I started my work as a documentary filmmaker as the historian and producer of With Babies and Banners. It was my first film, and it was nominated for an Academy Award in 1979. I have a BA in history and an MA in Women’s Studies, and film became my passion. Film has a unique ability to make history accessible by showing how ordinary people rise to extraordinary heights to challenge or change the circumstances around them.

With Babies and Banners offered an incredible opportunity to research, reconstruct and bring to life a story of women whose courage and conviction made a difference in their community and the nation. This pivotal documentary won multiple awards internationally with a theatrical release. The film had a worldwide television broadcast.

This was the beginning of an incredible journey in film. I had the opportunity to work on two of the PBS documentary series that have defined the genre of social history documentaries. I was a Producer, Director and Writer on Henry Hampton’s The Great Depression (1993), and for KCET on The Great War (1996). Both series won major television awards.

I had the privilege to witness the opening of cultural relations between the Soviet Union and the United States. In 1989, glasnost and perestroika had sparked a flurry of activities between American and Soviet filmmakers, and I was hired to film the Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles, where the top directors, writers and actors from the Soviet Union and United States met for the first time. The following year, we documented a delegation of American filmmakers to the Soviet Union, and had the wonderful experience of accompanying Quincy Jones and filming his first visit to a Moscow jazz club.

A year later, I produced a documentary in Russia. A Taste of Freedom (1991) was produced for Roland Joffe, directed by Marina Goldovskaya and broadcast on TNT.   I received start-up funding for an independent feature, Odyssey, which would have been one of the first American-Soviet co-productions. Unfortunately, relations between our two countries turned cold, and we were not able to secure financing.

I am very proud that my documentaries have used evocative storytelling, penetrating archival footage, and visually compelling cinematography to put a human face on historical events, and to reveal the enduring spirit in stories that still have an impact on our world today. Some of my films on contemporary issues include documentaries on disability for PBS’s People in Motion (1995) and an expose on child labor in the U.S. for Lifetime, Danger: Kids at Work (1991).

I believe that filmmaking is a collaborative process and I have worked in partnership with talented producers to create and produce 3 series for national primetime PBS: The Roman Empire in the First Century, a four-hour series with Margaret Koval (2001); and Japan: Memoirs of a Secret Empire(2004), a three- hour series with Deborah DeSnoo, both in association with Devillier Donegan Enterprises and PBS. I joined forces with Jed Riffe, Paul Espinosa and Emiko Omori to produce the four-hour PBS seriesCalifornia and the American Dream (2006). I continued to focus on California, directing the PBS documentary Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race (2015), which I also produced with Alison Sotomayor.

My short documentaries include:  Eddy’s World, is a film celebrating my 98-year-old(now 103-year-old)  toy inventor father, and featured on NewYorker.com, broadcast on PBS and honored as a film festival favorite.

Memorial Day Massacre (2023) was produced with Greg Mitchell,  broadcast on PBS and honored with a Los Angeles Press Club Award for best documentary; The First Attack Ads ( 2022), produced with Greg Mitchell and broadcast on PBS and screened at festivals; Museums Without Borders (2010) commissioned by the American Association of Museums video for their Annual Meeting at the Los Angeles Convention Center; L.A. Working / Trabajamos Los Angeles,  a 6 minute video commissioned by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs for the Los Angeles Pavilion at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. The video was part of a public art installation, suspended on large, pneumatic “bubbles” handing from the ceiling of the Pavilion. Icons from Sinai (2006), commissioned by  the J. Paul Getty Museum and  integrated into their major exhibit as part of an immersive experience. We produced 60,000 DVDs, which promoted and publicized the exhibit, and were inserted into Los Angeles Magazine prior to the opening.  

In 2012, I was selected as a film expert for the American Film Showcase, a partnership between the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts to engage international audiences through American film. In 2010, I was commissioned by the U.S. Department of State and the American Embassy in Burma to teach a 4 week intensive documentary workshop in Yangon, Burma.

My experience also includes narrative filmmaking. I was awarded a fellowship to AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women where I directed my first short feature From the Heart.