A Road to Home

President of Lumiere Productions in New York, Cal Skaggs, has over 30 dramas and documentaries to his credit. His first theatrical feature, On Valentine's Day, was the official American entry in the Venice Film Festival; his hip-hop drama Fly By Night won the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Festival. He has executive produced and directed two major documentary series for PBS—With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America and Local News—and produced numerous films for Discovery, PBS, HBO, Channel 4 UK, and Arté France/Germany. His recent films include Democracy on Deadline (2006), Kansas to Kandahar (2007), and To Tell the Truth (2011). In August, 2015, Skaggs completed the documentary feature, A Road to Home, following the lives of LGBT homeless youth through the streets and shelters of New York City.

Jessie Dorfman is a film editor based in New York City and Philadelphia. She began her filmmaking career in San Francisco amidst a thriving documentary film scene, and quickly gravitated toward post-production, editing her first feature documentary in 2001. Since then, Jessie has edited a wide range of both documentary and narrative work, and has created commercial spots for companies such as Weight Watchers, Gallo Wine and Stanford University.

Also a filmmaker, Jessie’s films have screened in festivals across the country, including the New York Jewish Film Festival and the Santa Cruz Film Festival. Jessie brings a director’s vision and a background in psychology and music to her editing work. She holds an MFA in Film Production from The University of Texas at Austin.

A New York native granted a BFA in Film Production at Pratt Institute in 2007, Reuben has now directed photography on many narrative, commercial, live performance, and documentary productions. His short film, Birth of the Box, was chosen amongst nine films in North America for an Eastman Kodak Scholars Program. In 2007, he shot Sufjan Steven’s The BQE, which was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music for the 25th Next Wave Festival and won the 2008 Brendan Gill Prize. His advertising clients include Grey New York, TBWA/Chiat/Day, and Y&R, for which he has shot many internal brand videos. In 2012, he directed and shot a web series in collaboration with Pitchfork TV, following musicians behind the scenes as the Pitchfork Music Festival. Most recently he has been shooting mainly for NBC Universal and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and with Lumiere Productions on A Road to Home and Walking the Tightrope: Religious Freedom in Today’s America. 

Ashley is a documentary filmmaker dedicated to creating socially conscious media. She has worked in several categories of documentaries such as (A)sexuality, which premiered at the LGBT festival NewFest; Independent Lens’ film Pushing The Elephant; and the international short Cast in Sand: Najia and Agaila. Rooted in the New York City film community, she was selected fellow for the Uniondocs Collaborative 2010-11, where she shot and edited the short film, The Sauce, about the salsa music revitalization in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Ashley graduated cum laude from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a B.A. in Media Studies and Minor in Women and Gender Studies. She is also an active participant in the Brooklyn Filmmakers’ Collective.