About the team
Cody Lucich (Director) is an award-winning director, cinematographer, and editor who has worked with Sundance, Nike, Toyota, HBO, Vice, Disney and PETA. He also works extensively in community-based media, which anchors him in culture and a more deeply-rooted relationship to the notion of ‚ÄòNative media.’ Lucich is from the Maidu Tribe in Northern California and describes himself as a “conscious filmmaker.” His film Akicita is the only Native-made film about the Standing Rock uprising. Lucich spent eight months at camp documenting the movement and became a vital part of the innermost frontline architects. His voice as a filmmaker has been said to have influenced the movement, as much as the movement influenced him and his storytelling. His narrative endeavors include developing episodic content including the drama, Savs, about Northern California reservation life, and narratives focusing on Native content.
Gingger Shankar (Producer) is a producer, composer, and the only female in the world that has mastered the Double Violin. Her accomplishments include working with The Smashing Pumpkins, Katy Perry, Trent Reznor, Mike Nichols, Meryl Streep and more. In 2011 she was chosen as one of Filmmaker Magazine’s ‚Äò25 New Faces to Watch’, and became a member of the Artist Advisory Board for the Sundance Film Festival. She scored Sundance Award-Winner Circumstance and co-composed Mel Gibson’s blockbuster Passion of the Christ. Recent projects include Heartbeats with Jay-Z/Roc Nation, and First Lady Michelle Obama’s We Will Rise, the highest rated film ever to air on CNN. She debuted Nari at TIFF and Sundance, as well as presenting it at TEDx. It’s the untold story of Lakshmi and Viji Shankar (her mother and grandmother) as they brought Indian music to the West with Ravi Shankar and George Harrison.
Heather Rae (Producer) has produced such films as Academy Award nominated Frozen River, Netflix Originals Tallulah and Dude, festival darling, I Believe in Unicorns and the award-winning The Dry Land. Rae directed and produced feature documentary Trudell about late Native American activist John Trudell, which played more than 100 festivals worldwide including Sundance and Berlin, and First Circle, a Showtime Premiere documentary about the foster care system in the American West. As a speaker and social critic Rae is working with both her settler and indigenous heritage to deepen the dialogue of reconciliation and responsibility in the Americas.