Mo Masterson, Magee McIlvaine, and Chris Moore co-founded Sol Productions in the spring of 2006. The three first met in the fall of 2002 while studying at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and they began producing documentary shorts together that year with the historian Luis Figueroa, a member of the Trinity faculty. In those earliest days, the three young students produced exposés on important and not-uncontroversial topics such as foreign language education, binge drinking, and the impact of Wal-Mart on small-town America. Since then, the trio have joined to produce three feature-length documentary films on elections in Venezuela, Senegal, and France.
Mo Masterson grew up outside of Boston. In high school Mo was selected to travel to the outskirts of Russia to interview and film survivors of Stalin’s dictatorship. It was during this trip Mo realized the power of film for story telling, preserving history and as an aid for inter-cultural dialogue. After this inaugural trip and subsequent return journey to Siberia and Northern Russia Mo’s passion for story-telling and film making developed with documentaries and creative films she produced during her time at college in the USA and abroad. In 2006, Mo co-founded Sol Productions, and, together with her two other film partners, has filmed presidential elections in Venezuela and France. Currently Mo lives in Boston and is developing a film and web series on human goodness.
Contact: mo@sol-productions.org
Magee McIlvaine was born in Canada and grew up between East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia) and Washington, D.C. Attending high school in D.C., Magee won a grant to film his first political documentary on the tiny kingdom of Swaziland, in Southern Africa. Successfully interviewing not only the head of the opposition parties in this small but politically fragile country but also the King himself--later voted by multiple publications as one of the top 20 worst dictators in the world--who has become increasingly more controversial. This film was Magee's first and it set him on a path of political and cultural exploration throughout the world with film as his medium. Since then, Magee has increasingly focused his work on international politics and the use of music, particularly hip hop music, as a political tool. In college he produced a documentary entitled Getting A Bad Rap: Conversations about hip hop from NYC to CTNyama: the Modern Manifestation of Griot Culture and Tradition in the US Through Hip Hop, a film exploring the links of west-African griot culture to modern American hip hop as we know it. In 2006, Magee co-founded Sol Productions, and, together with his two other film partners, has filmed presidential elections in Venezuela, Senegal, and France. He also co-founded, together with Nomadic Wax and Trinity College, the first ever international hip hop festival and conference of its size in the United States.
Contact: magee@sol-productions.org
Chris
Moore is originally from Holderness, New Hampshire. After spending a
semester in rural Argentina during high school, he went on to Trinity
College (CT). Graduating Phi Beta Kappa in Latin American
Studies and with a minor in film, Chris received the Trustee Award for Student Excellence, the highest honor bestowed upon any Trinity graduate. Among other academic honors, he received a Gold/Katz Human
Rights Fellowship to produce a documentary short on Venezuela in the summer of 2005. Chris has
also worked as a cameraman and assistant producer for The Wild World of
Summer, a New England cable TV sports program. He currently lives in
Washington, DC, and works at the Inter-American
Dialogue, a think tank devoted to the study of inter-American relations.
Contact: chris@sol-productions.org
