Lois Cunniff Productions, Inc.
PO Box 216
New York, NY 10113-0216
212) 477-5055

LOIS CUNNIFF
President

Lois Cunniff is an independent film producer and writer, specializing in history, cultural and environmental subjects. Before forming her own company in 1991, she was the senior production executive for VOICES AND VISIONS, the acclaimed PBS series on American poetry. As senior producer of the films on Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson, and as producer of the Hart Crane film, she was directly involved in developing the art-directed documentary techniques that distinguished these films.

After early training at CBS News, she helped pioneer videotape location production as a writer, producer and on-air reporter with the National Educational Television AT ISSUE series and served for five years as head of program planning and children's programming at WNET/l3 in New York. Programs she produced and reported for the PBS CRISIS TO CRISIS and INSIDE STORY series have won EMMY nominations and the George Polk award. She has written host commentary for the Disney cable series MOUSETERPIECE THEATRE with George Plimpton and for the Lifetime Channel.

Instructional projects include a two part video on "Awakening and Enlightenment: Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin," produced for Yale University and distributed by the PBS Adult Learning Service; and films on acid rain, Washington, DC, and Western Europe for FilmFair Communications. She has published The Book of Fees (William Morrow) and a photo-essay on Soviet photojournalism in the Columbia Journalism Review. Public policy studies she drafted during graduate study in urban planning at NYU helped shape the cable telecommunications franchise rules in New York and Chicago.

CREATIVE TEAM

Samuel S. Holmes, Executive Editor, was for seven years editor of the picture collection at Magnum Photos, the international photographers' cooperative. His freelance graphics research projects have included four international world's fair exhibits, a special search for the Smithsonian Institution's permanent exhibit on photography, and many books, including A Nation of Immigrants, by President John F. Kennedy and McGraw Hill's A History of the United States. For a decade, he worked for the National Park Service on programs of environmental education and the interpretation of history for the general public.

Julie Sloane, Senior Film Editor, cut the feature films Anna, with Sally Kirkland, and Simon, with Alan Arkin. She has edited more than a dozen documentaries on architecture and art for Michael Blackwood Productions and Amalie Rothschild. Since 1991 she has taught film editing in the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.

Ed Norris, Film and Digital Editor, is a feature film writer and director as well as an experienced editor with many commercial and network credits, including the children's series BIG BLUE MARBLE. Recently, he edited The Cat's Meow, a feature directed by Peter Bogdanovich.

Jeri Sopanen, cinematographer, is also a writer, composer, and director. He has been DP for several feature films, including My Dinner with Andre, directed by Louis Malle. His documentaries include a Peabody Award-winning CBS REPORTS on the Juilliard School, VOICES AND VISIONS: Emily Dickinson, and many National Geographic and NOVA programs.

Jim Riccardi, cinematographer, produces, directs and photographs programs for the Travel Channel, the BBC, and many commercial clients. His second unit photography has appeared in national primetime dramatic series.

Sally Montgomery, Costume Director, was trained in England and worked in theater and television there and in Jamaica, West Indies, before coming to New York. She has created costumes for the theatrical presentations of the poet/playwright Derek Walcott, living history museums such as the Genessee Museum in upstate New York and dozens of film and television productions. Her PBS network credits include documentaries for THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, and four of the VOICES AND VISIONS poetry films. She teaches American Studies at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

Neeley Bruce, Music Director, is a composer, conductor and pianist, and professor of American Music at Wesleyan University. As founder of the Hartford based American Music/Theater Group, he led performances of music of the Connecticut River Valley before 1825. His millennium piece, "Convergence", scored for 1000 players, was recently performed on the New Haven Green and at Lincoln Center.