Filmmakers
Baptizing Feminism is an independent documentary being produced by Big Voice Pictures, a production and distribution company focusing on meaningful films that transform, enlighten, and engage audiences worldwide. The team at Big Voice Pictures produce quality productions that have been endorsed by leaders such as Dr. Maya Angelou, screened in leading film festivals, broadcast on PBS stations, and distributed across the globe. Their team is also passionate about creating strategic audience engagement and outreach campaigns for raising awareness and motivating community dialog and social change regarding controversial and social issues. Their previous films have been screened with panel discussion in hundreds of communities, universities, political venues and organizations worldwide.
Executive Producer/Producer/Filmmaker
Kathy Barbini
Kathy Barbini, founder of Big Voice Pictures, and producer/director, is an independent documentary and award-winning television producer. She also creates and manages audience engagement and outreach campaigns for her films. Her independent documentaries have been funded by leading foundations including The Eastman Kodak Foundation, The Global Ministries Foundation, and the Pioneer Fund, and distributed internationally. She is producer/director of Big Voice Pictures’ recent film, Boys and Men Healing produced in association with The International Documentary Association. The film was broadcast on PBS stations nationwide, screened at the U.S. Department of Justice, in leading child abuse prevention and family violence conferences and in hundreds of communities and universities worldwide with panel discussions, including three screenings at Penn State University during the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. The film is currently being utilized for education, training and prevention by thousands of organizations internationally in the United States, Canada, England, Cambodia, Israel, Spain, Argentina, and other countries, and was a key tool in helping start an awareness raising movement internationally about the problem of male childhood sexual abuse.
Her first independent documentary, The Healing Years, endorsed by Maya Angelou and leaders in the field, became an acclaimed film in the field of women’s issues and child abuse prevention. The film, utilized for training and education in thousands of organizations internationally, was broadcast on PBS stations nationwide and screened in international film festivals and leading conferences internationally. Lifetime Television and The Times Square Project, a public awareness initiative emphasizing the importance of joining together to stop violence against women, awarded her with recognition for helping end violence against women. Recipients of past salutes include writer and feminist organizer Gloria Steinem, and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her earlier career includes: producing a daily, ACE-award winning educational documentary series for Discovery
Channel and an ACE-Award nominated year-end special
for MTV Networks. She also produced media for political
media consultants, and was an associate producer on a
prime-time Presidential election-eve special broadcast
on ABC, NBC and CBS. Additionally, she served as Project
Director for HBO’s national benefit screening tour of an Emmy Award-winning documentary. She has worked on leading magazine programs for ABC and NBC News, including The Sunday Today Show and Nightline.
Co-Producer, Marketing, Distribution and Outreach Director
Simon Weinberg
Simon Weinberg, co-owner of Big Voice Pictures, is an expert marketer, distributor, and outreach strategist for social issue documentaries and independent features. He is also Co-producer for Boys and Men Healing. Additionally, he is a key note and motivational speaker at leading conferences and for the military.
Simon creates and manages release strategies for Big Voice Pictures’ projects including: theatrical and online distribution, exhibition, ancillary, educational distribution, film festivals, word of mouth promotion, television broadcasts publicity, media buying, and grassroots and national outreach strategies. He’s currently assisting in the distribution of a theatrical release of a motion picture film about the Holocaust featuring Ben Kingsley. He also distributes Big Voice Pictures’ films to organizations, libraries, universities, counseling centers, correctional facilities, military bases and churches world wide.
Additionally, he creates dynamic educational outreach campaigns for Big Voice Pictures’ films, organizing hundreds of community screenings and panel discussion at universities and leading conferences internationally, and forging collaborative partnerships with social issue organizations, law makers and influencers to initiate positive and lasting social change on important issues.
Big Voice Pictures’ films and events have been featured in hundreds of articles, blogs, and film reviews, and have been covered on numerous local television and radio programs throughout the nation. Simon has appeared on many television and radio programs, and has developed key relationships with reporters and producers throughout national media.
His early career included marketing, media relations and fundraising for leading environmental organizations. This included creating environmental awareness campaigns through radio, television, events and print, and working collaboratively with leading national organizations to raise thousands of dollars for environmental causes.
Editor
Kenji Yamamoto
Kenji Yamamoto is an independent filmmaker and editor whose work has won many awards and has screened worldwide. Kenji edited the documentary Radical Grace, directed by Rebecca Parrish, which won an Audience Favorite Award at the Hot Docs Film Festival, where it premiered, and also won Best of Fest at the AFI Film Festival. Additionally, Kenji edited New Muslim Cool, directed by Jennifer Maytorena Taylor. After being accepted into the prestigious Sundance Documentary Edit and Story Lab, Cool premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival, won the Freedom Award at the Al Jazeera International Film Festival, and aired nationally on the PBS POV series. Kenji also edited the documentary States of Grace, directed by Helen Cohen and Mark Lipman, which received audience favorite awards at the Mill Valley Film Festival, Napa Valley Film Festival, and Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals.
As part of Kelly+Yamamoto Productions, he produced and edited the acclaimed California Humanities–funded documentary Rebels with a Cause, which explored how the Northern California coast was saved from development. Rebels screened in many film festivals, won an Audience Favorite Award at the Mill Valley Film Festival, received theatrical distribution in seventeen states (including a remarkable eleven-week run at the Rafael Film Center in California), had extensive screenings in community settings, and aired on public television stations nationwide. The initial broadcasts of Rebels were so well received that American Public Television plans to extend the broadcast license beyond 2017. Yamamoto also produced and edited a documentary trilogy about the transformative power of art: Downside UP, which aired on the PBS Independent Lens series and internationally on the on the ITVS series True Stories: Life in the USA; Smitten, which won many film festival awards and aired as a PBS Primetime special; and Trust: Second Acts in Young Lives, which won several film festival awards and aired on the PBS World America ReFramed series. He also produced and edited the critically acclaimed narrative feature Thousand Pieces of Gold, the story of a young Chinese woman who comes to America during the gold rush as a slave, which was developed through the Sundance Institute, was released theatrically in the United States, aired on the PBS American Playhouse series, and was broadcast worldwide.