Elaine Power
Director, Writer, & Producer

Soulbird Elaine M. Power is an assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston (Ontario, Canada), where she teaches students and does research about the interactions between poverty, food and health. She was born in 1961 and grew up in a working class family in Cape Breton (Nova Scotia). She was the first in her extended family on her father’s side to attend university and only the second on her mother’s side. She earned a B.A. (sociology) from Mount Saint Vincent University; a B.Sc. (biochemistry) from the University of Ottawa; a M.Sc. (applied human nutrition) from the University of Guelph; and a Ph.D. (public health sciences) from the University of Toronto. Elaine has worked as a dietitian in Port aux Basques (Newfoundland), Victoria (British Columbia), and in the HIV/AIDS clinic at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. Her doctoral research examined how single mothers living on social assistance in a small Nova Scotia town maintained their dignity in a dehumanizing social services system. She is very excited about making her first documentary film, and the possibilities of this medium to promote social justice for those living in poverty in Canada. Elaine is the happy and proud mother of Claire Stewart (b. 2006).

Read the abstract for Elaine's article on single mothers' experiences of poverty here (Sociology, 2005)

Antonin Lhotsky
Director of Photography

Antonin Lhotsky is a graduate of F.A.M.U., the Czechoslovakia Film Academy in Prague. He has taught film at a number of Canadian film schools, and has been a Professor of Film and Video Production at York University in Toronto for the past 10 years. As a Canadian filmmaker, Antonin has accumulated more than 100 film credits, mostly in cinematography, but also as producer, director and editor in documentary and theatrical films. He has also worked on several multi-screen projects, including Taming of the Demons (1986), which received a special Genie Award (Canada’s top film honour) for Outstanding Film Achievement. In recent years, Antonin was the associate producer and cinematographer for the Karen Shopsowitz’s documentary A Place to Save Your Life, about Jewish refugees in Shanghai during World War II. Antonin was also the cinematographer for the half-hour drama The Visit, the feature film My Script Doctor and three 35mm short films: Island, sancesse, and Soulbird Paul Lee’s The Offering, which has won 67 awards at more than 470 film festivals around the world, with 10 awards for Best Cinematography. Antonin was the cinematographer for My Father’s Camera (a National Film Board of Canada production), which won the prestigious Peabody Award in 2002. He recently finished a short experimental film, Last Year at Killaloe, and a docudrama, The Last Illusion (as cinematographer and producer).

Farid Haerinejad
Editor

Farid Haerinejad was 14 years old when the Iranian Revolution took place in 1979. As with many Iranians, his life was profoundly affected by the social changes that occurred in Iranian society following the Revolution. He became politically active, and by the age of 18 he was forced to leave Iran on a self-imposed exile. Since then, he has lived and worked in the former Soviet Union republics, as well as Eastern and Western Europe, before moving to Canada in 1992. He graduated with an M.A. in Russian Language & Literature from the Akhoondov Pedagogic Institute of Baku in Azerbaijan, and received his television production and post-production training from Dawson College in Canada. Farid has more than 10 years of experience in television and documentary productions. For the past 5 years, Farid has been working as a producer and editor at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). At the CBC, he produced, directed, and edited Bloggers War (2005) and Bahman’s Journey (2006). Both documentaries were awarded at the Columbus International Film Festival, and Bahman’s Journey was also awarded at the New York Festivals. In 2007, for the CBC, Farid produced, directed, and edited Out in Iran – a documentary about the underground gay/transgender community and queer movement in Iran, which has been widely seen inside Iran through an underground distribution network (click here to view the film). The main focus of Farid’s documentaries has been the social and political issues of his native Iran. Farid is now in post-production on his first film as an independent filmmaker – Women in Shroud is a documentary about the Iranian justice system’s murderous and violent injustice towards women.