THE TEAM

 Post-Production Team

MICHELE WESTMORLAND
Director, Producer, Expedition Leader, Photographer

Michele Westmorland started dreaming of bringing Caroline Mytinger’s story back into public view as far back as 1995. It began when a copy of Caroline’s book, New Guinea Headhunt, was given to her as a gift. In 2000, Michele began the journey of piecing together the amazing life of Caroline Mytinger. Planning the expedition was an adventure of its own and was completed in 2005 after spending eight weeks on board the MV FeBrina with expedition team and the crew of the vessel. They visited many of the same villages and locations where Caroline painted her stunning portraits. For contact information, click here.

LAUREN HUTTON
Spokesperson, Narrator

Supermodel and environmental activist Lauren Hutton has appeared on the cover of Vogue 28 times since she began modeling in the mid 1960s. Her film credits are extensive–31 films, 4 in French–and for many years she was the face of Revlon. For the past 12 years she has worked closely with women’s health, environmental and wildlife foundations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Wildlife Fund. Lauren made three television documentaries in Africa on the Ituri Forest Pygmies, the Kalahari Desert Bushmen and the Maasai warriors, and lived with these tribes for weeks at a time. She is now CEO of her own cosmetics company, “Lauren Hutton Good Stuff,” and donates a percentage of the company’s profits to WWF.

ALICE APLEY
Executive Producer

Alice Apley assumed the role of Executive Director of Documentary Educational Resources (DER) in 2011, where she oversees curation, marketing and exhibition of works in DER’s extensive distribution catalog and provides management and support services to DER film projects. She has worked as director, producer and advisor on numerous documentary film projects. Prior to coming to DER, Alice conducted audience research, program evaluation and impact studies for media, museum, and community engagement projects. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology and a Certificate in the Culture and Media Program from NYU.

SANDY JEGLUM
Editor, Producer

Sandy Jeglum is an independent documentary filmmaker based out of Seattle, WA. Sandy started her career as an intern for the Mytinger Project over 10 years ago and has now became a media professional specializing in digital image processing, film editing, online publishing and new media distribution. Sandy is currently working on two feature-length documentaries in post-production, HEADHUNT REVISITED and CRAZYWISE. During previous projects, Sandy edited and produced web shorts for non-profit organizations including KIVA (2013) and Foundation for Women (2013). Sandy also edited a short multimedia documentary for the Living Oceans Foundation (2013), an Official Selection at the Wild Shorts Film Festival.

KIMBERLEE BASSFORD
Consulting Producer

Kimberlee Bassford is an independent documentary filmmaker born and raised in Hawai’i with a passion for social issue, cultural and women’s stories. She produced, directed, wrote and co-edited Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority (2008), a one-hour documentary about the late U.S. Representative Patsy Mink, the first woman of color in Congress and co-author of the landmark Title IX gender equity legislation. Kimberlee holds a BA in psychology from Harvard University and a Masters of Journalism from the UC Berkeley. She owns Making Waves Films LLC, a documentary production company in Honolulu, and is an adjunct lecturer at the Academy for Creative Media at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

ICARUS MUSIC
Composer

In charge of this creation process are award-winning composers Eddie Freeman and Marta Victoria, the successful partnership that drives Icarus Music.This ener­getic duo holds degrees in audio engineering, television, writing, music and film. Tapping on that and their thirty plus years of industry experience, they are able to quickly and intelligently compose and engineer beautiful, high-quality works for all their clients. Clients include Discovery Channel, Nat Geo and other programing of natural history documentaries, advertising, interactive gaming and music CDs.

ELLE RUSS
Script Writer

A native of downtown Chicago, Elle launched her writing career at the world famous comedy theater The Second City – Chicago, where she produced and co-wrote sketch comedy shows. After moving to Los Angeles she continued writing sketch comedy at The Second City – Hollywood and then brought her skills to the famous Acme Comedy Theater in Hollywood where she wrote and performed in over 200 sketch comedy shows. Elle pens everything from 3D live-action films and comedy/drama series, to satirical news articles, and natural history. In 2015 Elle is publishing her first book.

EMMANUEL NAROKOBI
Director of Photography, PNG

Emmanuel is the owner of Masalai Communications, a digital media services company based in PNG, which has been operating since 2001. Despite attaining a law degree and acceptance to the bar, Emmanuel decided that using media to help tell PNG stories was more important. This has led him to over 10 years in website development and now filmmaking for television broadcast with his new program, Tanim Graun. With his film crew, Emmanuel helped to collect footage for the film in a pick-up shoot that took place in June, 2015.

RAE SMART
Co-Producer, Australia

As our Australian Co-Producer, Rae’s connections in Papua New Guinea and surrounding Melanesian islands are as significant as her relationships established within the borders of her home country of Australia. Rae’s NGO work includes an impressive list including human rights issues throughout the Pacific region. She lived and worked on Bougainville Island for over 20 years before having to evacuate as a result of the Civil War Crises. Rae also manages the international work of artist, Jeffry Feeger, our modern-day Papua New Guinean portrait painter collaborating with the film project.

Advisory Team

DR. ANDREW MOUTU
Anthropologist, Advisor

Dr. Andrew Moutu, a Papua New Guinean from a village located on the mountains along the west coast of Wewak, received his education at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby and completed his Masters and PhD Degrees in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. He’s currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge, working under the eminent anthropologist Dame Professor Marilyn Strathern. He is also on secondment as the Curator of Anthropology at the Papua New Guinea National Museum. For his PhD, he carried out field research in Kanganamun village on the Sepik River during which time he was also inducted into the men’s initiation cult there. Andrew was an invaluable source of information on traditional culture and body decor, providing translation and in-depth analysis of local customs and beliefs.

DR. JOSHUA A. BELL
Anthropologist, Advisor

Dr. Joshua A. Bell combines ethnographic fieldwork with research in museums and archives to study the shifting local and global network of relationships between persons, artefacts and the environment. His work is complemented with archival and museum-based research in Australia, Europe, Papua New Guinea and the U.S. One of his museum based projects is on the 1928 USDA’s Sugarcane Expedition to New Guinea, which crossed paths with Caroline Mytinger in the Middle Fly-Lake Murray region. His work on the 1928 USDA Expedition has appeared in various journals and in an edited book on expeditions and their films during the 1920s and 1930s. Since 2008, Dr. Bell has been the Curator of Globalization in the Anthropology Department of the Smithsonian Institution’s National of Museum of Natural History, and currently serves as the Director of the Recovering Voices program.

DEBORAH KIRK
Book Writer

Deborah Kirk is a writer and editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is currently the Editorial Director of Diablo Custom Publishing (DCP), which produces magazines for universities, museums, and many other clients. She has been a senior editor at Scuba Diving magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Elle, and has written for Travel and Leisure, Rolling Stone, Interview, and many other publications. Deborah has edited books for Rizzoli and the Smithsonian Institution, and has launched and edited Spanish-language magazines in Panama and the Dominican Republic. Deborah is excited to be contributing to the Mytinger project, which reflects many of her wide-ranging interests: art, exploration, Papua New Guinean culture, biography, and literature.