JACKIE RIVET-RIVER
is an EMMY Award winning filmmaker and the founder of Peace Productions, Inc., began her film career in Chicago at the Fred A. Niles Communications Center (then Harpo Productions) and was the first female in the Midwest Chapter of the Director's Guild of America.
Among the projects she has written, produced and directed are: "Where Is Dead?" for Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Films which won a Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival and 12 additional awards nationally; Planned Parenthood's 50th Anniversary, dozens of half-hour specials for NBC and ABC television that included issues such as latchkey children, battered women, programs for persons with AIDS, civil rights for gays and lesbians, protesting the School of the Americas, and children of war; an ABC-TV Network special for the National Council of Churches, "Someone is Listening: Teens from Crisis to Caring" with host Walter Payton; an anti-nuclear film, "If The World Goes Away Where Will the Children Play?" narrated by James Earl Jones with music by Pete Seeger and an original score by Martin Rubenstein played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and "Peace Like A River", aired on PBS-TV, featuring His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Ecologian Wendell Barry and others, hosted by Ellen Burstyn, "In A Time Of Siege: Voices in the Wilderness Defying War and Sanctions in Iraq" with activist Kathy Kelly and hosted by Studs Terkel.
JOHN LYONS
is an EMMY Award winning documentary filmmaker. A graduate of Chicago's Columbia College, he has produced, directed, shot and edited films in various areas of the humanities, often taking him around the country and the world. The first film he co-produced and co-directed, "Too Flawed to Fix: The Illinois Death Penalty Experience", completed in 2003, was widely acclaimed and the recipient of several awards. He is also an accomplished photographer.
In addition to his professional work, he also has a long history of advocacy for human rights. For several years, John served as the Illinois State Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator for Amnesty International, often speaking around the state and country on death penalty and human rights issues. He also served on Amnesty's National Steering Committee and the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Board of Directors. He has taught documentary at Columbia College Chicago as well as film and video in the Chicago Public School system and was a filmmaker-in-residence at Snow City Arts Foundation, an arts education organization dedicated to working with hospitalized children. He currently works with Marwen, a Chicago arts education organization, as the coordinator of technology. He lives in Chicago with his wife Jessica and daughters Catie and Annie.
In addition Jackie and John have produced "Too Flawed To Fix: The Illinois Death Penalty Experience", "War On The Family: Mothers in Prison and the Children They Leave Behind", "Compelled to Action: The History of Citizens Alert", which includes "To Turn a Blind Eye", "Faith and the Power of Persistence", "Racism on the Rise" and "The First Amendment Under Surveillance".
Peace Productions, Inc. is committed to hiring women and minorities, an ideal that remains a priority.