The way this film was made is as much a testament to the people and places of the American South it represents as the film itself. The style of production is perhaps best described as self-reliant filmmaking; For Memories’ Sake is, despite its digital format, a handcrafted film, made possible because of the passion and dedication of those who struggled to make it.

In addition to the crew listed below, this film would not have been possible without the cooperation of Angela Singer and the Singer family, The Arts Council of the Blue Ridge, Temple University and Virginia Tech, the Southern Humanities Media Fund, and the many musicians who so graciously donated their time and talent to the film’s score.

ASHLEY MAYNOR: Writer/Director/Editor.

Ashley Maynor is a documentarian whose films and new media works have been exhibited around the country. Maynor is also engaged with building communities through video partnerships, empowering youth and communities to tell their own stories. Maynor’s creative work, outreach, and research have been supported by the Southern Humanities Media Fund, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Maynor has taught workshops as a video facilitator for Scribe Video Center’s Precious Places Project and as a guest artist in the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge’s Artists in Schools program. Locally, she is the co-founder and program director of the Blacksburg Stories Youth Video Workshop. She also organizes Southwest Virginia’s annual Home Movie Day celebration.

PAUL HARRILL: Producer/Co-cinematographer.

Paul Harrill’s narrative films and documentary videos have screened on five continents at film festivals, museums, and on television. Venues have included the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the Sundance Film Festival, where Harrill’s short film Gina, An Actress, Age 29 was awarded the Jury Prize.

Harrill’s work has been supported by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and the Aperture Film Grant (among others), and by residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In addition to his teaching and filmmaking, Harrill maintains a popular weblog, Self-Reliant Film, which discusses issues surrounding the art and practice of do-it-yourself regional filmmaking.

LOUIS MASSIAH: Executive Producer.

Louis Massiah is a MacArthur fellow and independent filmmaker who has produced and directed a variety of award-winning documentary films for public television, including W.E.B. Du Bois – a Biography in Four Voices and Louise Thompson Patterson: In Her Own Words, a biography of the activist and organizer.Massiah has received awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Black Programming Consortium, the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and several Emmy award nominations. He has also received fellowships from the Pew Trust and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Massiah is also the founder and executive director of the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia, a media arts organization that provides low-cost workshops and equipment access to emerging video and filmmakers and community organizations.

PAUL HINSON: Lead Animator.

Paul Hinson has been making films since high school and currently runs the Association of Movie Productions, a Virginia Tech student organization dedicated to student filmmaking on campus. Paul has created animations for promotional videos for Virginia Tech’s University Union and Student Activities Office in addition to teaching Final Cut Pro and other filmmaking software at InnovationSpace, Virginia Tech’s new media center. He has also written and directed a number of short fictional and documentary videos and is currently a student in Temple University’s MFA in Film and Media Arts program.

MELISSA THOMPSON: Consulting Editor.

Melissa Thompson is an independent filmmaker from North Carolina. Thompson began a series of documentaries on Irish women’s rights while a Fulbright fellow in 1998-1999. Completed pieces from the series include Like A Ship In The Night about the experiences of women traveling to England for secret abortions. Her previous short documentaries have screened in many film fests in the US and abroad (Women in the Director’s Chair, the Dallas Video Festival, Frameline, the Cork Film Festival) and have been broadcast on Free Speech TV and Philadelphia public television. She has worked as a videographer and editor on major independent documentaries such as Desire: The Teenage Girls Documentary Project (directed by Julie Gustafson) and By Invitation Only (directed by Rebecca Snedeker), as well as on many grassroots media projects with kids, artists, and immigrant communities.