About the Filmmakers
Eric Steel (Producer/Director)
Eric Steel began his career as a creative executive at Walt Disney Pictures after graduating from Yale University in 1985. Later he worked as a Vice President at Cinecom, at the time the leading art film distributor.
Shifting gears, he decided to take a position as an Editor at Simon & Schuster and then as a Senior Editor at HarperCollins, where he published many noted and award winning books of fiction and non-fiction.
In 1995, he became Senior Vice President of Scott Rudin Productions. Along with the acquisition and development of many of the company's most prominent feature projects, he was the Executive Producer of Angela's Ashes, and Co-Producer of Bringing Out The Dead and Shaft.
In 2003, Eric Steel formed his own company, Easy There Tiger, and is currently developing several documentaries and features, including Julie/Julia, a co-production with Amy Robinson, based on the book of the same title by Julie Powell (Little Brown, Fall 2005), screenplay by Dana Stevens, for Columbia Pictures.
The Bridge is Eric Steel's directorial and documentary debut.
Tad Friend, Writer
Tad Friend has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998. He writes the magazine's "Letter from California," and often covers the entertainment business. Mr. Friend's recent pieces have included articles about the William Morris agent David Wirtschafter; a female bounty hunter; and the man who hopes to introduce "green burial" to American cemeteries. He has also written profiles of director Peter Bogdanovich, director Harold Ramis, screenwriter Ron Bass, and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom.
Prior to joining The New Yorker, Mr. Friend was a Contributing Editor to a number of publications, including Outside and Esquire.
He is the author of Lost In Mongolia: Travels In Hollywood And Other Foreign Lands, a collection of his articles published by Random House in 2001.
Mr. Friend is married to the New York Times food writer Amanda Hesser, and lives in Brooklyn.
Peter McCandless, Director Of Photography
Peter McCandless began work as an experimental filmmaker and photographer. He has collaborated with innumerable Bay Area musicians, composers, choreographers, and fellow filmmakers on performance and multi media installations.
As a cinematographer he moved into commercial work, and has been the DP for many independent features and shorts. In the last five years he has devoted much of his time to documentaries.
The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, his films have been presented at major international film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival where his film Pool Of Thanatos premiered.
As a cinematographer, his projects include the Emmy award winning documentary, Of Civil Wrongs And Rights, The Fred Korematsu Story, and the critically acclaimed films Celebration, Reverend Cecil Williams And Glide Church , and From Tibet To Turtle Island.
Sabine Krayenbühl, Editor
Sabine Krayenbühl, a Swiss native, has worked in both the United States and Europe editing documentaries and features. Her most recent work is the critically acclaimed documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, distributed by Paramount Classics and Oscar-nominated feature length documentary, My Architect; A Son's Journey, for which the American Cinema Editors also nominated her for an Eddie award in 2004.
Other works include Eleven Friends, a feature-length documentary produced by ARTE and nominated for the Prix d'Europe; Jugodivas, which premiered at Sundance and won the Swiss Film Prize 2002; An American Love Story, an acclaimed ten part series for P.O.V., broadcast on PBS, ARTE and BBC; Frau2 And Happy End, a feature produced by Studio Canal and BMG International.
Alex Heffes, Composer
Alex Heffes' work appears on cinema and television screens worldwide. Originally rising to prominence with his score to Academy Award-winning One Day In September, Alex's versatility as composer has led to a busy scoring schedule taking him constantly across musical boundaries. Recent scores include acclaimed BAFTA-winner Touching The Void, Miramax Film's Dear Frankie and the psychological thriller Trauma for Warner Bros. starring Colin Firth and Mena Suvari. Other films to be released in 2006 include the Fox Searchlight projects Imagine Me And You starring Piper Perabo and The Last King Of Scotland directed by Kevin MacDonald starring Forest Whitaker, Gillian Anderson and James McAvoy.
Away from the screen, Alex's concert music has been featured at venues as diverse as the Sangat Music Festival in India where he was the composer in residence in January 2000, Symphony Hall Birmingham and the London Jazz Festival. In 2003 he was invited to the Sultanate of Oman to attend the premiere of his overture commissioned by the Royal Symphony Orchestra.
Alex has also collaborated on Elton John's movie score to Women Talking Dirty and with members of Blur.