Filmmakers

Richard Ray Perez, Director and Producer

Rick Pérez co-produced and co-directed the seminal political documentary Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election, which The Los Angeles Times called “a riveting story about the undermining of democracy in America.”

Unprecedented was an official selection at over 50 international film festivals, and winner of nine festival awards.

Currently Mr. Pérez is the co-executive producer of the innovative new media series, In Their Boots, a documentary magazine show about the impact the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are having on families and communities across America.

Rick Pérez is also the co-executive producer of The Freedom Files, Season II, a 9-episode documentary series that reveals the impact civil liberties violations have on the daily lives of real people.  Robert Greenwald is the executive producer of the series. The Freedom Files is currently broadcasting on PBS Stations across America.

Rick Pérez directed and was and the supervising producer of Sierra Club Chronicles, a hard-hitting, half-hour documentary series of environmental stories that was also produced by Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films.  Sierra Club Chronicles recently broadcast on The Sundance Channel during its primetime “Green” programming.

Richard Ray Pérez earned a bachelor of the arts degree, cum laude, in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University and is a native of San Fernando, California.

Molly O’Brien, Producer

Molly O’Brien recently directed a series of public service announcements featuring Kyra Sedgwick for the Sundance Channel and the Natural resources Defense Council.  Previoulsy O’Brien worked with Rick Perez as a consulting producer on the ACLU, Brave New Films, and PBS series, Freedom Files, and as co-executive producer of Sierra Club Chronicles, a 7-part documentary series of environmental stories with a human heart that broadcast on Sundance Channel in the Spring of 2008.

O’Brien’s feature documentary film, Schooling Jewel premiered at the Doubletake/Full Frame film festival and went on to IDFA in Amsterdam, broadcasting on the Oxygen Network.

O’Brien’s first film, A Pig with Hair, was short-listed for the 1998 Academy Awards by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.  Featuring the Guggenheim Museum’s Children’s Arts Program and the music of Wynton Marsalis, A Pig with Hair went on to win numerous awards including the Silver Plaque in Chicago and continues to air on PBS.  O’Brien is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts/Film and Television and currently lives in Los Angeles with her family.

O’Brien won the primetime Emmy award in 2000 for her producing work on the FOX & PBS series American High, and directed 11 episodes, including the pilot, of ABC Family’s Switched.

Lorena Parlee, PhD

The late producer/director Lorena Parlee began working on the film that was to become Cesar’s Last Fast in 1986 when she volunteered with the United Farm Workers of American at La Paz, the UFW California Headquarters.

That year Lorena also produced, directed and wrote The Wrath of Grapes, a UFW advocacy video depicting the effects pesticides have on agricultural workers and their families.  In 1988 Lorena was Cesar Chavez’s press secretary and spokesperson when Cesar launched his Fast For Life.  During Cesar Chavez’s fast, Ms. Parlee collected some of the most intimate and powerful footage shot of Cesar.

After working for Cesar Chavez, Lorena produced, directed and co-wrote the feature-length IMAX film Mexico.  Ms. Parlee also co-produced Concerto for the Earth, a large-format 3D film, which was shown at the 1992 World’s Fair Environmental Pavilion in Seville, Spain.

In addition to making films, Dr. Parlee was a Professor of Mexican and Chicano History at the University of California’s Santa Barbara, Irvine and San Diego campuses.

Lorena Parlee died Aug. 18, 2006 after an extended battle with breast cancer. She was 60 years old.

Lisa Remington, Line Producer

Lisa Remington recently collaborated with Rick Pérez on The Freedom Files Season II (line producer), a 9-part documentary series produced in collaboration with the ACLU and Brave New Films.

Prior to The Freedom Files, Remington  worked with  filmmaker and political activist Robert Greenwald on the timely documentary Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (line producer/post-supervisor).

Remington is currently working on the follow-up film to An Inconvenient Truth on the topic of nuclear weapons, produced by Participant Media and Lawrence Bender and directed by Lucy Walker (Devil’s Playground, Blindsight) scheduled for completion in the summer of 2009.

Other credits include the documentary feature film, Urban Frontier produced by the C4 Cinema Collective, commercial and integrated marketing content for here! TV, Artivist Collective, Travel Channel/Discovery Communications, MediaVest, Lifetime Television, Women’s Entertainment Television, ABC Family in addition to creating budgets and schedules for independent documentaries seeking funding.

Carla Gutierrez, Editor

Carla Gutierrez is a Los Angeles based documentary editor.  In 2007 she edited HBO’s Oscar-nominated documentary, La Corona.  She recently finished cutting She Wants to be a Matador, a film about female bullfighters, which won Best Documentary Work in Progress at Tribeca All Access.

Carla has edited several one-hour documentaries for PBS including: Recalling Orange County, Bragging Rights and the Emmy Award-Winning, The Mighty Warriors of Comedy.

Remington is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Drama and Gender Studies and is a native of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Carla also edited two half-hour episodes of The Sierra Club Chronicles, a TV series broadcast on the Sundance Channel and Link TV.  She was the lead editor on the widely distributed feature-length documentary, Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, directed by Robert Greenwald.  Carla began her career as the second editor on The Fall of Fujimori, a feature-length doc that premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

Ed Barguiarena, Composer

Ed Barguiarena is a Los Angeles-based composer, producer, and musician. He has collaborated with the creative team of Cesar’s Last Fast on multiple projects including The Freedom Files and Sierra Club Chronicles – both for Brave New Films, and the NRDC Action Fund Campaign featuring Kyra Sedgwick. Ed’s film and video scores have been heard on The Sundance Channel, LinkTV and Public Television Stations throughout the United States. Most recently Ed composed the score the Downtown LA, a film collaboration with filmmakers Nick Higgins and Kristina Robbins.

Mr. Barguiarena’s work spans a diverse landscape that includes producing field recordings in Botswana, arranging Billie Holiday classics in London, creating concert presentations for Los Angeles Philharmonic, directing songwriting workshops at the Kennedy Center, producing a community concert for the San Francisco Symphony, and leading a youth symphony workshop in El Salvador as a United States Embassy Cultural Envoy

Ed is a recipient of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Ford Foundation, and The ASCAP Foundation, and was the Music Panel Chairperson for United States Artists 2007.

More info and music can be found at: www.ebmusica.com.