We are celebrating 15 years — and counting — of stories that are deeply researched and deeply felt, that build a historical record of what the city has been.
Gretchen Hildebran is a documentary filmmaker who has often focused on the connections between policy and human experience. Her love of documentary was inspired by a 2002 collaboration with homeless and low-income people to create No On Prop N, a TV ad campaign that opposed cutting general assistance benefits in San Francisco. Since then, Gretchen co-produced the internationally screened WORTH SAVING (2004), which was presented in HBO’s Frame by Frame documentary showcase. OUT IN THE HEARTLAND (2005) tells the stories of gay parents in Kentucky facing a constitutional amendment banning marriage. Since graduating from Stanford University’s documentary program in 2006, Gretchen has worked in Los Angeles and New York as a cinematographer and editor for TV and independent documentary productions. Gretchen shot RamonaDiaz’s THE LEARNING (2011), and contributed camerawork to Joan Braderman’s THE HERETICS (2009) and Socheata Poeuv’s NEW YEARS BABY (2008). Still getting her bearings since moving to New York in 2006, Gretchen is currently shooting and co-producing DECADE OF FIRE, which examines the legacy of the fires that destroyed the Bronx throughout the 1970s.