STORYTELLER
MC Sundeen
PRODUCER / SCREENWRITER / DIRECTOR
Maria Sundeen is a writer, director and producer with more than 15 years of experience in television, documentary, short, and nonprofit productions, including the award-winning documentary “The Great 14th: Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama In His Own Words” with Frame of Mind Films.
She has produced and directed two of her own shorts, produced an original short by an award-winning Latina filmmaker, and is currently working as a Producer with Gamechanger Films on a feature film entitled, “Save Yourself.”
She has written more than a dozen scripts for film and television, many of which have won awards or placed in international festival competitions. As a producer and director, she produced the filmed production of “Kawit Legong: Prince Karna’s Dream," a live action, music and shadow stage play based on the Balinese legend—created in collaboration with Gamelan Sekar Jaya, a Balinese orchestra, and Shadowlight Productions, a renowned theatre company that integrates indigenous traditional shadow theater techniques with modern theater and film styles.
Tennessee Reid Norton
CO-PRODUCER / LEAD ANIMATOR
02
Tennessee is an accomplished stop motion animator who will be serving as the lead for this project. His work includes serving as a Stop-Motion Animator for Guillermo del Toro's Academy Award-winning Pinocchio, and as the lead Stop-Motion Animator on the Academy Award-nominated feature film Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.
He began as a character fabricator on Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, and as a stop-motion animator on ABC's Bump in the Night. He worked on Robot Chicken (Cartoon Network) for eight seasons and six specials, and received Emmy Award honors for contributions to Robot Chicken as both Character Animator and Director of Character Fabrication.
Other work includes all three seasons of Eddie Murphy's The PJ's (Fox Television) and as a Lead Animator on Gary & Mike (UPN, then Comedy Central) at the famed Will Vinton Studios (which would eventually morph into Laika Studios, which produced the award-winning stop-motion film Coraline).
At Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, Tennessee directed two episodes of the prehistoric workplace comedy Dinosaur Office and five episodes of the iconic Spy Vs Spy for MAD (Cartoon Network). He also wrote, produced, and directed a live action & animatronic puppet hybrid series pilot San Fransisco 411 (Cartoon Network Adult Swim).
In addition to short films, edu-tainment, and extensive commercial work, Tennessee joined the Screen Novelties team for the stop-motion animated Halloween Special, SpongeBob SquarePants The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom (Nickelodeon), serving as both Puppet Fabrication Supervisor and Stop-Motion Animator.He is included in the updated edition of “The Animation Book: A Complete Guide to Animated Filmmaking”—the same book that inspired him to pursue his craft.
As Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Facing West Shadow Opera, an experimental shadow theatre collective, Lydia’s work combines analog shadow theatre with original animation, video projection of found footage and sometimes opera performed live, expanding into film, theatre and installation.
With a focus on blending art forms to create magical acts of rebellion as experimental art, Lydia works to seamlessly combine old and new technologies and art forms. In 2022, Facing West produced a live, multimedia, shadow-theater opera inspired by the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The Robber Bridegroom.” It incorporated puppetry and shadow play, video projection, stop-motion animation, and live music.
Lydia Greer
SHADOW ANIMATOR / ASSOCIATE PRODUCER
03
Lydia Greer is a widely exhibited multimedia artist, visual designer, filmmaker and animator who works in hand-made stop-motion, multiple and single- channel video, and sculptural installation. She has been an artist and consultant for the last decade with ShadowLight Productions, an internationally recognized shadow theater company based in San Francisco notably working on multiple large-scale, bilingual, interdisciplinary shadow theatre plays incorporating video, dance, sound, hand-built lights, puppets, live actors and masks.
Her work has been commissioned at The Exploratorium Museum (SF), Shapeshifter’s Cinema (Oakland), Other Cinema at ATA (San Francisco), Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), Berkeley Center for New Media (Berkeley), Radar Productions (San Francisco), and inclusion in The Channel of Democracy: Womanhood, Power & Freedom in Video Art, an all-women video art exhibition at the International SF PhotoFairs 2018 at Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture (San Francisco).
I Made Moja
MASTER SHADOW PUPPET ARTIST
04
I Made Moja is a painter, dancer, puppet maker, and shadow-play artist from the village of Batuan, a traditional arts village in Bali known for its classical music and dance, fine woodcarving, and unique painting style. Widely known as a visual artist, Moja‘s work has been shown internationally and featured in numerous books detailing the art and culture of Bali. In addition to teaching and experimenting with new themes in his painting, he is a primary dancer with Gamelan Sekar Jaya, an acclaimed Balinese orchestra and dance group.
His work has been featured in a broad spectrum of stage performances and related film works, including “Kawit Legong: Prince Karna’s Dream” (shown on UCTV). Moja has been creating puppets, designing sets, and performing with ShadowLight Productions since 1991.
At the beginning of his career, Bruton worked as an Illustrator, Set Designer and Art Director. He contributed on films such as: Armageddon, Con Air, The Rock, Deep Blue Sea, Stargate, Inspector Gadget, The Jackal, Blade, Bicentennial Man and Jungle Fever.
Beyond working in the entertainment industry Bruton has designed boutique and residential projects. Including work with the Kober , Cedergreen, Rippon, The Dogman Institute Forum , Division 23 ,EGG and The Pacific Design Group ( GT cycles ). He currently has a concept in the Aprillia Design Museum in Milan from the film Bicentennial Man.
Bruton Jones
PRODUCTION DESIGNER
Originally from a military town Central Texas, Bruton Jones studied at Center for Creative Studies and Art Center College of Design before receiving a BA in Environmental Design from Otis Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles.
Over a 25+ year career, Bruton has designed projects in both Film and Television, shot both domestically and internationally. He has worked on many genres including, Drama, Action-Adventure, Comedy, Horror and period pieces. Among his notable Projects: Underworld, Dear White People, Idlewild, American Soul, Greenleaf, Raising Dion, Grand Crew and SWAGGER to name a few.