TRACY HEATHER STRAIN

Tracy produced and directed "Building the Alaska Highway" for the PBS series American Experience through her former company Diner Media. For California Newsreel's 2003 ITVS/PBS series Race: The Power Of An Illusion, she wrote, produced, and directed "The Story We Tell," about the history of race in America. Her television feature documentary debut as producer, director and writer came at Henry Hampton's company Blackside on the six-part PBS series I'll Make Me a World: A Century of African-American Arts with her films "Bright Like a Sun" and "The Dream Keepers." The series won the team George Foster Peabody Awards among other honors. Tracy's films profiled the life and times of artists Paul Robeson, Augusta Savage, Dizzy Gillespie, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, and black ballet dancers of the 1950s and 1960s.

Strain has produced and directed a number of short pieces—including profiles for Greater Boston Arts, classroom videos for PBS series Evolution and Building Big, and the children's series ZOOM. Her museum video credits include The Spy Museum, The Mariners Museum and Martin Luther King, Jr. Visitors Center produced for Northern Light Productions. She co-produced Tom Curran's documentary feature film, ADRIFT, a WGBH Home Video release and American Public Television Exchange offering as well as past IFP Market selection. Her other PBS credits include Discover: The World of Science with host Peter Graves, and the two multi-award-winning history series, The Great Depression and America's War on Poverty. In 2001, Strain was selected for the CPB/PBS Producers Academy Workshop, and last year began co-teaching its production management/budgeting session.

In the early 1990s, while based in New York, Strain worked as assistant to still photographer Mitch Epstein. She also served as Art Department Coordinator (US) on Mira Nair's dramatic feature film Mississippi Masala. She worked under Shelby Stone as production/acquisitions coordinator at Cinecom and SCS Films.

Tracy is part of the team that has relaunched Center for Independent Documentary's monthly AIVF Boston Salon—Filmmakers Workshop, which is held monthly at the NAO Gallery. Strain is a member of a number of filmmaking and media organizations, and has served as a panelist and reader for several foundations. A graduate of Wellesley College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she is actively developing a feature-length documentary of the late playwright/activist Lorraine Hansberry with Nyack, NY-based producer Chiz Schultz.

RANDALL MACLOWRY

Randy is a producer, director and editor with 20 years experience in the field. MacLowry has produced and co-written American Experience episodes "A Brilliant Madness" and "Stephen Foster," the latter he also directed and was nominated for a Writers Guild Award. As editor, his work includes an episode of the two-part series "Reconstruction: American's Second Civil War" for American Experience, an episode of the three-part series Race: The Power of an Illusion for ITVS/California Newsreel, the four-part series West Virginia: A Film History, and biographical segments for the Kennedy Center Honors and the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award.

At Guggenheim Productions in Washington, DC, MacLowry was assistant editor on the late Charles Guggenheim's Academy Award-winning films The Johnstown Flood and A Time for Justice. In addition to documentaries, MacLowry directed and edited Head Over Heels, an independent drama that was a 1997 IFP Market short film selection. He also produced and edited Getting Over the Arnette, a dramatic short for West Virginia public television that won the 1998 NETA award for Best Performance Program. MacLowry graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in film where he studied with cinema scholar Jeanine Basinger. Currently, MacLowry is producing, directing, and co-writing a two-hour co-production for WGBH/Boston's American Experience and with San Francisco's KQED on the California Gold Rush through his company Yellow Jersey Films, Inc.