Grief Becomes Me :: Filmmakers & Cast

Producer/Director

Christine Fugate’s work explores the complexities of women's lives in today's world, including award-winning films The Southern Sex and Mother Love. Her film Tobacco Blues was broadcast during POV's 11th season, and screened onboard Air Force One for President Clinton. Fugate's feature-length documentary The Girl Next Door, following Oklahoma native Stacy Valentine's rise to stardom in the adult film industry, had a successful theatrical run in over 25 cities throughout the US and Canada. Fugate has also produced and directed projects for VH1, The Discovery Channel, A&E, Bravo, New Line Cinema and interviewed celebrities including Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Julie Andrews, and Johnny Depp. Fugate has won numerous honors for her work, including the prestigious Columbus Film Festival Chris Award, the New York Expo Special Judges Award and a Cine Golden Eagle. Fugate was also named one of Showbiz Data's Top 100 Directors of 2001 and is a recent member to the National League of American Pen Women.

Producer/Cinematographer

Sandra Chandler holds an MFA from the USC School of Cinema & Television and, in both film and video, has established a reputation among the first rank of documentary cinematographers. Her work has been featured at film festivals, received theatrical exhibition, and broadcast widely. She was nominated for an Emmy for cinematography for Living Dolls ; HBO. Other credits include The Eyes of Tammy Faye for HBO; The First Year for PBS and the Getty – it was awarded a Peabody; 101 Rent Boys for Cinemax; The Young and the Dead for HBO; She has taught documentary camera at the University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television.

Writer/Actor

Donna Hilbert was born in the Red River Valley of Oklahoma near the Texas border but has spent most of her life in Southern California. She is a graduate of California State University, Long Beach and leads an occasional workshop at El Dorado Nature Center museum in Long Beach, where she now lives. Her latest book is Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems, PEARL Editions, 2004 Other books include Transforming Matter, PEARL 2000, Feathers and Dust, Deep Red and Mansions, all from Event Horizon Press. In 1994 she won the Staple First Edition writing award resulting in the publication in England of the short story collection, Women who Make Money and the Men Who Love Them. Her Greatest Hits chapbook spanning her career is now available from Pudding House. She frequently travels to England to give readings and workshops and has served as Vice President for Programs of PEN Center USA West. Grief Becomes Me marks her acting debut. She is listed in the forthcoming Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry.

Actor

Arlo Gates has appeared in the Emmy Award-winning shows Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless. He has also appeared on stage at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in The Taming of the Shrew. Recently, he wrote and produced the plays Final Score and Out West at the Gem Theater in Garden Grove.

Editor

Kate Amend is the editor of two Academy Award-winning documentary features: Into The Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2001), and The Long Way Home (1998). Amend also received the 2001 American Cinema Editors’ Eddie award for Into The Arms of Strangers, and edited the 2001 Oscar-nominated documentary short On Tiptoe: Gentle Steps to Freedom. Her recent film, Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, about the late actress Beah Richards, directed by LisaGay Hamilton and produced by Jonathan Demme, received the Grand Jury award at the 2003 AFI Film Festival, aired on HBO in February 2004, and received a 2005 Peabody Award. Cowboy Del Amor, a film she edited and co-produced, received both the Audience and Jury Awards at the 2005 South By Southwest Festival. .Amend is on the faculty of the Cinema Department at the University of Southern California.

Sound Designer

Midge Costin received her undergraduate degree from Smith College and her masters from USC School of Cinema-Television. For 20 years she has been working as a feature film sound editor in Hollywood, where she has worked at every major studio and collaborated on the soundtracks for filmmakers such as John Waters (Crybaby), David Wolper (Imagine: John Lennon), Kenneth Branaugh (Dead Again), Tony Scott (Crimson), Amy Heckerling (Look Who’s Talking Too) and Jerry Bruckheimer(The Rock). Two of the films, Crimson Tide and Armageddon, for which she edited effects and dialogue, received Academy Award nominations for Sound Editing. Several of the films she has sound edited have received nominations for The MPSE (Motion Picture Sound Editors) Golden Reel Award. She is a recent past Board member of the MPSE, and is a long-standing member of the Editors Guild. Costin began teaching as an adjunct in 1995 at the Cinema Department at the University of Southern California, received tenure and became Head of Sound in 2000. She was recently named the Kay Rose Professor in the Art of Sound Editing, which was given by George Lucas. On Nov. 1st Midge returned home from Costa Rica as a gold medal winner from the World Championship of Surf Kayaking as a member of the U.S. Kayak Surf Team.

Composer

Miriam Cutler has scored numerous documentaries for PBS, HBO, IFC, and other TV networks, and many film festival favorites including:
Lost in La Mancha, Pandemic: Facing Aids, Stolen Childhoods, Scouts Honor, Licensed to Kill, and the soon to be released Thin (Sundance), Absolute Wilson (Berlin) and China Blue (Toronto, Amsterdam). She has also scored numerous indie films and provided music for studio films like Arlington Road, Bachelor Party, and Grandview USA. Since 1988, Cutler has been resident composer Circus Flora, featured at Charleston's Spoleto Festival. In addition, Cutler has co-produced live jazz albums on Polygram/Verve for Joe Williams (nominated for 2 Grammys), Nina Simone, Shirley Horn, and Marlena Shaw and has produced independently released albums of her own songs and soundtracks. She has served on film festival juries for the Sundance Film Festival, American Film Institute, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the International Documentary Association, and a mentor for the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Composer Lab.