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Ark Media is an independent documentary film production company located in Brooklyn, NY. Ark was founded by Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin. We produce historical, cultural and public affairs documentaries for the PBS series FRONTLINE and American Experience, as well as cable outlets like The History Channel and AMC. In the last few years, Ark films have been nominated for an Academy Award and won the National Emmy, a Dupont-Columbia, an RFK Journalism, a Peabody, and a Writers Guild Award.

Barak Goodman

 

Executive Producer, Producer/Director, Writer

Barak Goodman is co-founder of Ark Media and a principal producer, director, and writer with the company. His films for Ark Media have been nominated for an Academy Award and won multiple Emmys and Writers Guild Awards, the DuPont-Columbia, and Peabody Awards, the RFK Journalism Prize, and twice been official selections at the Sundance Film Festival.

Rachel Dretzin

 

Executive Producer, Producer/Director, Writer

Rachel Dretzin is co-founder of Ark Media and a principal producer, director, and writer with the company. She has been producing and directing films for PBS' FRONTLINE since 1995. Among her many films for FRONTLINE are: The Lost Children of Rockdale County, Merchants of Cool, The Persuaders, Failure to Protect, and Growing Up Online. Dretzin has also produced for WNET New York, MSNBC's Edgewise, and NPR's "All Things Considered," as well as the NY Times Magazine on the Web. Currently. she is directing and producing Digital Nation, a major documentary and multimedia FRONTLINE website about life in the digital age. She and Barak Goodman live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with their three children.

John Maggio

 

Producer/Director, Writer

Filmmaker John Maggio has produced, directed and written award-winning feature documentaries mostly for PBS including the critically acclaimed films The Fight, Kinsey, The Boy in the Bubble and The Lobotomist for the series American Experience. Maggio's work, which has been honored with the National Emmy Award, Writer's Guild Award, Cine Golden Eagle and an Independent Spirit Award nomination, has screened at nearly every major film festival around the world. He's just finished producing and directing a two-hour special Looking for Lincoln, a fascinating new take on our 16th President, scheduled to air on PBS in February 2009. Maggio lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two young sons.

Muriel Soenens

 

Producer/Director

Muriel Soenens is a producer and director of feature documentary films. Her work has mainly been for PBS and include FRONTLINE'S Failure to Protect (winner of the Dupont-Columbia award and RFK Journalism Prize), The Persuaders, A Hidden Life, and Pope John Paul II: The Millennial Pope; BILL MOYER'S NOW Global Woman and Poverty; and American Masters' Alfred Stieglitz and Richard Avedon. She also made AMC's Precinct Hollywood, a history of the American cop film genre. Most recently she directed and produced the PBS two-hour special Looking for Lincoln with host Henry Louis Gates. Currently, she is developing a film on federal and corporate whistleblowers. Muriel lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Caitlin McNally

 

Co-Producer

Caitlin has been with Ark Media since 2005. She co-produced Digital Nation (2010), a major PBS-FRONTLINE documentary and web report about life in the digital age. Her other credits for FRONTLINE include Growing Up Online (2008), A Hidden Life (2006) and Congo: On the Trail of an AK-47 (2007), a film about China's involvement in the African gun trade for FRONTLINE/World, which she co-wrote, co-produced and edited. Caitlin also associate produced Rory Kennedy's Emmy award-winning HBO documentary, The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (2007), and has produced video for the WNYC/PRI public radio program, The Takeaway, about an oil boom in North Dakota (2008). In 2009, the Drag City record label released Portraits of Gnawa, a critically-acclaimed series of documentary portraits Caitlin wrote, directed and produced about sub-Saharan musicians in Morocco. She lives in Brooklyn.

Jamila Ephron

 

Associate Producer

Jamila Ephron came to Ark Media in 2007 to work as associate producer on The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  Currently, she is associate producer for Barak Goodman's upcoming special about the My Lai massacre for American Experience. Prior to joining Ark, she worked on Helen Whitney's The Mormons, a four-hour co-production for American Experience and FRONTLINE.  A Seattle native and alumna of Sarah Lawrence College, Jamila lives in Astoria, Queens.

R.A. Fedde

 

Editor

Since escaping a successful Silicon Valley career in 2001, Fedde has edited everything from wild horses to Marilyn Manson. Her work includes 10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America: Antietam and Combat Diary, which was nominated for a 2006 Emmy. She has worked on numerous PBS shows, including most recently Digital Nation and Looking for Lincoln for Ark Media. She also co-owns the Brooklyn Fencing Center, Brooklyn's first Olympic-style fencing club. An alumna of the Rhode Island School of Design, she lives in Brooklyn.

 
 

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Ark Media::News

OUR FILMS

My Lai

Faces of America

Digital Nation

Looking for Lincoln

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Naked

Growing Up Online

The Lobotomist

A Hidden Life

Einstein's Letter

The Boy in the Bubble

Precinct Hollywood

Kinsey

The Fight

The Persuaders

Failure to Protect

Rollover

Scottsboro: An American Tragedy

Merchants of Cool

The Lost Children of Rockdale County

The High Price of Health

The Search for Satan

Hillary's Class

Richard J. Daley: The Last Boss