Cultiva! is a youth farming program in Boulder, Colorado. It offers teens a summer job growing organic vegetables, selling them at the Boulder farmer's market, and donating vegetables to community organizations like the Boulder Homeless Shelter. Ontos Media made this profile for their tenth anniversary celebration.

This is a documentary made of the 2008 Wilderness Filmmaking Expedition, a trip put together by the Handmade Film Institute under the leadership of Ontos Media's director Robert Schaller. The trip took all the equipment necessary to shoot, process, print, edit, and project 16mm film into the wilderness of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, carrying it all on the participant's backs.

The online clip is a three minute preview.

Made with the participation of the Colorado Haiti Project, the community of Petit Trou DeNippes, and St. Paul's Mission, HaitiOur journey to Haiti began in the spring of 2000. I had been offered a position working for a company based in South Florida, and Robert and I decided to pack up our lives in Boulder and relocate to an entirely unknown place just months before our wedding. We found our dream house on the Internet, of all places - a modest bungalow built the year my grandparents were married and tucked away on half an acre of tropical paradise. An enormous mango tree dominated the yard, and the abundant tropical garden and a climate that was positively magical to two people coming from a dry (and cold!) place like Colorado completely won our hearts. We bought this house - the only one we ever looked at, and on the strength of a single showing - and set in motion a chain of events that would change our lives forever. Now I mention the house, because that's where we were first introduced to the people and culture of Haiti. Though I had been back and forth several times, I had never heard that the city in which we were to live was home to the largest Haitian American population in the US...

Winner, Best First Person Documentary, IDC 2007This film was created as part of the International Documentary Challenge in March, 2007. All the competitors had five days to make a film, starting with being told what the subject and theme had to be at 8 AM the first morning. It was an onslaught! Our film won the"Best First Person" category. It was made under the name "Team Yumiao," after our collaborator (the first person voice), Yu Miao.The film was shot, edited, and finshed in 720p24 HD.

Mothers Acting Up is a Boulder, Colorado-based activist group which, as their website says,"is dedicated to mobilizing the gigantic political strength of mothers to ensure the health, education and safety of every child, not just a privileged few. We realize that we live in a world that does not prioritize or protect our children's well-being and that this will not change without each of us finding the courage and commitment to speak out on their behalf."Ontos Media created a 9 minute piece for them to use in promoting themselves and their cause (Standard Definition, 4:3 aspect ratio, 2006).