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Michael Chandler is an Academy-Award nominated filmmaker, working in non-fiction and fiction film. Michael’s film Forgotten Fires, on the burning by Ku Klux Klansmen of Black churches in South Carolina, aired on over 250 PBS stations. It has won critical acclaim and numerous awards, including a Golden Spire at the San Francisco International Film Festival, a Crystal Heart from the Heartland Film Festival, and a Juror’s Choice Award at the Charlotte Film Festival. Bill Moyers said about it: “If we wanted a real dialog about race in America, we’d start with this film.” Michael has also produced and directed documentaries for the PBS series Frontline. Blackout, a co-production with The New York Times, looked at the roots and repercussions of the California energy crisis and was the first media program to expose Enron’s financial manipulation of energy markets. The Future of War, an examination of the U.S. Army’s ability to meet emerging global military threats, won a Silver Plaque for Investigative Reporting from the Chicago International Television Competition. Secrets of the SAT dealt with the impact of standardized testing in college admissions and won First Prize in Broadcast Journalism from the Education Writer’s Association. He wrote and edited the documentary feature Freedom on My Mind, which chronicled the voting rights struggle in Mississippi during the sixties. The film earned an Academy Award Nomination and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. He also wrote and edited the Academy Award-nominated Waldo Salt: A Screenwriter’s Journey, the Emmy Award-winning Yosemite: The Fate of Heaven, and ABC’s Can’t It Be Anyone Else?, for which he received the Christopher Humanitarian Award. Michael has also edited feature films, including Never Cry Wolf, Mishima, and Amadeus, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.
Ms. Canavan produced Knee Deep with Producer/Director Michael Chandler. Ms. Canavan's other film work includes Yosemite, The Fate of Heaven and Waldo Salt: A Screenwriter's Journey. She is also a well-known consumer law attorney concentrating in predatory lending fraud and the financial abuse of the elderly. Ms. Canavan and Mr. Chandler are currently producing Greedy Trial Lawyers: Will We Miss Them When They're Gone?
Blake Leyh is a Composer, Sound Designer, and Music Supervisor who lives in New York City. He has composed scores for more than a dozen feature films, including B-Movie schlock classics American Cyborg, the challenging independent drama Star Time, and award-winning documentary Twist Of Faith. In 1996 Leyh composed the score for the Sundance Jury Prize-winning documentary SICK: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, which marked the beginning of a long term collaboration with filmmaker Kirby Dick. In 2001, Blake became the music supervisor on HBO’s dramatic series The Wire and also composed the theme music for The Wire. www.blakeleyh.com
Knee Deep also features the work of renowned Maine fiddler and composer Greg Boardman. Greg’s exciting rendition of the film’s title sequence music, Jerusalem Breakdown, is from his Divine Waltz CD , available at http://www.bowandstring.com/shop.html.