THE FILMMAKERS
Chris Metzler - (co-director, co-producer)
After graduating from USC with a degree in business and cinema, Chris’ film career has taken him from the depths of agency work, to coordinating post-production for awful American movies seen late at night in Belgium. His film directing and producing work has resulted in frequent partnerships with Jeff Springer, where together they've criss-crossed the country with the aid of caffeinated beverages and made their way in the Nashville country and Christian music video industries, before finally forsaking their souls to commercial LA rock n’ roll. These misadventures eventually culminated in their winning a Billboard Magazine Music Video Award. Chris is currently traveling the film festival and theatrical circuit promoting his John Waters’ narrated documentary, PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA, which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival and later won both the HBO Producer’s Award and the Robert Altman Award. He is a recipient of the Bay Area Video Coalition’s AEA Award and has previously received funding support from the Pacific Pioneer Fund and the Fleishhacker Fund.
Lev Anderson – (co-director, co-producer)
Lev jumped feet first into filmmaking after working as an Urban Planner designing bike paths and other transportation projects for five years, after graduating from Beloit College. He recently left the bureaucracy behind and put his remarkably savvy film and communication skills to work as the Outreach Coordinator for the 25-time award-winning documentary THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN, currently being released in select cities around the country and broadcasting on PBS’ Independent Lens. As a fine art photographer with recent exhibit in San Francisco, Japan and Mexico City, Lev has honed his ability to create dynamic images through composition and his sharp eye for finding contradiction and beauty where it may be least expected. His first attempt at capturing the magic of music on video was at 12 years old, when working with his father, they produced a lip-sync rendition of the Suicidal Tendencies song “Institutionalized.”
Jeff Springer - (editor)
Jeff Springer was born in a virtually abandoned town in the California desert, raised in Hawaii, and educated at USC Film School. After living for a winter in Russia, he returned to Los Angeles to begin directing music videos, shorts, and editing for UPN, Fox, Geffen Records, and Lucasfilm. Burned out and hung over, he eventually fled to San Francisco to start work on PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA, while still driving to Los Angeles to edit WWF and Moesha promos to pay the bills. He now lives somewhere between San Francisco and Berlin.
Josh Kurz - (motion graphics)
Josh Kurz was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. His attempts at an early age to fuse the abstract concepts of comedy and science through home video led to many nights filming in the basement.
Eventually this passion drew him out to sunny California where he became educated at USC Film School. However, living in the City of Angels for four long years without a car turned out to be hell. Soon after graduation, with a longing for the subway and tired of perpetual sunshine, Josh returned to New York and began directing offbeat interstitial segments for Comedy Central, ABC, Fox, and Noggin. The segments ranged from an explanation of cloning using large balls of Jell-O to an infomercial that explained how the ancient pyramids were built. Determined to reinvent children’s television programming, he has returned to the West Coast (with car) and currently lives in the megalopolis that he now loves, Los Angeles.
Josh recently co-directed LONG DIVISION : THE NEXT BIG THREAT TO DEMOCRACY with Chris Metzler.