Team
Michael Wolfe, Co-Founder, Executive Producer
Alex Kronemer, Co-Founder, Executive Producer
Rob Gardner, Co-Producer and Director, Islamic Spain Film
Andrea Kalin, Co-Director, Prince Among Slaves
Bill Duke, Co-Director, Prince Among Slaves
MICHAEL WOLFE is the Co-Executive Producer of Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain, and Prince Among Slaves, as well as a trio of documentaries on individual Muslims in modern-day American, and the recent Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, based on a six-year Gallup poll of the Muslim world.
In 1997, Wolfe wrote and narrated a special televised Hajj report from Mecca for ABC Nightline. The program was nominated for Peabody, George Polk, Overseas Press Club, and Emmy awards; it received the Muslim Public Affairs Council's Media Award for that year. In 2003, he contributed to a Hajj Special broadcast by CNN-International.
The author of books of poetry, fiction, history, and travel, he has published three books about Islam: a travel narrative, The Hadj: An American's Pilgrimage to Mecca (1993); an historical anthology, One Thousand Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing about the Muslim Pilgrimage (1997), and an anthology of articles by American Muslims called Taking Back Islam: (2002), which received a Wilbur Award as Best Book of the Year on a religious theme. Wolfe has been featured on many regional and national radio talk shows, he has contributed to a number of anthologies on world religion, and he has spoken on many university campuses. He writes an occasional column called “From a Western Minaret” for the Web journal Beliefnet.com.He holds a degree in Classics from Wesleyan University.
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ALEXANDER KRONEMER is the other co-producer of Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, and the upcoming films “Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain,” and “Prince Among Slaves.” In addition to his filmmaking work, he is a frequent writer and lecturer on religious diversity, Islamic awareness and cross-cultural communication. He has a Master’s in Theological Studies from Harvard University, where his research concentrated on the philosophy of religion and comparative religion. In 1996, he was awarded a Malone Fellowship for Middle East and Islamic Studies, which funded him for a study tour of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
He has published essays in numerous newspapers including the Christian Science Monitor, the LA Times, the San Jose Mercury News and The Washington Post. His articles have been included in several books, including “What Would Muhammad Say About Terrorism,” in the 9/11 memorial, Up From the Ashes, and “Islam and Democracy” in Taking Back Islam.
He has received numerous writing awards, among a Halberstam Writing Fellowship. As a lecturer, he has delivered talks on religious diversity and Islam for the World Affairs Council in Washington, the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, numerous universities, including Northeastern, Penn State, and Harvard, and for private corporations, including Nike, Aetna, and Disney.
He has appeared as a CNN commentator on several occasions, including during CNN’s historic live coverage of the Hajj in 1998, which was broadcast to 400 million viewers. He has also been heard in many radio interviews, such as NPR and the Voice of America.
In 2000, Mr. Kronemer served a one-year appointment at the Bureau of Human Rights in the U.S. State Department focusing on U.S. foreign policy and Islam.
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ROBERT GARDNER, CO-PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR, ISLAMIC SPAIN FILM
Over a career that spans thirty years, documentary film producer, director and writer Robert Gardner has been nominated for an Academy Award, won three National Emmy Awards, four regional Emmys, a duPont Columbia award, from Columbia University for excellence in broadcast journalism, American Association for the Advancement of Science; Science Journalism Award for Television and a variety of special awards. His production company, Gardner Films, has produced for commercial and public television in the United States and internationally for seventeen years. He is a member of the Director’s Guild and the Writer’s Guild of America, and has lectured on non-fiction television at Johns Hopkins University, Goucher College, The American Film Institute, The American University, and Wesleyan University.
Gardner's best work explores the way ordinary people react to extraordinary events—the triumph of personal courage in the face of war or poverty, the emergence of human values in times of crisis and change. His historical documentaries feature extensive period re-enactments and complex location production, utilizing robotic jib work, Steadicam and extreme slow-motion. High production values are a high point of the genre.
Gardner’s most recently broadcast films include The Barbarians, a four-hour World Premiere, Marquee Special Series for The History Channel about the Barbarian invasions of Europe. The series produced the History Channel’s second all-time highest ratings.
Gardner has also recently aired a number of films on PBS, including a one-hour documentary biography of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, narrated by Academy Award-winner William Hurt; and Arab and Jew: Return to the Promised Land, a one-hour PBS documentary about the ongoing conflict between the Israeli’s and the Palestinians, with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, David K. Shipler. In 2002, PBS also aired Gardner’s three-hour documentary film series called Islam, Empire of Faith.
Other credits include two one-hour episodes of the Discovery Channel’s top-rated forensic science series The New Detectives, two one-hour episodes of The FBI Files, also on the Discovery Channel, as well as an episode of the PBS premiere science series NOVA, produced on location in Antarctica. Gardner produced two one-hour episodes of Time Life Television’s documentary series Lost Civilizations, produced for NBC’s entertainment division and broadcast on NBC in June, 1995. The two episodes were Egypt; Quest for Immortality and Mesopotamia; Return to Eden were shot on location in Egypt, Iraq, Israel and Bahrain. The series won a Prime Time Emmy in 1996, represented by Egypt; Quest for Immortality.
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ANDREA KALIN, CO-DIRECTOR, PRINCE AMONG SLAVES
Founder of Spark Media, Kalin is Co-producer and director of Prince Among Slaves along with Bill Duke. Kalin and Duke previously collaborated to produce Partners of the Heart. The film tells the inspirational story of the partnership between Dr. Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas, a white surgeon and a black lab technician who defied segregation to become pioneers of modern day heart surgery. Partners of the Heart was awarded the 2004 Eric Barnouw Award for best history documentary, garnered a coveted Chris Award, Gold Special Jury Award from WorldFest Houston, and is receiving outstanding reviews by film critics nationwide. A best seller on PBS, the film continues to be screened at festivals across the country. Kalin has garnered over 40 prestigious national and international awards for such productions.
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BILL DUKE, CO-DIRECTOR, PRINCE AMONG SLAVES
The reenactment sequences for Prince Among Slaves are directed and produced by Bill Duke, the acclaimed actor and director known to many movie fans as the shaven headed, imposing African American actor who appears with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator and Commando and with Anthony Hopkins in The Red Dragon. In television, Duke also heads the cast of many popular dramas. As director, his extensive television resume includes episodes of Miami Vice, Cagney & Lacy, Hill Street Blues, Robbery Homicide Division, and Angel. For Hollywood, he has directed A Rage in Harlem, Deep Cover, and Sister Act II, among other films.
He has also worked on several Award winning PBS productions. In 1984, Duke directed the PBS drama "The Killing Floor," which screened at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. He followed this with the PBS presentations of the Emmy Award winning A Raisin in the Sun, starring Danny Glover and Esther Rolle, and The Meeting, depicting a fictional encounter between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Duke garnered NAACP Image Award nominations for both of these outstanding dramas. Most recently, he directed the reenactments for a PBS American Experience presentation of Partners of the Heart.