Hard Hatted Woman

Lorien Barlow, Director - Producer

Barlow began developing Hard Hatted Woman in 2013 and has since then interviewed dozens of tradeswomen from all over the country and ventured onto construction sites from coast to coast to film them working. Production has brought her to tradeswomen communities in Chicago, Sacramento, Saint Louis, San Francisco, Boston, Portland, Pittsburgh, Beaumont, and New York City. She regularly attends industry conferences with business leaders, labor activists, and tradeswomen organizations, building strategic impact partnerships for Hard Hatted Woman. She is a regularly sought-out speaker on tradeswoman issues, delivering keynotes at ENR's 2016 Groundbreaking Women in Construction conference and the Autodesk University Summit in 2018, in addition to numerous other panels and presentations. She has appeared on HuffPost Live and been interviewed by Huffington Post, Ms. Magazine, and various trade publications and podcasts. Hard Hatted Woman is her first feature film.

Autumn Eakin, Cinematographer

Autumn Eakin turned her years of working under Maryse Alberti (The Wrestler, Velvet Goldmine, Creed) and Vanja Cernjul (30 Rock, Orange Is The New Black, The Deuce) into an artful resourcefulness she uses in her narrative and documentary filmmaking. Born in New Mexico and raised in the hills of Missouri she loves stories about the thin line of melancholy one finds between hope and despair. Her narrative work includes Netflix's Someone Great directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and starring Gina Rodriguez. The Light of the Moon by Jessica M. Thompson had its World Premiere in Narrative Competition at SXSW 2017 and was the winner of the Audience Award. Her feature documentary work includes Mavis! (HBO) and No Le Digas A Nadie (Don't Tell Anyone) (PBS POV), both of which went on to win Peabody Awards. She has shot for acclaimed directors Liz Garbus, Elizabeth Chai and Alex Gibney. She has also shot projects for Netflix, The History Channel, NBC, Hulu, Northface, Ogilvy & Mather, AT&T and many more over her 14 years as an IATSE Local 600 member. She is finishing up post-production on episodes of Netflix's new dramatic series Grand Army set to release summer 2020. She is currently in production on the doc features The Kids Are Not Alright with Peabody Award winning director Mikaela Shwer and Project XQ with award winning director Lee Hirsch. Autumn is also the forming member of the site Cinematographers XX, a respected hiring resource of experienced female identified DPs. The group has been profiled in The New York Times, BUST, and The Washington Post. She now divides her time between New York, Los Angeles, and wherever the next job is.

Toby Shimin, EDITOR

Editor Toby Shimin began her film career as a sound editor, and switched to picture editing in 1988 when she cut The Children’s Storefront, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Since then, she has edited numerous films that have premiered at Sundance, including, How to Dance in Ohio, which won a Peabody Award, A Leap of Faith, Martha & Ethel, Miss America, Everything’s Cool and the Sundance Audience Award winning films, Out of the Past, This is Home, which was also nominated for an Emmy award in editing, and Buck, which was short-listed for an Academy Award. Toby received the prestigious Documentary Editing Award at the Woodstock Film Festival for HBO's 32 Pills: My Sister’s Suicide. Ernie & Joe won a Jury Prize at SXSW where it premiered in 2019 and an Emmy for outstanding editing in 2020. Her most recent film, Baby God, was to premiere opening night SXSW, 2020. It aired on HBO on Dec 2nd. Toby is a principal of Dovetail Films, a production and editing company she co-founded with Dina Guttmann in 2001. She has to served as a mentor for the Edit and Story labs at the Sundance Institute and Chicken & Egg and is on the advisory boards of Full Frame and Hedgebrook. She joined the faculty of the School of Visual Arts 6 year ago and is co-curator of the documentary film series, Depot Docs.

AMANDA LAWS, EDITOR

Amanda Laws is an independent filmmaker working in both documentary and narrative. She co-edited the highly acclaimed Cameraperson, directed by Kirsten Johnson, which premiered at Sundance in 2016 and was shortlisted for an Oscar. Her most recent work includes The Hanging, directed by Geoff Feinberg, which premiered at HotDocs and IDFA in 2016. Laws attended the Graduate Film Program at NYU, where she studied under Spike Lee and Mary Harron, and was an editing fellowship recipient. She was also a finalist for the Karen Schmeer Editing Fellowship in 2011. Her documentary credits include The Imposter: How to Write a Banjo Concerto directed by Bela Fleck and Sarah Paladino, Shooting Script by Frank Hall-Green, and It Was Rape by Jennifer Baumgardner. She also codirected and edited the Amanda Palmer feature, Bridetripping. In 2011 she served as a mentor to the documentary fellows at the DoxBox Film Festival in Damascus, Syria. She was two-time participant at the Sundance Doc Edit Lab, which she attended in 2013 with Camperaperson, then titled A Blind Eye.

AbBY LYNN KANG DAVIS, Executive Producer

With over twelve years of experience in the entertainment and media industry, Emmy-nominated Abby Lynn Kang Davis primarily collaborates with storytellers and curators in the non-fiction space. Throughout her career Abby has focused on breaking underrepresented voices into the commercial television and film marketplace. Her specialized skill set in identifying viable talent, as well as her advocacy and mentorship on behalf of unknown storytellers, has garnered millions in sales revenue, top tier film festival invitations and award nominations. Abby began her career at Freestyle Picture Company (Tangerine, The Florida Project), where she assisted in the directorial debuts of top female talent such as Jennifer Aniston, Zoe Saldana, Olivia Wilde, Eva Longoria and Demi Moore. In 2011, Abby began the next phase of her career at Preferred Content, one of the leading film, television & digital sales, production and advisory companies. While there, Abby assembled creative and financial elements for original documentary features and television series as well as oversaw the worldwide and North American distribution rights for its non-fiction film slate. Over her six year tenure at Preferred Content, Abby was responsible for bringing multiple projects to market, most notably Blood Brother (Sundance 2013), Rich Hill (Sundance 2014), The Nightmare (Sundance 2015), The Bad Kids (Sundance 2016) and 78/52 (Sundance 2017)) and executive producing Emmy nominated Long Shot (Telluride 2017/Netflix Originals), 306 Hollywood (Sundance 2018/PBS POV), Wrinkles the Clown (Magnolia) and the television docuseries The Devil You Know (Viceland).

abigail disney, Exectuive Producer

Abigail E. Disney is an award-winning filmmaker, philanthropist and the CEO and president of Fork Films. Disney's 20+ films and series focus on social issues, sharing a quality of spotlighting extraordinary people who speak truth to power. Her first film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, won best documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008, and screened in 60 countries around the world on all seven continents. Pray the Devil Back to Hell is broadly credited with highlighting the bravery and sacrifice of its lead figure, Leymah Gbowee, who received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2011. Disney was a creator of the five-part special PBS series Women, War and Peace, winner of the Overseas Press Club's Edward R. Murrow Award, a Gracie Award, and a Television Academy Honor. Disney has also executive produced films on a wide array of social issues, including the Academy Award nominated The Invisible War (Best Documentary Feature), Return and Sun Come Up (Best Documentary Short). Disney's other producing credits include: Cameraperson, The Mask You Live In, Hot Girls Wanted, She's Beautiful When She's Angry, 1971, Vessel, Citizen Koch, Alias Ruby Blade, The Iran Job, Sexy Baby, This is How I Roll, Mothers of Bedford, and Playground.

GINI RETICKER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Gini Reticker, Chief Creative Officer at Fork Films, is an Academy Award nominated and Emmy Award winning director and producer with a distinguished career that spans more than 20 years. Her directorial debut, The Heart of the Matter, received a Sundance Freedom of Expression Award. She recently directed The Trials of Spring, which has played at Human Rights festivals around the world and was accompanied by six shorts that launched on The New York Times. Reticker previously won the Tribeca Best Documentary Award for Pray the Devil Back to Hell, and received an Academy Award nomination for the short film, Asylum. That same year she was nominated for an Emmy for producing A Decade Under the Influence. Reticker was one of the creators of the award-winning series Women, War and Peace for PBS and other producing credits include In The Company of Women (IFC), New School Order (PBS) and the Wide Angle series Ladies First. She co-produced The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)­, nominated for both an Academy Award (Best Documentary Feature) and an Independent Spirit Award. She has served as executive producer on The Armor of Light, 1971, Live Nude Girls Unite, Cameraperson, Alias Ruby Blade, Citizen Koch, Hot Girls Wanted and She's Beautiful When She's Angry.

Emily Wells, Composer

Emily Wells is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, arranger and producer whose genres encompass alternative, electronic, folk, experimental, and classical. A classically trained violinist, she plays diverse instruments including cellos, guitars, bass, drums and synthesizers. She is known for her transfixing live solo performances where she uses a series of live loops, sample pads and acoustic drums to make rich and atmospheric compositions with layers of strings and vocal harmonies. Wells has produced ten solo albums, in addition to collaborations with other artists, including film composer Clint Mansell, Questlove of The Rooots, and filmmaker Park Chan-Wook on the soundtrack for Stoker, which premiered at Sundance. Praised in The New Yorker for her “moving voice and boundless imagination” and in The New York Times for her “gothic and meticulous” creations, Wells has appeared multiple times on NPR and All Songs Considered, has given live broadcast performances on WNYC and KCRW, and has written articles for such publications as American Songwriter, Impose Magazine, and The Huffington Post.