CHRISTIAN D. BRUUN
Director | Producer | Director of Photography

Christian D. Bruun is a director and producer of film and television. Christian is developing narrative feature Candy about transgender Andy Warhol muse Candy Darling, documentary feature Time, No Changes about Miles Davis' Second Quintet, narrative feature Closer to the Sun about African-American painter William H. Johnson, television series The Freedom Ring on the life of Henry Ward Beecher based on Debby Applegate's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, and documentary It's About Marian Goodman on contemporary art gallerist Marian Goodman. He has recently directed and released documentary feature Calendar Girl about New York Fashion Calendar publisher Ruth Finley and podcast Monuments Woman about U.S. State Department archaeologist Laura Tedesco and her work to preserve Afghanistan's cultural heritage. And he produced the narrative feature Son of the South about American civil rights activist Bob Zellner (Spike Lee, Barry Alexander Brown, Brian Dennehy, Lucas Till, Lucy Hale). His recent projects include The Burning Child and award-winning films Please Hold the Line, Secondo Me, and winner of British National Film & TV Awards, The Road Movie. Christian produced The Man Who Saved the World, Best Documentary Film winner by both the Danish Film Academy Awards and the Danish Film Critics Awards, and directed, produced, wrote, and shot Blue Gold: American Jeans, acquired by Netflix.

NATALIE NUDELL
Producer | Writer

Natalie Nudell is the Producer and Writer of the documentary "Calendar Girl," (2020) now on the festival circuit. She is a fashion and textile historian specializing in the Fashion Calendar and the post-war American fashion industry. Nudell is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the History of Art Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, where she teaches about the history of fashion and textiles. She is a co-Principal Investigator, in collaboration with Special Collections and College Archives at the Library at FIT, on the digital humanities project "The Ruth Finley Collection: Digitizing 70 Years of the Fashion Calendar," which is supported by a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Nudell's scholarly and popular articles have been published in The Hidden History of American Fashion (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2018) and The Ephemera Journal (2020), among others. She is an Associate Editor of the Fashion Studies Journal, and a founding member of the Fashion Studies Alliance. Nudell holds a BAHons in History from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada and an MA in Visual Culture and Costume Studies from New York University. She is based in New York City.

KATE DELPIZZO
Executive Producer

Kate DelPizzo is a physician who lives and works in New York City. As the Director of Pediatric Anesthesia at Hospital for Special Surgery, Kate does not normally make movies, but her connections to Ruth Finley helped create “Team Ruth” which led to Calendar Girl.

In 2013, over Thanksgiving dinner, Tracy Jenkins Yoshimura sat next to Kate’s mother, Martha DelPizzo. As Tracy described the exhibition that her NYU graduate students were coordinating, she mentioned Natalie Nudell’s object, Fashion Calendar, and that the same woman had been running it for seven decades. Martha immediately recognized Ruth Finley as “Aunt Ruth,” the aunt of Martha’s best friend Steffi Graham in Baltimore, Maryland. Steffi spent her summers in college with Aunt Ruth in the office of the Fashion Calendar. Martha knew all about this New York powerhouse in fashion, a woman ahead of her time. 

Kate then met Ruth in February 2014, where Ruth was a panelist at the NYU symposium held in concert with the exhibition. She could not believe that Ruth was not more widely known outside the fashion world, and was inspired to change that. Kate and Tracy proposed the idea of a movie to Christian, who immediately fell in love with the prospect of telling Ruth’s story; they then enlisted Natalie for her deep knowledge of the Calendar. Kate set off to convince Ruth to do the film, which took some explaining and persistence in the form of weekly phone calls and occasional coffees, where they bonded over childrearing and their shared neighborhood. Finally, right before Fashion Week in 2014 and the final Calendar under Ruth, they started filming!  

REIKA ALEXANDER
Executive Producer

Reika Alexander is the founder and restaurateur of EN Japanese Brasserie in NYC and the hospitality group Workin Inc. Going into the restaurant business was not always in Alexander’s plans as her interest was in music which she began at age 5 with playing the piano and continued to develop her musical talent through her college years, attending Tokyo College of Music to study music composition, and later Middlesex University in London to study jazz. Looking for a steadier career, she joined her brother, Bunkei, a renowned restaurateur in Japan, to learn the restaurant trade. With the encouragement from Bunkei, Alexander initially came to NY in 2000 to help Bunkei scout a location for a potential new venture which ultimately transformed into Alexander’s own rendition of EN Japanese Brasserie. At the time when Alexander arrived in New York she found that Japanese cuisine was greatly misinterpreted. With EN Japanese Brasserie, she saw the opportunity to create an authentic Japanese izakaya, serving small plates of rustic dishes resembling what the Japanese regularly eat at home including the restaurant’s signature house-made tofu to dishes such as seasonal rice pots. She knew she could provide diners with a new experience, exposing them to a variety of unexplored flavors and textures. Together with the move to New York where she was inspired by the dynamic energy and cultural diversity it exuded and opening EN Japanese Brasserie, Alexander recognized the joy of bringing people together and creating an experience through great cuisine in a compelling environment.

KIKKA HANAZAWA
Executive Producer

Kikka Hanazawa is a fashion investor, non-profit founder, and executive producer for upcoming documentary film Calendar Girl about Fashion Calendar founder Ruth Finley. Her investment includes VPL, a sustainable fashion brand, and she is founder of Fashion Girls for Humanity, an award-winning nonprofit. Ms. Hanazawa became the first Japanese woman to be selected as a Forbes 48 Heroes of Philanthropy. She has made, and continues to make, a global social impact through these business and nonprofit ventures, and she has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, The New York Times, Vogue, BBC, and Reuters. She is a regular speaker at conferences and panels, including Google, Yale Center for Business and the Environment, Harvard Business School, and New York City Economic Department Corporation (NYCEDC)'s fashion incubator program. She served on The Council of Fashion Designers of America's finance committee. She currently serves on the Board of Visitors at Columbia University’s School of General Studies and advises various fashion sustainability initiatives. Born in Tokyo, Ms. Hanazawa received a Bachelor of Arts in art history from Columbia University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

RAPHAEL AVIGDOR
Executive Producer

Raphael Avigdor is a photographer. His work has been exhibited at the Lawrence Gallery in East Hampton, N.Y., Private Exhibitions, The Spectrum Miami Art show, Art Market + Design in Bridgehampton, N.Y., The SEAFAIR MEGAYACHT Art show and at Art Boca Raton. Recently Raphael was featured in a Family group show alongside his mother and sister at the CASTLE FITZJOHNS gallery on Manhattan's Lower Eastside, who currently represents his work. In addition to still photography, Raphael has directed and shot two full feature films and has acted as an executive producer and producer of various other full feature documentaries notably BLUE GOLD, a history of the blue jean, and most recently THE MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD, a film that recently won a Danish academy award. Another Recent film named THE ROAD MOVIE just won the red carpet title of best documentary at the National Film & Television awards in Los Angeles. Raphael pursues careers in writing, music and speaks 6 languages fluently. Raphael is a Samba Drummer often performing with BOOM samba school. Raphael resides in Southampton, New York.

TRACY JENKINS YOSHIMURA
Executive Producer

Tracy Jenkins Yoshimura is a fashion historian whose interests include the history of retail, the fashion system, and exhibition making. She was Associate Collections Manager at The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she led the assessment team in researching permanent collection objects and assisted with the care and storage of the collection. She is a former Adjunct Professor at New York University where she taught Fashion Curation: Exhibition Praxis in the Costume Studies graduate program. She holds an MA in fashion and textile studies: history, theory, museum practice from the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she co-curated the exhibition Youthquake! The 1960s Fashion Revolution. Her thesis traces the history and innovations of New York City's Charivari boutiques.

ANGELA SUN
Executive Producer

Angela Sun is Senior Advisor to the CEO at Gro Intelligence, and serves on the Board of Directors of The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), Maxim Crane Works, and Apollo Strategic Growth Capital II (NYSE: APGB). Angela was recently Chief Operating Officer and Partner at Alpha Edison, a venture capital firm. She spent ten years at Bloomberg, L.P. as Global Head of Strategy and Corporate Development, where she created a platform for evaluating emerging technologies and led M&A and commercial partnerships across the company’s media, financial products, enterprise and data businesses. She was also the architect and creator of the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index. As Chief-of-Staff to Bloomberg's CEO, she managed the company's largest transformation effort, corporate-wide strategic planning, new business development, and spearheaded growth efforts in emerging markets and Asia. Previously, Angela served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Bloomberg Administration, and held positions at McKinsey & Company, J.P. Morgan, and The Henry L. Stimson Center.  Angela graduated from Harvard College and holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She is a Trustee of the Museum of Arts and Design and Second Stage Theatre. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights Advisory Council, and was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.

TERESA LAI
Associate Producer

Teresa's recent projects are documentary feature Calendar Girl about New York Fashion Calendar publisher Ruth Finley, and podcast Monuments Woman about U.S. State Department archaeologist Laura Tedesco and her work to preserve Afghanistan's cultural heritage. Teresa is producing It’s About Marian Goodman, a documentary about New York contemporary art gallerist Marian Goodman.

MARK ROMEO
Associate Producer 

Mark is a producer and executive producer who leverages 20+ years as a marketing executive in consumer products and technology to provide marketing, finance and distribution solutions to foster the creative process in film. He is the founding CMO of Fresh Direct (2020 Sales $1.4 Billion) and Co-founder of the Brand Experience Lab which incubated and sold Guitar Hero to Viacom and Jestertek to Sony Playstation. He spent over a decade at Nabisco and Pepsi, leading entertainment and sponsorship. Mark produced and Executive Produced Christian Bruun’s film “Blue Gold: American Jeans and is thrilled to work with Christian again on “Calendar Girl”. Mark is a board member of Illuminating Humanity, a non-profit 501C corporation dedicated to the use of digital media, artificial intelligence along with strategic alliances to inform, educate and enlighten at risk populations nationally.

MARY E. MYERS HACKLEY
Associate Producer

A Louisiana native with a B.A. in History, a minor in Theatre and post graduate studies including flight school, photography, and a fashion course that included a field trip to NYC. After several years as an award-winning freelance photographer and writer, Mary moved to NYC on Sept. 1, 2001. There she remained an UES resident for the next 15 years. Mary embarked upon a career working for Ruth Finley at Fashion Calendar and Fashion International after responding to a classified ad in The New York Times for a job opening at a small fashion publication with the requirement, “must like cats”. She was thrilled to have found a job within walking distance and a loveable mentor/boss from whom she gained a tremendous amount of knowledge and fashion industry experience along with a friendship. The work included learning every aspect of the business, editing the calendar, and covering events for fashion international, etc. After the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) acquired Fashion Calendar in 2014, Mary consulted in the transition and worked in their finance department. 

She continued to visit Ruth up until she moved back to Louisiana, where she is happy to be near family, though she misses her NYC friends and career. She is a former member of the NYJL and served on the Board of Advisors to the High School of Fashion Industries. Currently she works as a Law Journal Coordinator for Louisiana Law Review and the LSU Journal of Energy Law and Resources and manages to have a creative outlet through writing, painting and music.

ROSIE NAKAMURA
Editor

Rosie is an Emmy-winning editor and producer, and is Senior Editor at hsc.tv, a full-service production company in New York. With 18 years of post-production industry experience, she has edited network television projects, feature and short films, web series, music videos and promos. Past clients include ABC, NBC, CBS, HISTORY, ESPN, Lifetime, Sony, and Coca-Cola. She is a graduate of the Denison University film program. In 2018 she won the Best Editing Award from the Worldwide Women’s Film Festival for the short film, “Lovers”. An accomplished filmmaker herself, her first feature documentary film, The Trick to Escape a Straitjacket, has screened in festivals around the country.

DERON JOHNSON
Composer

Deron Johnson is an award winning pianist and composer whose work includes scoring films and Trailers for TWC, Blumhouse, HBO, and Entertainment Tonight. His professional career began as a touring keyboardist with Miles Davis, Stanley Clarke, David Sanborn, Seal, Carly Simon, and Alanis Morissette to name a few. Soon after transitioning into the visual media as a composer for movie trailers (Tulip Fever, Wind River, Woman In Gold, Southpaw, No Escape, and Silver Linings Playbook), he branched out into film and TV. His recent credits include scoring Midnight Kiss for Blumhouse (Into The Dark Series), Hellraiser Judgment, and adding additional score to Tulip Fever, and August Osage County. As a songwriter, Deron has written and produced songs for films such as Big Eyes, Hoodwinked Too, Escape from Planet Earth, and Woman In Gold. Deron is based in Los Angeles CA.

STEVEN RAY
Executive Music Supervisor

Steven B. Ray is a music, film, and television producer. His current films include Son of the South about longtime civil rights activist Bob Zellner, and Little Rootie Tootie and Cannon Street All-Stars (directed by Reggie Bythewood and produced by Gina Prince-Bythewood). In the 80s, Ray was Director of Artists and Repertoire at Capitol Records, and the first person of color to run its New York office. He oversaw domestic and international recordings for Freddie Jackson, re-mixes for Duran Duran and The Pet Shop Boys, and the signing of Bebe & Cece Winans and MC Hammer, a move that led to over 50 million units sold. In the 90s, Ray held executive positions at Urban Music Worldwide and Windswept Pacific Publishing, where he signed Manuel Seal, Quincy Jones III, and HitCo Music. He provided music supervision on Havana and Forrest Gump, and he earned a Spirit Award nomination for best film music for Hangin' with the Homeboys. Ray went on to become President at Arizen Records of Warner Brothers Group. Steve is a Los Angeles native.