognizing his innovative work in the art of documentary filmmaking. Lance is co-producer of the feature documentary Voices from Within and associate producer of Fly By Light; and producer of award-winning shorts Life as a Collage, Doing it for Me, Porchfest, and Community Harvest. Prior to founding MHP, worked as a community journalist and children's author in Portland, Oregon; and taught English in Ethiopia. Lance is active in building the DC documentary filmmaking community: he has served two terms as Board Member of Docs In Progress; a Humanities Council of Washington DC humanities scholar and is a current DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities Individual Arts Fellow. Lance holds a Bachelors Degree in History from Dartmouth College.
Magee McIlvaine, editor
Magee McIlvaine was born in Canada and grew up between East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia) and Washington, DC. His work to date primarily focuses on the intersection of politics and the arts, especially the use of hip hop music and culture as a political tool. From Africa to Europe to South America, he has produced documentaries in some of the world’s most notorious urban areas. As co-director of the groundbreaking ‘Democracy in…’ series (Senegal, France, Haiti), as well as two political documentaries in Venezuela, he conducts guerrilla filmmaking workshops around the world; and, his work has been presented at institutions of higher learning in the US and abroad (Harvard, MIT, GWU, Georgetown, Wesleyan, University of Cape Town, among others), and at music and academic conferences (SXSW, NXNE, CMJ, ASA, Waga Hip Hop Festival in Burkina Faso, and more).
Sam McCormally, composer
Sam McCormally is a composer, songwriter, singer, and multi-instrumentalist from Washington, DC. He has composed music for numerous films, including the feature length documentaries Walk With Me and Igual Que Tú. Sam is the founding member of Ugly Purple Sweater, an indie rock band from Washington, DC. He is currently collaborating on the score for Meena’s Dream, a play by Anu Yadav. Information about Sam’s work is available atwww.sammccormally.com. Sam grew up in Northern Virginia and currently lives in a house in Washington, DC with his wife Rachel, his sister Anna, and his friend Ross.
