Production Team
Production Team
Dyanna Taylor – Writer, Director, Producer
Roberta Grossman – Producer
Meg Partridge – Consulting Producer
Lisa Thomas – Executive Producer
Dyanna Taylor
Dyanna Taylor brings a uniquely personal angle to this film; she is the granddaughter of Dorothea Lange.
Taylor is an Emmy Award winner and the recipient of the MUSE Award for “Outstanding Vision and Achievement in Cinematography” from New York Women in Film and Television. She began in the film business in San Francisco, producing and directing documentaries with her first company, Taylor/Franklin Films. Her first TV network assignment was as co-director and cinematographer for ABC, making a documentary on the first American women’s climbing expedition Annapurna I in the Himalayas. In the Southwest she directed and produced the NHK/Turner film Vanished!, on the writer and artist (and Lange friend) Everett Reuss. In 2007, Taylor directed Monastery, a four-part series for The Learning Channel. Taylor was recently featured in the NEH video initiative Picturing America about her grandmother’s photograph Migrant Mother. Currently, she is directing Territories of the Fresh and Wild: The Life of a Roshi.
Taylor’s credits as Director of Photography include HBO’s 2009 special The Alzheimer Project; for American Masters: Hemingway: Rivers to the Sea and Winter Dreams: F. Scott Fitzgerald (Fitzgerald received a 2002 Peabody Award); Evolution, a NOVA/WBGH co-production; the HBO Special Life After Life; PBS’s Great Performances Swingin’ With the Duke; Porgy and Bess: An American Voice (PBS special), 500 Nations, the eight-part CBS mini-series with Kevin Costner; Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, which won an Academy Award; and Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh.
Roberta Grossman
An award-winning filmmaker with a passion for history and social justice, Roberta Grossman has written and produced more than forty hours of documentary film and television. Her most recent film Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh won awards at 13 film festivals, aired on the PBS series Independent Lens and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. Grossman was the series producer and co-writer of 500 Nations, the CBS mini-series on Native Americans hosted by Kevin Costner. Grossman’s feature documentary, Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action, premiered in February 2005, and screened and won awards at more than forty festivals worldwide. Other writing and producing credits include In the Footsteps of Jesus, a four-hour special for the History Channel; Hollywood & Power: Women on Top, a special for AMC; The Rich in America: 150 Years of Town and Country Magazine for A&E; The History of Christianity: the First Thousand Years, a four-hour special on A&E; Medal of Honor, a six-part television series produced for U.S. News & World Report; and Heroines of the Hebrew Bible and Judas for the A&E series Mysteries of the Bible. Grossman is currently producing and directing Hava Nagila, What Is It?
Meg Partridge
Meg Partridge is a producer and director of documentary films. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her film Portrait of Imogen, on her grandmother, the photographer Imogen Cunningham. As a member of Lange’s extended family, she also grew up in the milieu of the Taylor/Lange/Dixon families, and knows both the personal side as well as professional work of Dorothea Lange. As an executive producer, Partridge has supervised projects for a variety of companies, including The Discovery Channel, The History Channel, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq and Toyota. Her recent work includes a film co-produced and directed with Dyanna Taylor highlighting the photographic work of her father. Outta My Light! Photographer Rondal Partridge accompanied two solo shows of Rondal Partridge’s photographs at the California Historical Society in San Francisco and at the Oakland Museum of California.
Pamela Mason Wagner
Pamela Mason Wagner won the Primetime Emmy in 2001 for the American Masters film about Lucille Ball: Finding Lucy. She has produced and directed numerous historical films including Christmas and the Civil War, and a series of docudramas about famous saints for the Hallmark Channel (Joan of Arc, St. Patrick and Francis of Assisi). Recently she created a short video about the photograph Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange, one of forty iconic American artworks included in the NEH initiative Picturing America. Her decade-long collaboration with Bill Moyers yielded several series for PBS: Close to Home: Moyers on Addiction; Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers; and The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith.