The filmmakers working in collaboration to produce and direct this project, Elisabeth Haviland James and Revere La Noue, met while making a film about the quest for the Ivory‐billed woodpecker in the sticky swamps of Arkansas in 2006, and married on a goat farm 4 years later. In 2014 they launched THE FALCONBRIDGE COLLECTION, LLC  to house their new documentary film, OVERLAND, about falconers around the world. Producer Christopher Behlau joined “team Falconbridge” in 2015.

REVERE LA NOUE, ELISABETH HAVILAND JAMES AND CHRISTOPHER BEHLAU AT THE SCOTTISH DOCUMENTARY INSTITUTE PITCH FORUM AT THE EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL

ELISABETH HAVILAND JAMES

Elisabeth Haviland James is a film producer, director and editor based in Durham, North Carolina, where her company Thornapple Films is headquartered. 

In 2015, James was awarded one of two film fellowships by the North Carolina Arts Council. She is the Producer and Editor of Althea, (dir Rex Miller), a feature documentary about pioneering tennis icon Althea Gibson, which premiered at DOCNYC, and was PBS’ American Masters season premiere episode in September 2015. She was awarded a WIFTA for editing Althea. Her documentary feature‐directing debut, In So Many Words, premiered at the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and has screened at festivals, museums and conferences around the country. James was the Producer and Editor of The Loving Story (co‐produced with HBO) for which she was short‐listed for the Academy Award, winner of a George Foster Peabody Award and an Emmy Award (Best Historic Program) and nominated for two additional Emmy Awards (Best Documentary, Best Editing). The film has screened in festivals around the United States (Full Frame, TriBeCa, Silverdocs, Traverse City, Virginia, Hamptons, among dozens of others), and as a participant in the Sundance Film Forward program, with the US Department of State and with the American Film Showcase. It premiered on Valentine’s Day, 2012 on HBO. She was a consulting producer and pre‐production researcher on location in the Dzangha‐Sangha National Park in Central African Republic to the narrative feature Oka!. Other recent credits include Producer of The Good Fight and co‐Producer of The Lord God Bird (both dir. George Butler). She served as Director of Photography and Editor on the 2003 documentary Brothers in Arms, featuring now Secretary of State, then Senator John Kerry. 

James is a graduate of the M.A. Program in Documentary Film and Video at Stanford University. In 1999, she earned a BSFS with honors from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where she majored in Culture and Politics. She is fluent in French, speaks some Spanish and has led tours for art museums, botanic gardens and cultural institutions around the world, including to France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Argentina, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. James has taught documentary filmmaking at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies and as an artist in residence at the Oklahoma Arts Institute; she has also served as a guest lecturer for the State Department in Central Asia. 

REVERE LA NOUE

Revere La Noue is a filmmaker and artist working on a wide array of creative projects all over the world. He is Hellbent on pushing the frontier of visual storytelling in documentary through artful innovation and cross‐collaboration.

As a filmmaker, Mr. La Noue has collaborated with a wide range of organizations including National Geographic, NBC Sports, The New Yorker Magazine, The National Science Foundation, The National Institutes for Child Health and Human Development, The University System of Maryland, and Stanford University Medical School. He is proud that his work has made a strong social impact as an educational tool, a case for conservation, a vessel of inspiration for communities in need of support around the country, and as a medical resource saving lives on five continents around the globe. He worked with George Butler and White Mountain Films as a field producer of The Lord God Bird documenting the controversial search for the Ivory‐Billed Woodpecker and as an editor and co‐producer of The Good Fight, a verité exploration of the legacy of Bobby Bowden. He was the Art Director and Producer of In So Many Words, a southern gothic hybrid documentary by Elisabeth Haviland James and Thornapple Films. He served for two years as a creative advisor to HBO’s The Loving Story, which was short‐listed for an Academy Award, won an Emmy and a Peabody Award in 2013. He is frequently called upon to consult with filmmakers, artists and business leaders to help refine their creative vision and develop alternative models of storytelling.

As an artist, he has lived, trained, and worked in Washington, D.C., Palo Alto, NYC, and now operates from a private studio outside of Durham, NC. Shortly after finishing his graduate work at Stanford University, he launched his art business in New York City with a collection of his work featuring icons of American history and folklore. Within the first year, pieces from the series were hung in public and private collections in 42 states. In 2011, he was commissioned to create a four‐story, 6500 sqft. fine art print of stampeding broncos that wrapped around the corner of a city block; it is the largest publicly displayed fine art print on record. In 2012, he exhibited his first solo show with paintings, prints, and photographs featuring dance and architecture in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His exhibition of experimental photography depicting the city of Detroit was part of a show at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum that drew a record number 100,000 visitors in two weeks. In the spring of 2014, he unveiled Targyle: series one, a collaboration with renowned fashion designer Alexander Julian featuring five 10 ft tapestries, a 200 sq ft canvas, 15 original paintings as well as several prototypes for a line of men’s ties and women’s scarves. In the summer of 2014, he debuted a new show of paintings called EMOTICON, Feeling Unsimplified, made in collaboration with dancers and choreographers from around the country to explore the human silhouette as a highly nuanced communication device. Most recently, in partnership with Duke University, he unveiled a 300 sq ft permanent installation featuring his impressionistic depiction of “Les Diables Bleus” a WWI era French military unit that inspired the University’s Blue Devil nickname.

Revere La Noue has a Bachelor’s Degree from the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame, where he played Division I lacrosse. He has a Master’s Degree from the Documentary Film and Video Program at Stanford University.

CHRISTOPHER BEHLAU

Christopher Behlau is the founder and principle of Matter Films, headquartered in Los Angeles, currently working with directors/producers Revere La Noue and Elisabeth Haviland James to produce Overland – a feature documentary film about the ancient art of falconry.

Behlau’s passion for documentaries as fundraiser, cinematographer and producer has taken him across the globe from the blazing jungles of India and Bangladesh, where he worked with legendary documentary director George Butler (Pumping Iron) to film the making of and produce Tiger, Tiger, a feature documentary, previewing at the 2015 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, which follows world renowned big cat conservationist, Dr. Alan Rabinowitz on perhaps his last adventure, into the Sundarbans ‐ one of the least‐known tiger habitats left on earth. Behlau’s latest project saw him associate produce, alongside editor/producer Elisabeth Haviland James, Althea (dir Rex Miller), a feature documentary about pioneering tennis icon Althea Gibson, which premiered in Fall of 2014 at DOCNYC, and will be broadcast on the prestigious American Masters PBS series in September 2015. Behlau has also worked as a fundraising consultant and creative advisor on various projects, includingon Cartel Land (dir Matthew Heineman), which won best director and cinematographer at the Sundance Film Festival 2015, Citizen Koch (dir Tia Lessin/Carl Deal), Golham (dir Mitra Tabrizian) and We are Many (dir Amir Amirani). 

Behlau graduated magna cum laude from Regent’s University London in International Business and aside from film production, has experience in sectors as diverse as agriculture, real‐estate, energy and fine art. He is fluent in German and speaks conversational Spanish.