Indie Filmmaker Series #7 – Documentary Filmmaking: An Insiders View
We will be taking a deep dive into the state of making documentaries in this current climate where both topics and financing can be difficult.
BIOS
Jeffrey Winter
Jeffrey Winter is co–executive director at The Film Collaborative since 2010, an LA-based independent film distribution company with specialties in human rights, social justice, environmental issues, and LGBT cinema. Highlight films during this time include Shaunak Sen’s ALL THAT BREATHES (Oscar nomination Best Doc Feature 2023), Maite Alberdi’s THE ETERNAL MEMORY (Oscar Nomination Best Doc Feature 2024), Kirby Dick’s THE INVISIBLE WAR (Oscar Nomination Best Doc Feature 2013), David France’s THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON and WELCOME TO CHECHNYA, Nanfu Wang’s HOOLIGAN SPARROW, Andrew Haigh’s WEEKEND, Rita Coburn Whack and Bob Hercules’ MAYA ANGELOU: AND STILL I RISE; Sam Feder’s DISCLOSURE, Jacqueline Olive’s ALWAYS IN SEASON, David Charles Rodrigues’ GAY CHORUS DEEP SOUTH, Ondi Timoner’s MAPPLETHORPE, Kirsten Johnson’s CAMERAPERSON, Louie Psihoyos’ RACING EXTINCTION, Jeffrey Schwarz’s I AM DIVINE, VITO, and many more. Other career highlights include five years managing strategic investments and U.S. sales/acquisitions for the largest media conglomerate in Spain (under the banners Maxmedia, Sogepaq, Sogetel, and Sogecine); several years handling grassroots marketing for L.A.’s two largest film festivals (the Los Angeles Film Festival and AFI FEST); a long tenure handling non-theatrical/festival/
Caroline Waterlow
Caroline Waterlow is an Oscar, Emmy & Peabody award-winning documentary film producer based in New York City. Waterlow produced O.J.: Made in America, winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards, an ESPN Films production directed by Ezra Edelman. The film premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and has been awarded by multiple organizations including the International Documentary Association, Film Independent, the Producers Guild, the Columbia School of Journalism, & the American Film Institute.
Caroline Waterlow is President of Laylow Pictures, Inc, a Brooklyn-based production company she co-founded in 2019 with Ezra Edelman. Recent projects include STAX: Soulsville, U.S.A, a four-part docuseries for HBO, winner of a Peabody Award and Audience Award at SXSW, and nominated in 2024 for two Prime Time Emmy awards, a Gotham Award and an IDA Award; and Vow of Silence: The Assassination of Annie Mae, a four-part docuseries for HULU/ Onyx Collective about the life and infamous murder of Indigenous activist Annie Mae Aquash. The series premiered November 2024 after winning the “Achievement in Filmmaking” award at the Native American Media Awards/ LA SKINS FEST and is currently nominated for a Humanitas Award. Waterlow’s projects prior to the founding of Laylow Pictures include: Radical Love, a short film for the The New Yorker about Weather Underground lawyer Michael Kennedy
which premiered Tribeca in 2021; Qualified, an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary about race car driver Janet Guthrie, which premiered at SXSW and was selected for the State Department’s American Film Showcase; Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon, directed by Mike Myers & Beth Aala, which premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy; and Academy Award-nominated, Cutie and the Boxer, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013 and won Best Director of a U.S. Documentary for Director Zachary Heinzerling. In 2013, Caroline was the senior producer of content for MAKERS.com, the largest video collection of women’s stories, produced with AOL and PBS. Between 2006 and 2012,
Caroline worked in varying roles on multiple HBO documentaries, including Emmy-Award winning films Teddy: In His Own Words and Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of
Flatbush, as well as WARTORN: 1861-2010, Executive Produced by James Gandolfini and winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and Prism Award. Waterlow graduated from Emory University in 1996 and began her career in documentaries working with filmmaker Peter Kunhardt as a researcher and archivist. Originally from Montreal, Canada, she currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband Wyatt Smith, a feature film editor.
April Wright
April Wright is an award-winning filmmaker who fell in love with movies going to drive-ins and movie palaces in the Chicago area. She brings a fresh and creative approach to her original material, inspired by real people and events, especially underdog stories.
In 2025, April directed “Final Trip,” a psychological thriller she also wrote, starring Michael Provost (The Holdovers, 9-1-1 Nashville) and Doug Jones (The Shape of Water). She’s completing several new docs, including an inspiring female-driven sports doc “Jessie Graff: We Can Rebuild Her” and “All Skate” about the history of roller skating and rinks, which is very personal, since April’s family’s business growing up was a roller rink. She’s also working on a documentary about the Gardena Cinema and owner Judy Kim’s struggle to keep her family’s historic theatre alive.
She was recognized by Humanitas “New Voices” in 2023 and Women in Film / Blacklist in 2024 for her pilot “Fear of Flying.” Her latest documentary “Back to the Drive-in” released theatrically in 2022 with a per-screen average second only to Top Gun Maverick. “Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story,” executive produced by Michelle Rodriguez, was named Best Documentary of 2020 by the national Women Film Critics Circle. April worked as a narrative programmer for the Sundance Film Festival and AFI Fest for over 15 years. She has an MBA from Northwestern, and is a Sundance Institute alum.
Christine La Monte – Moderator
Producer/director/writer and former film marketing executive at Universal, Disney, and Orion is the founder/president of La Monte Productions where current projects include two feature documentaries on the awards circuit up for Oscar consideration: AI WEIWEI’S TURANDOT, a co-production with Italy’s Incipit Film and La Monte Productions with Executive Producer Julian Lennon, which follows Ai Weiwei as he makes his operatic directorial debut at the Rome Opera House bringing his activist and artistic vision to Puccini’s Turandot; and VIVA VERDI! about Casa Verdi in Milan, the home for retired opera singers and the young music students they mentor, built by Giuseppe Verdi in 1896, where she serves as producer, writer and executive producer; and in postproduction, FIGLI DEL FIUME / CHILDREN OF THE RIVER, three men in search of meaning find their ancestral roots along Italy’s Po River. In various stages of development are THE OTHER SIDE OF 90, a feature documentary about women in their 90s, which she is directing/writing, and a feature film, JUSTICE DEFERRED, based on Len Williams’ critically acclaimed legal thriller. La Monte produced the Palm Spring International Film Festival audience award-winning short film, DANDELION DHARMA; the Gary Goldstein scripted play, “Three Grooms & A Bride,” and syndicated television talk show, “Marilu” starring Marilu Henner. Her directing credits include the Screen Actors Guild’s “A Heart United” with Sharon Lawrence and Jo Beth Williams, and “The Angina Monologues” with Brenda Strong and Eric Close. She spent over five years as Executive Vice President of the Motion Picture Division at Rogers & Cowan; and as an international strategic marketer worked at legendary Italian studio, CineCittà in Rome; and served as Marketing Executive at TV 3 New Zealand while living in Auckland. La Monte is a Contributing Editor of Musée Magazine, an avant-garde photography magazine. A long-time member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences where she served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Student Academy Awards, she is a member of the Academy of Television Arts, and the Alliance of Women Directors. A current member of PEN America’s Los Angeles Committee, La Monte is on the board of the University of Buffalo’s Dean’s Advisory Council, and is a past faculty member of New York’s School of Visual Arts where she initiated the Dusty Awards, an annual festival of student short films and awards ceremony. She is on the Advisory Board of LA-based SEEfest, the Southeast European Film Festival, and is a frequent guest speaker/panelist at independent filmmaking events, including USC, UCLA and New York Film Academy; she has been the Chair of the Humanitas Awards jury panel for the previous two years. With US/Italian dual citizenship, she divides her time between Los Angeles and Rome.
ZOOM INFO WILL BE SENT PRIOR TO THE EVENT