Firestorm | A film by Julie Winokur

Julie Winokur – Director/Producer/Editor

Julie Winokur is a writer and documentary film producer who strongly believes in using the visual power of film to catalyze positive social change. Her work has appeared on PBS, Discovery.com and the National Geographic Magazine website, as well as in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and MSNBC.com, among others.

Her passion for social advocacy has produced multi-year projects including the one-hour film Aging in America: The Years Ahead, its companion book and traveling exhibition as well as the ongoing 5-year project examining the health care crisis, which includes the feature-length documentary Firestorm and a series of short films. Winokur’s dynamic approach to doctumentary filmmaking drove her to turn the camera on herself in the short film The Sandwich Generation, in which Winokur and her husband, photojournalist Ed Kashi, chronicled their personal challenges caring for their two children and Winokur’s aging father. The film has been featured on MSNBC.com, AARP.org, MediaStorm, National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times website, and Good Morning America, and has been used by numerous organizations for community outreach and education on caregiving.

Winokur has won a 2009 FREDDIE Award for the short film Doctor in the House and the 2009 “Best Online Series” award from Magazine Publishers of America Digital Awards for India’s Fast Lane to the Future, featured on the National Geographic website. Additionally, Curse of the Black Gold took First Place Multimedia at the 2008 New York Photo Festival Awards and has been featured at The George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, and The Open Society Institute, as well as on various websites including CNN, NPR, Slate, and The Atlantic Monthly.

Ed Kashi – Still Photography/Cinematography

Ed Kashi has dedicated his photographic career to documenting the social and political issues that define our times. Since graduating with a degree in photojournalism from Syracuse University in 1979, he has photographed in over 60 countries. His images and essays have appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, Geo, Newsweek, and various other domestic and international publications.

In 1991, a project he proposed on the Kurds evolved into his first cover story for National Geographic. Recently for the magazine, Kashi’s vibrant photographs of India’s Golden Quadrilateral highway project captured the country’s conflict between traditional ways and modernization (October 2008 edition), and his work chronicling the negative impact of oil development on the Niger Delta (February 2007) evolved into the book Curse of the Black
Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta.

Premiering on MSNBC.com (12/06), his Iraqi/Kurdistan Flipbook demonstrated Kashi’s innovative approach to photography and filmmaking. Using stills in a moving image format, this creative and thought-provoking form of visual storytelling garnered a Black Maria Film and Video Festival Award (2007).

With his wife, writer Julie Winokur, Kashi completed an eight-year project which included a traveling exhibition, an award-winning documentary film, a website, and a book. Aging in America: The Years Ahead, published in the fall of 2003 by powerHouse Books, examines the social impact of the expanding elderly population in the United States. In 2002 Kashi and Winokur founded Talking Eyes Media, a non-profit multimedia company that explores social issues through visually compelling materials. The first documentary project for Talking Eyes Media produced a book and traveling exhibition on uninsured Americans called, Denied: The Crisis of America’s Uninsured. The book was published in March 2003 and the exhibition continues to travel throughout America.

Stela Georgieva – Editing Consultant

Stela Georgieva began her career in the entertainment business editing variety television shows, cartoons, films and advertisements in her native Bulgaria. After she moved to the United States, she worked closely as an editor with the rising director Morgan Spurlock for several years and collaborated with him on their first feature documentary, the Academy Award nominated Super Size Me. Since then, her film editing credits include Konstantin Bojanov’s Invisible, a documentary following the struggles of a group of drug-addicted youth in post-communistic Bulgaria, and Rob Van Alkemade’s What Would Jesus Buy?, an examination of the commercialization of Christmas in America. She recently produced Darryl Roberts’ America the Beautiful, a film about the unhealthy obsession with beauty that also went on to win several awards in the festival circuit, including Best Director at the Chicago International Film Festival.

Carol Devoe – Associate Producer/Outreach Coordinator

Carol DeVoe is a veteran producer who worked for Ogilvy & Mather advertising for a decade before applying her media skills to help raise awareness about the HIV/Aids Pandemic in Africa. Her first documentary produced with Globalvision, Nkosi: A Voice of Africa’s AIDS Orphans aired on PBS in 2002. The film was screened at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2003 and was widely used by UN agencies as an educational tool. Carol joined Talking Eyes Media in 2007 and has worked in various capacities on a number of multimedia projects including The Sandwich Generation, the Inner Wounds of War - produced for Disccovery.com and many other films. She was associate producer and co-editor on the multi-media component of the Heart Gallery of New Jersey’s 100 Waiting Kids campaign, which included cinematography and editing of profiles of almost 100 foster kids. She was an editor on HR676, a video primer on single-payer health care, featuring Michael Moore and Rep. John Conyers. Carol is currently an associate producer on Firestorm which examines the impact of Los Angeles’ crumbling emergency medical care system through the lens of Los Angeles firefighters.


	TRAILER BUY DVDS SYNOPSIS NEWS/REVIEWS BLOG THE FACTS GET INVOLVED FILMMAKERS PARTNERS/SPONSORS CONTACT PRESS KIT	Julie Winokur – Director/Producer/Editor Julie Winokur is a writer and documentary film producer who strongly believes in using the visual power of film to catalyze positive social change. Her work has appeared on PBS, Discovery.com and the National Geographic Magazine website, as well as in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and MSNBC.com, among others. Her passion for social advocacy has produced multi-year projects including the one-hour film Aging in America: The Years Ahead, its companion book and traveling exhibition as well as the ongoing 5-year project examining the health care crisis, which includes the feature-length documentary Firestorm and a series of short films. Winokur’s dynamic approach to doctumentary filmmaking drove her to turn the camera on herself in the short film The Sandwich Generation, in which Winokur and her husband, photojournalist Ed Kashi, chronicled their personal challenges caring for their two children and Winokur’s aging father. The film has been featured on MSNBC.com, AARP.org, MediaStorm, National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times website, and Good Morning America, and has been used by numerous organizations for community outreach and education on caregiving. Winokur has won a 2009 FREDDIE Award for the short film Doctor in the House and the 2009 “Best Online Series” award from Magazine Publishers of America Digital Awards for India’s Fast Lane to the Future, featured on the National Geographic website. Additionally, Curse of the Black Gold took First Place Multimedia at the 2008 New York Photo Festival Awards and has been featured at The George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, and The Open Society Institute, as well as on various websites including CNN, NPR, Slate, and The Atlantic Monthly. Ed Kashi – Still Photography/Cinematography Ed Kashi has dedicated his photographic career to documenting the social and political issues that define our times. Since graduating with a degree in photojournalism from Syracuse University in 1979, he has photographed in over 60 countries. His images and essays have appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, Geo, Newsweek, and various other domestic and international publications. In 1991, a project he proposed on the Kurds evolved into his first cover story for National Geographic. Recently for the magazine, Kashi’s vibrant photographs of India’s Golden Quadrilateral highway project captured the country’s conflict between traditional ways and modernization (October 2008 edition), and his work chronicling the negative impact of oil development on the Niger Delta (February 2007) evolved into the book Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta. Premiering on MSNBC.com (12/06), his Iraqi/Kurdistan Flipbook demonstrated Kashi’s innovative approach to photography and filmmaking. Using stills in a moving image format, this creative and thought-provoking form of visual storytelling garnered a Black Maria Film and Video Festival Award (2007). With his wife, writer Julie Winokur, Kashi completed an eight-year project which included a traveling exhibition, an award-winning documentary film, a website, and a book. Aging in America: The Years Ahead, published in the fall of 2003 by powerHouse Books, examines the social impact of the expanding elderly population in the United States. In 2002 Kashi and Winokur founded Talking Eyes Media, a non-profit multimedia company that explores social issues through visually compelling materials. The first documentary project for Talking Eyes Media produced a book and traveling exhibition on uninsured Americans called, Denied: The Crisis of America’s Uninsured. The book was published in March 2003 and the exhibition continues to travel throughout America. Stela Georgieva – Editing Consultant Stela Georgieva began her career in the entertainment business editing variety television shows, cartoons, films and advertisements in her native Bulgaria. After she moved to the United States, she worked closely as an editor with the rising director Morgan Spurlock for several years and collaborated with him on their first feature documentary, the Academy Award nominated Super Size Me. Since then, her film editing credits include Konstantin Bojanov’s Invisible, a documentary following the struggles of a group of drug-addicted youth in post-communistic Bulgaria, and Rob Van Alkemade’s What Would Jesus Buy?, an examination of the commercialization of Christmas in America. She recently produced Darryl Roberts’ America the Beautiful, a film about the unhealthy obsession with beauty that also went on to win several awards in the festival circuit, including Best Director at the Chicago International Film Festival. Carol Devoe – Associate Producer/Outreach Coordinator Carol DeVoe is a veteran producer who worked for Ogilvy & Mather advertising for a decade before applying her media skills to help raise awareness about the HIV/Aids Pandemic in Africa. Her first documentary produced with Globalvision, Nkosi: A Voice of Africa’s AIDS Orphans aired on PBS in 2002. The film was screened at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2003 and was widely used by UN agencies as an educational tool. Carol joined Talking Eyes Media in 2007 and has worked in various capacities on a number of multimedia projects including The Sandwich Generation, the Inner Wounds of War - produced for Disccovery.com and many other films. She was associate producer and co-editor on the multi-media component of the Heart Gallery of New Jersey’s 100 Waiting Kids campaign, which included cinematography and editing of profiles of almost 100 foster kids. She was an editor on HR676, a video primer on single-payer health care, featuring Michael Moore and Rep. John Conyers. Carol is currently an associate producer on Firestorm which examines the impact of Los Angeles’ crumbling emergency medical care system through the lens of Los Angeles firefighters.