We Are The Radical Monarchs

Linda Goldstein Knowlton (Producer/Director)

Linda Goldstein Knowlton is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, working in documentary and scripted feature films, as well as television.  In 2016, she Executive Produced the documentary DREAM, GIRL, which premiered at The White House. The film showcases the stories of inspiring and ambitious female entrepreneurs. Goldstein Knowlton directed and produced one of the six, Emmy-nominated documentaries for the PBS MAKERS: Women Who Make America series. The film, WOMEN AND HOLLYWOOD, aired in October, 2014 and includes interviews with Jane Fonda, Shonda Rhimes, Lena Dunham, Ava Duvernay, Glenn Close, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Alfre Woodard, Hunger Games producer Nina Jacobson, among many other notable women. Prior to that, she produced CODE BLACK, Best Documentary winner at LA Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival, and the basis for the CBS one-hour drama of the same name. Previously she directed and produced SOMEWHERE BETWEEN, which won the Sundance Channel Audience Award at the Hot Docs Film Festival, and was released theatrically in over 80 cities across the US. For her directorial debut, she co-directed THE WORLD ACCORDING TO SESAME STREET, which debuted at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival in competition and aired nationally on PBS. Linda started her career producing feature films, including the award-winning WHALE RIDER and THE SHIPPING NEWS.

Katie Flint (Producer/Editor)

Katie Flint is an award winning feature-length documentary editor and producer. With her frequent collaborator, Linda Goldstein Knowlton, she co-produced and edited SOMEWHERE BETWEEN (2011) which profiled four girls adopted from China. The film won the Hot Docs Audience Award. She co-edited Dawn Porter's documentary film TRAPPED (2016), about the struggles of the clinic workers and lawyers who are on the front lines of a battle to keep abortion safe and legal for American women. The film premiered at Sundance and won the Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking. Other credits include SOUND OF REDEMPTION: THE FRANK MORGAN STORY, Jonathan Demme's JIMMY CARTER: MAN FROM PLAINS, STEAL A PENCIL FOR ME, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO SESAME STREET, PBS’ MAKERS: WOMEN IN HOLLYWOOD, and Daryl Hannah's DHLOVELIFE webseries. Katie participated in multiple Sundance documentary labs and is passionate about using her filmmaking skills to advance the interests of those who lack a majority voice, including advocating for the environment and fighting climate change. She lives in Petaluma, CA with her family.

Grace Lee (Executive Producer)

Grace Lee directed and produced the Peabody Award-winning AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY: THE EVOLUTION OF GRACE LEE BOGGS about the legendary civil rights activist which won multiple festival audience awards and was broadcast on the PBS documentary series POV. Other directing credits include the Emmy-nominated MAKERS: WOMEN IN POLITICS for PBS; the interactive online documentary K-TOWN ‘92 about the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest, OFF THE MENU: ASIAN AMERICA; and the feature film JANEANE FROM DES MOINES, set during the 2012 presidential campaign, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. She has been a Sundance Institute Fellow, a 2017 Chicken & Egg Breakthrough Award winner, an envoy of the American Film Showcase (through USC and the U.S. State Department), and is co-founder of the Asian American Documentary Network. She is a producer on PBS Asian Americans as well as co-director/producer on AND SHE COULD BE NEXT, a docuseries about women of color transforming US politics from the ground up.

Arielle Amsalem (Editor)

Arielle Amsalem is an Emmy Award winning editor of feature length documentary films.  Arielle started her career working alongside acclaimed editor Sam Pollard on Spike Lee’s award winning documentary “When the Levees Broke” (2006), a film about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  She has since been the editor of many feature documentaries including the Edward Norton produced HBO documentary By the People: The Election of Barack Obama (2009) for which she won the Primetime Emmy for Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming, The Education of Dee Dee Ricks (HBO, 2011) , Comedy Warriors (Showtime, 2013) and the PBS documentary mini-series “Coming Back with Wes Moore” (2014).  Recently she spent some time immersed in the world of Vice editing and producing the investigative documentary series Weediquette for Viceland.

Gingger Shankar  (Composer)

Gingger Shankar is a singer, violinist and composer, and was born into one of the world’s most acclaimed and influential musical families. Her accomplishments include working with top producers and film composers including Mel Gibson, The Smashing Pumpkins, Trent Reznor, Mike Nichols, Mike Myers, and James Newton Howard.  In 2011 she was chosen as one of Filmmaker Magazine’s ‘25 New Faces to Watch’, as well as becoming a member of the Advisory Board for the Sundance Film Festival. Gingger composed music for the critically acclaimed 2011 Sundance U.S. Dramatic Audience Award Winner ‘Circumstance’ directed by Maryam Keshavarz. In addition to being the artist and co-composer behind the poignant score of Mel Gibson’s blockbuster “Passion of the Christ”, Gingger’s music can be heard in Mike Nichol’s film, “Charlie Wilson’s War”. 

Her multimedia project 'Himalaya Song' (focusing on Climate Change in the Himalayas) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was named one of the '10 Best Music Films at Sundance 2012' by Rolling Stone. She guested on the new Katy Perry album ‘Prism’. Her most recent projects include ‘Heartbeats’ directed by Duane Adler with Jay-Z and Roc Nation, and Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s ‘We Will Rise’ for the First Lady’s ‘Let Girls Learn’ Initiative which was the highest rated film ever to air on CNN. ‘We Will Rise’ was premiered at the White House on the International Day of the Girl.

Her most personal project to date is ‘Nari’, which she debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. It follows the untold story of Lakshmi and Viji Shankar (her mother and grandmother) as they brought Indian music to the West with Ravi Shankar and George Harrison. It is an ode to her family’s legacy and the role of women in Indian society and beyond.

Clare Major  (Director of Photography)

Clare Major is a cinematographer and documentary filmmaker based in Oakland, California. She specializes in handheld observational camerawork and in stories that illuminate the intersection of cultures and the lives of women and girls. Most recently, she was Director of Photography for WE ARE THE RADICAL MONARCHS, which premiered at SXSW in 2019; Cinematographer on BELLY OF THE BEAST, which premiered at the Human Rights Watch film festival in 2020; and Vérité Cinematographer for AHEAD OF THE CURVE, which premiered at Frameline in 2020. Clare served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal and has walked all the way from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail.

Guisel Contreras (Additional Camera / Associate Producer / Assistant Editor)

Guisel Contreras is a Mexican American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer. She is proud to capture the complexities of people's lives from behind the camera. She has filmed on documentary features including We Are The Radical Monarchs (SXSW, 2019), And She Could Be Next (POV ON PBS, 2020), Happening: A Clean Energy Revolution (HBO, 2017). Guisel earned her master's degree in documentary film production from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she was awarded a Documentary Merit Fellowship.

Suz Curtis  (Associate Producer)

Suz Curtis is a Los Angeles based screenwriter and Associate Producer of We Are the Radical Monarchs. Her work includes writing the short doc Radical Brownies for Ladylike Films, which premiered on The Guardian UK, and the feature documentary Where She Lies, which will be released by Gravitas Ventures in November 2020. In the narrative space, she wrote the short adaptation of Death, produced by James Franco+Rabbit Bandini, and the short Down to Nothing, featuring Sheryl Lee from Twin Peaks. She was the researcher for Equal, a 4-part doc series expected to premiere this fall on HBO Max. She writes for Documentary Magazine, published by the International Documentary Association and loves everything about the Radical Monarchs and this film. MFA - Screenwriting, UCLA.