Irene most recent film, One Last Hug: Three Days at Grief Camp, explores how children grieve and it won the 2014 Prime Time Emmy for Best Childrens Programming. In 2011, she directed Saving Pelican 895 which also won an Emmy for its affecting music score and followed the life of a single bird rescued from the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill. For her 2009 short-subject film The Final Inch, Irene was nominated for a 2009 Academy Award, three Emmys, and won the International Documentary Association’s Pare Lorentz Award for cinematic excellence. In 2007, Irene turned the camera on her own family to make her first feature-length documentary Hear and Now, which won the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award, and went on to receive numerous Audience and Jury awards around the world, a 2008 Peabody Award, and a nomination for Documentary of the Year by the Producer’s Guild of America.
Irene’s passion for documentary portraiture began as a still photographer with her landmark book, Buddhas in Disguise, about disabled people living in the mountains of Nepal. She went on to make her first film for UNICEF in 1993, throughout the 90s produced and shot numerous award-winning television documentaries, and worked as a Producer for CBS Sunday Morning.
Irene’s next film, Open Your Eyes, will be released in the fall of 2015. It follows a blind couple in Nepal, and their unlikely 3-day journey to to regain their sight. She founded Vermilion Films in 2004 and lives in Portland, Oregon.Kat McMahon - McMahon has contributed to more than 40 hours of national documentary and long-format news programming primarily for PBS since she began her career in 1998 as an Associate Producer for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Today, she produces and co-produces documentaries for the PBS series FRONTLINE; independent films, digital channels and PBS stations. Her current film is about the history of women in computing for Google family foundations – release date 2014. Recent film projects include FRONTLINE: Life and Death in Assisted Living (2013); FRONTLINE: Nuclear Aftershocks (2012); FRONTLINE: The Vaccine War (2010); FRONTLINE: Sick Around America (2009) and FRONTLINE: Sick Around the World (2008). In 2008, Kate’s co-production of the 2-hour historical film Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil and the Presidency premiered on PBS. In 2004 Kate associate produced the Oscar-nominated film ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room and in 2005 co-produced FRONTLINE: The Meth Epidemic. In 2001, while working at ABC-NEWS Nightline, Kate covered the tragic events of 9/11 from New York City. She went on to work for NOW with Bill Moyers covering the nexus of business and politics in Washington, D.C. Her on-going production of Inside the Psychologist’s Studio is a popular web series for the Association for Psychological Science. Outside of producing documentaries rooted in journalism, Kate has produced and reported public radio programs and published articles in Metro Parent Magazine . She enjoys living in Portland, OR with her husband, two children and their fluffy dog and pink fish.