Crew Bios :ochocandelas.com:

BIOS: THE CREATIVE TEAM

Sandro Halphen - Directory, Producer, Writer
Ishai Setton - Producer
Nick Woythaler - Producer
Patrick McGinley - Director of Photography
Judith Helfand - Advisor

Sandro Halphen
Director, Producer, Writer

Sandro is currently preparing a number of films for production in Mexico.

Sandro graduated as an honor scholar from New York University’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts Undergraduate Film/Television Program. After arriving to the United States from Mexico in 1996, Sandro co-founded the production company, CTW 2000, where he has acted as Co-Chairman since 1999.

Projects with CTW 2000 include the stage reading of Dinner Party (co-director), starring Brian Dennehy and the upcoming feature film, Memory of a Summer (associate producer), with 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks and starring Claudia Cardinale.

A recipient of the NYU President’s Service Award for Community Service, Sandro has also written and directed the short films Diagram of a Couch Potato, Uncut, and Anhedonism.

During his Mexico years, Sandro was part of the Mexico City’s award winning Columbia Theatre Group.

Ocho Candelas is Sandro’s first documentary.

Ishai Setton
Producer

Ishai is currently directing his first feature film, The Big Bad Swim, in Connecticut.

Ishai studied filmmaking at Tisch School of the Arts. He juggled school with work, teaching for the New York Film Academy filmmaking workshops at Princeton University for three years. He later became program coordinator for the Princeton and UCLA summer filmmaking programs.

Ishai has worked at Gotham Pictures, an industrial and commercial production house, as well as, Decoy Films, during the production of their union film, Untitled Catskills.

Ishai has produced several short films, including Clutching the Black Hand, Refrigerator, and Help Wanted, which has screened at both the Director’s View Film Festival and the NYU Color Sync Showcase.

Phyllis, a documentary about a haunted library in New Jersey, was his first endeavor as a documentary producer.

He is the director and producer of the documentary Dinerama 2000, a documentary about the three-day festival of all-things diners in Providence, RI.

Nick Woythaler
Producer

Originally from Baldwin, New York, Nick attented NYU's film school where he connected with the team behind Ocho Candelas. After production of Ocho Candelas, Nick directed his first feature film Anatomy of a Fight. He continues to work in New York in post-production for film and television.

Patrick McGinley
Director of Photography

Patrick is currently working as a filmmaker in Germany.

Born in Brussels and raised in Munich, Patrick came to America after receiving his European Baccalaureate and completing his national service.

He attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating as a University Honors’ Scholar.

As a Director of Photography, Patrick recently finished shooting Matthias Creavieaux’s documentary Bon Voyage, about French-American cultural relations. Prior to that, Patrick worked as a cinematographer for several shorts in the New York City area, including Easy Money, Das Laundry Room, Fun, and Sinner.

Judith Helfand
Advisor

Judith, an independent film and video maker based in New York, co-produced and co-directed the award-winning documentary, The Uprising of 34’, with George Stoney. The film draws on the hidden history of the General Textile Strike of 1934, exploring labor, power, and economics in the South today. The program was broadcast nationally on the PBS series P.O.V. in June of 1995.

She worked as an Associate Producer on two other PBS documentaries: Broken Minds, which was a Frontline episode directed by DeWitt Sage on the treatment and mistreatment of schizophrenia and the homeless mentally ill; and Through the Wire, Nina Rosenblum's film about an experimental maximum security unit for women political prisoners in the U.S., which was aired on P.O.V. She is a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Undergraduate Film and Television Program.

Prior to focusing on documentaries, Helfand worked for three years at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research as a production associate on the archival photo video-disk People of a Thousand Towns: A Visual Encyclopedia of Jewish Eastern Europe 1865-1939.

She has run video and media literacy workshops with textile workers, community organizers and middle school teachers in the South, and designed a video production program for homeless mentally ill adults who are members of the Project Reachout community in New York City.

Judith is currently working on Blue Vinyl, a documentary focusing on the health hazards caused by the production of vinyl. She joined the producing team of Ocho Candelas in January 2001.