SARAH RACHAEL WAINIO

Production Coordinator

She's beautiful, artistic, loved, and can't stand to be alive. 32 PILLS is a feature length documentary that traces director Hope Litoff's efforts to piece together the life, mental illness, and suicide of her sister, New York artist and photographer Ruth Litoff.

Associate Producer Post Production

After she fights the tide of violence against trans women, activist Victoria Cruz probes the suspicious death of her friend Marsha P. Johnson.

Social Media Manager

When housing on the lowest rung of the American Dream is being devoured by the wealthiest of the wealthy, whose dream are we serving?

Associate Producer
$25,000 raised

Through personal stories, BUSY INSIDE delves deeply into Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) - formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. This condition fascinates and puzzles modern psychiatry. Karen Marshall is a respected therapist who treats patients with DID - the condition of having multiple personalities often resulting from child abuse. Among her patients is Marshay, a biracial musician, who sometimes struggles to believe that she really has DID. Marshay works with Karen to overcome her painful childhood memories, embrace her multiple personalities, and find peace. But, Karen is still haunted by her own past, juggling seventeen of her own alter egos.

BUSY INSIDE works to return dignity to those with DID and bring better understanding of it by creating an honest film about people who live with it every day and giving audiences a direct window into their inner world.

Camera Assistant

Rachel Dolezal, family, and critics reckon with the aftermath of a national debate sparked by questions about racial identity after she becomes a social phenomenon while passing as African American and becoming the head of her local N.A.A.C.P. chapter.

Associate Producer, 2017

ONE OCTOBER is a lyrical time capsule that offers a window into the shifting heart of New York City. Filmed entirely in October of 2008, a time when gentrification is rapidly displacing the working and middle classes, Wall Street is plummeting, and Senator Obama is making his first presidential bid, the story begins with Clay Pigeon, an intrepid radio host who takes to the streets of New York City to talk to everyday citizens who are facing the uncertainty of change.

As part of what he calls a “radio experiment,” this transplanted Iowan roams the streets bearing a handheld recorder and a kindly probing nature: “Has he popped the question?” “When is the last time you’ve had a regular roof over your head?” “Do you love America?”

During his neighborhood rambles, Clay Pigeon meets people like Kristin, an optimistic young woman who has just arrived from the Midwest; Mark, a union construction worker still dusty from his workday and deeply in debt; Nicole, a transgender woman looking for an accepting community; and Stacy, a single mother in Harlem worried about gentrification.

Pigeon’s encounters interweave with observational passages that poignantly reveal urbanist Jane Jacobs’s idea of the “ballet of the good city sidewalk”: roller-skaters wind their way through Central Park, city dwellers seek blessings for a motley group of pets on St. Francis Day, observant Jews toss breadcrumbs into the Hudson River on Rosh Hashanah, and Muslims mark the end of their Ramadan fast with Eid al-Fitr prayers and expressions of forgiveness. Amid these celebrations of daily life we see the shifting landscape of the city: big-box stores and mega-chains rapidly replace independent businesses, giant glass buildings are erected where flea markets once stood, and luxury condos loom over small brick tenements.

Nuanced, cinematic, and often humorous, ONE OCTOBER charts the chasm between one’s desires and one’s means, explores the urgent need to conserve the old amid the glorification of the new, and affirms the notion that a varied streetscape is essential to the health of a dynamic metropolis. Seen from our current vantage point, the film is also a remarkable time capsule that presages the roiling political upheaval spreading across the country today.

Kickstarter Manager
$62,000 raised

In 2017, confrontational multi-media artist Lydia Lunch and filmmaker Beth B joined forces to create LYDIA LUNCH The War Is Never Over the first career-spanning documentary retrospective of Lunch’s confrontational, acerbic and always electric artistry. In this moment where the desire for powerfully independent and challenging female figures are in the spotlight, this is the ideal time to be acquainted with Lunch, the psycho-sexual transgressive who forged a vocabulary of rare emotional honesty, philosophy and humor.

Co-Producer
$19,000 raised

Following the lives of four women drummers, TOMBOY brings fresh vision, unheralded style, and emotional impact to the usual tropes of the music documentary genre. Told in cinematic, parallel narratives, this character-driven film explores how women make their way through a male-dominated industry, the pivotal crossroads they face, and the big conversations taking place about art, career, and family across generations.

Featuring unseen archival footage, intimate portraiture, moving interviews, and some serious drumming skills, TOMBOY takes us on the bold, multi-layered journey of four women that converges in a unique celebration of the female experience that hits hard and hits home.