Helene Kvale | Director / Writer / Producer

Born in Norway, Helene is an American director, writer, actor and educator. She received her anthropology degree from the London School of Economics and her postgraduate actor training from The Drama Studio, London. Her career as an actor spanned two decades in award-winning television, film and theatre, including Richard III, King Lear and Napoli Milionaria at the National Theatre, and various West End productions. In 2003, Helene joined the Department of Dramatic Arts at UCONN as a professor, directing for Connecticut Repertory Theatre. Helene was the founding Artistic Director of Bated Breath Theatre Company and is an alumna of The Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. Writing credits include the film Burning Blue, distributed by Lionsgate. The Loom marks her debut as a documentary director.

Adam Briscoe | Co-Director / Producer

Adam studied international relations at Georgetown University. While still a student, he took advisory roles on congressional and gubernatorial campaigns in his home state of Texas, and spent a year living in China, producing documentaries for a human rights watchdog in Beijing. Later, he founded a media consulting company before moving to France in 2013 to pursue film full-time. Since then, Briscoe has worked as a writer and producer on films whose subjects range from soccer to civil war. His first documentary release as a writer was Maria by Callas, which was distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. In the summer of 2020, Adam made his debut as a co-director with the release of Talking Like Her, which was first broadcast by SVT.

Nick Stuart | Producer

For twenty years Nick has run documentary film production and impact campaign companies in the US and UK, harnessing the power of storytelling to build audiences and impact for a more just world. First as a reporter, then director, and more recently as a producer and executive producer, he has delivered programming for Netflix, HBO, PBS, Starz, Discovery, BBC and ITV. Nick has worked with Transform Films/Odyssey Impact and Nick Stuart Films on films that have won over 40 national and international awards including a Peabody and the Human Rights Award at the Venice International Film Festival. Features include Serving Life, Newtown, The Rape of Recy Taylor. Shorts include Return to the Promised Land: The Legacy of Black Wall Street, Run For His Life and Notes from Dunblane. Nick’s films in production are Unconquered:Gorazde, City of Heroes and The Kyiv Independent. He is a member of BAFTA and PGA.

Cynthia Kane | Producer

Cynthia co-created Sundance Channel’s DOCday and brought Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and Denis Poncet’s documentary series, The Staircase (2006-Peabody-Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Awards) to U.S. television. At ITVS, she shepherded 150+ international and U.S. co-productions for public media. At Al Jazeera America, she commissioned documentaries and series (Albert Maysles’ final work, In Transit and duPont Award-winning series, Kartemquin Films’ Hard Earned). Recent work includes Pip Gilmour and Leslie Shampaine’s Call Me Dancer (2023), Raj Patel and Zak Piper’s The Ants and the Grasshopper (2021), Carl Gierstorfer and Antje Boehmert’s The River Between Us (2021), NC Heikin’s Life & Life (2021), Maria Finitzo’s The Dilemma of Desire (2020-Showtime), Kim A Snyder, Maria Cuomo Cole, Lori Cheatle’s Us Kids (2020), and Maia Lekow and Chris King’s The Letter (2019).

Jana Lämmerer | Director of Photography

Jana is a DoP based in Berlin, Germany. Since graduating from Munich Filmschool as cinematographer, her work can be seen in award winning feature films and commercials worldwide. Her debut feature, Isy Way Out, premiered at the Munich Film Festival and was nominated for the Grimme Prize. In 2019, Jana became the first female DoP of a German Netflix original with Freaks. Known for capturing the intricate poetry and beauty of everyday life through her visual storytelling, Jana is delighted to take part in the journey of the documentary feature The Loom.

Anne Fabini | Editor

has been editing notable feature films and documentaries since 1999. Writing With Fire (2022) by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Gosh and Of Fathers and Sons (2019) by Talal Derki won Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary. No Other Land, a documentary by a Palestinian-Israeli collective, won both the audience and jury awards for Best Documentary at the 2024 Berlinale. Of the films she has edited throughout the years, four documentaries and three narrative features premiered at the Sundance Film Festival with Return to Homs winning the World Documentary Grand Jury Prize 2014. Jennifer Fox’s The Tale premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition in 2019 and went on to earn Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and a nomination for Best Editing at the Independent Spirit Awards. Anne’s work has earned both the German Film Critics Award and the German Film Award for Best Editing. She is a member of the European, German and American Film Academies.

Simon Kilmurry | Executive Producer

Simon Kilmurry is a documentary producer, executive producer, and consultant. He has received a Prime Time Emmy Award, 17 News & Documentary Emmys, and six Peabody Awards. Simon was the executive director of the International Documentary Association from 2015 to 2021. Prior to IDA, he was the executive producer of “POV” at PBS, where he co-founded the documentary series “America ReFramed.” Simon is currently on the Board of Governors for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and is a member of the Producers Guild of America, the Television Academy, and has served on the board of jurors of the Peabody Awards since 2016.

Hugo Perez | Consulting Producer

Hugo is a producer, director, editor and writer. Most recently he directed the documentary feature, Omara, about Afro-Cuban music icon Omara Portuondo. He also co-directed and produced the feature doc, Once Upon a Time in Uganda. Hugo is currently serving as writer on the PBS series, American Historia. He was editor and co-writer for Elliot Page and Ian Daniel’s feature doc There’s Something in the Water. He was co-produer and co-writer on the feature doc Island of Baseball and producer and director for the PBS doc, Summer Sun Winter Moon. Hugo is the recipient of the NALIP Estela Award, the HBO/NYILFF Short Film Award and the Rockefeller Foundation/Tribeca Film Institute Emerging Artist Fellowship, and NEH Chairman’s Grant. Hugo is currently a cultural envoy for the U.S. State Department’s American Film Showcase program, teaching documentary storytelling workshops around the world.

Rich Hollant | Co-Producer / Designer of Interactive Website

Rich is the founder, lead strategist and design director at Hartford’s CO:LAB and an international award-winning designer. His community work features in books and museums in the USA and abroad. Rich teaches in the MFA program at Hartford Art School and sits on the National Board of AIGA, where he co-chairs Design for Democracy. He is the chair of Hartford’s Commission on Cultural Affairs, leading the city’s Recovery Committee on art, culture, recreation, and faith. He is the founder and Executive Director of Free Center, a national organization that provides access to space and resources to promote community engagement through arts and culture.

Katharina Esch | Co-Producer / Researcher

Katharina was born and raised in Demmin, East Germany, later obtaining a BA First Class with Distinction from Reading University, UK. This is her first foray into documentary filmmaking. After decades of working in the corporate world, she joined The Loom team as producer and researcher, combining her interest in genealogy, modern German history and gender issues. Her experience of living in the German Democratic Republic and through reunification brings valuable insight to the project. She now lives in Balestrand, Norway.

Dr. Benno Grzimek | Co-Producer / Researcher

Benno was raised in Southern Germany. After studying Ethnology at Freie Universität Berlin, he continued his studies in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics and wrote his PhD thesis after carrying out fieldwork about social change in an Eastern Indonesian society. He has contributed to and translated texts by Maria Montessori on the history of the peace movement in the German post-war states as well as ethnographic studies in India. He currently works as a freelance researcher in Berlin, undertaking genealogical studies, researching the history of individuals and families.

Matt Porwoll | Vérité Cinematography

Matt is an Emmy and Sundance award-winning cinematographer based in New York. Porwoll shot the film Tigerland, directed by Academy Award-winner Ross Kauffman, which premiered in competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The feature documentary Cartel Land, which Matt shot and co-produced, won Best Cinematography Awards at the Sundance Film Festival and Primetime Emmys, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Porwoll has served as an additional cinematographer on numerous other films including HBO’s Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1, which won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Advisory Board

• Adrian Wood, Archival Producer
  
• Martin Farkas, Cinematographer
• Professor Dr. Juliane Prade-Weiss
• Professor Dr. Andrea Peto
• Professor Richard A. Wilson
  
• Assistant Professor A.K.M. Skarpelis

Additional Credits

• Camera: Alexander Drecun
• Camera: Tanya Bindra
• Camera: Christian Carroll
• Composer: Lillie McDonaugh
• Sound LA: Jameo Duncan
• Sound Berlin: Adel Gamehdar
• Senior Colorist: Andrea Chlebak
• Assistant to the Director: Kira Kock, Amelia Connelly
• Researchers: Johanna Leutnant, Henrik Bassett
• Website: co:lab
• AC Berlin: Marc Remmert
• 2nd AC Berlin: Vicky Mueller
• AC LA: Otis Witt
• 2nd AC LA: Han Radjawane

Outreach:

• Silvia Schroeder, Inner Weaving
• Kerry Kincy, Free Center

The Loom is supported by:

• The Merchant and Ivory Foundation
• Robert McNeal and James Kinsella Family Fund
• Kathleen Keen & Robert Earl Keen
• The Garrett Family Foundation
• Jenniphr Goodman & Eric Pope
• Nancy Dickenson
• David Greer & Andrew Halliday
• Rev. Dagfinn & Edith Kvale
• Francesca Joseph
• Barbara Pivarnik & Francis Archambault
• Dan & Sally Wigutow
• OVP for Research, UCONN: SCHARP
• Linda & Larry Lane
• Dan Milne & Jane Nash
• Alexandra Boyd
• Andy & Lucy Carl
• Kristin & Jim Howard
• Beatrix Kaltenmaier
• Lise Martina & Peter Lindseth
• Birgit Doring
• Alexandra Boyd
• Lucy Reed
• William Ruggiero
• Peter Schumann
• Margaret Wilkinson
• Saul Dubow
• Ruth Doberstein
• Elke Allwelt Miyahara
• Michael Bradford
• John Briscoe
• Dale Rose
• Kitty & Paul Martin
• Kim & James Sewell
• Robert Bryan Davis
• Jennifer Hayes
• Susybelle Goslee
• Stafford Lyons
• Tanya Fleming
• Dominique Lasseur & Catherine Tatge
• Alan Perrin
• Beth Lane
• Katherine & James Hogarth
• Dianna Wallquist
• Bente Hoegsberg
• Amy Lettes
• Debora Parks
• Kevin and Melissa Buckner

Special thanks to:

• Topography of Terror Museum, Berlin
• Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center, Berlin
• Berlinische Galerie
• Museum Berlin Karlshorst
• Elisabeth Allwelt
• Elke Allwelt Miyahara
• Ingrid Allwelt
• Edith & Dagfinn Kvale
• Linus Roache
• Rosalind Bennett
• Kathryn Libal, Human Rights Institute, UCONN
• Catherine Masud, DMD & HRI, UCONN
• Dr. Paul Betts
• Florian Huber
• Marilyn Berger
• Judson Studios
• Berlinische Galerie
• Samantha Smith
• Dr. Hoeller
• Narcissus Quagliata
• Jennifer Sapozhnikov
• Kent Coleman