I have been fortunate in having several important mentors, distinguished filmmakers who taught me craft and an appreciation for both the nuts and bolts and the art of film production. I owe much of what I learned of directing to Laslo Benedek ("The Wild One") and George Cukor, both of whom taught me at New York University; and to Bertrand Tavernier and Robert Parrish ("Fire Down Below" & "Casino Royale") with whom I first became acquainted when I worked as Production Manager on their "Mississippi Blues", a documentary film about Mississippi. Arnaud D'Usseau, a blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter turned Broadway playwright, taught me story telling and the use of craft in writing. I learned cinematography from Czech cameraman Beda Batka at NYU and then worked under three very fine Directors of Photography, Steven Fierberg ("Spike of Bensonhurst"), Willie Glenn ("Coupe de Torchon" & "Day for Night") and Academy Award Winning D.P. Robert Richardson. And finally I learned industry standards in producing while working under Producer Robert Papazian ("The Day After" and "North and South") in Los Angeles in 1991.

I studied film production at New York University's Graduate Institute of Film and Television in the late 1970's. Despite the spare classrooms, often harsh conditions and limited production equipment of that time, from a distance of twenty years hindsight those years take on the glow of a golden era for the school. Classmates included Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, Susan Seidelman, Barry Sonnenfeld and Rudd Simmons along with many other lesser known but accomplished film artisans and artists. The rigors of grinding production schedules combined with the rich cultural environment of New York prepared us well for life after film school. While at NYU I was awarded a Leo Jaffe Columbia Pictures Scholarship and won the Camera Mart Award for Best Cinematography in 1980. One of the documentary films that I photographed became a finalist in the Student Academy Awards; I was also a finalist in the American Cinema Editors Competition.

After finishing school and working as Assistant Camera on a New Line Cinema low budget feature film and as sound man on a documentary about the wild horses of Chincoteague, I chose to return South. Combining necessity with a wide ranging interest, I have built my career on a diverse range of skills and accomplishments. My work includes very personal films and videos intended for specific, sometimes narrow audiences and work for hire performed for commercial and educational organizations. Regardless of subject matter or intended audience, however, my films and videos reflect a particular style and vision that include a strong sense of drama, deep respect for story telling and a commitment to the poetry of the moving image. I work in both documentary and fiction, and I believe my dramatic work has enhanced my skill with documentary and vice versa. I also work frequently as a cameraman, and have learned a sensitivity to the requirements of image (lighting, framing, and movement as well as the practicalities of execution) that have greatly strengthened my ability as a director.

Highlights in my career include receiving an American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Grant to produce The Diamond King , a children's drama that was distributed by New World International and broadcast in more than a dozen countries around the globe. It was selected for showing at the Children's Film Festival of India and the Cork Film Festival in Ireland as well as being awarded a CINE Golden Eagle and winning the Silver Award for Short Drama at the Houston International Film Festival. In 1991, I was one of twenty four Americans selected to travel to Europe as part of the prestigious European Community Visitor Programme. I spent a month in Belgium, France, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom studying European film and television industries in light of the changes that were being introduced into media as part of the Europe 92 economic program. I was also selected in the same year for an American Film Institute-USA Network Training Fellowship to become a Producer Intern on the production of a Movie of the Week, Drive Like Lightning. I worked under Producer Bob Papazian at Papazian Hirsch Entertainment, from the commencement of pre-production through the sound mix. In 1994, I learned French in order to direct Radishes and Butter: Doing Business with the French, a dramatic educational video which won a Silver Award at the Charleston Worldfest and has been picked up by a prestigious Boston distributor, Schoenhof Foreign Books. I worked as Production Manager for French Director Bertrand Tavernier on his feature documentary, Mississippi Blues, an experience that had a profound effect on the way I approach documentary. And I have worked extensively as a Director of Photography for the iconoclastic Canadian Director John Kozak on films that have been consistently well received in Festival venues, if not in the Canadian marketplace.

There is another unusual feature to my resume that bears noting. I have been one of a small cadre of top Escort Officers working for the U.S. Department of State on the U.S. Information Agency's cultural exchange programs. Most of this work has been with media professionals and I have gained an international understanding of film, theater and media techniques. I have traveled throughout the U.S. with individuals from over a hundred and twenty different countries and I have participated in high level seminars and discussions with some of America's most prominent artists. A short list includes theater directors Lloyd Richards of the Yale Rep., Gregory Mosher of the Lincoln Rep., Robert Falls of the Goodman Theater in Chicago, and Bill Bushnell of the LATC; playwrights August Wilson and David Mamet; film producers Tom Luddy, Edward Pressman and Saul Zaentz; film directors Randa Haines, Werner Herzog, James Ivory, Irvin Kershner, Paul Mazursky, Melvin Van Peebles and Robert Wise; and journalists Ted Kopple, Hal Bruno, Sanford Ungar, and Hodding Carter III.