Manny Mendoza
Producer-director

Mendoza has been a newspaperman since 1979 when he became one of the last copy boys in America and first-hand witness to print journalism’s decline. He has been a staff writer covering crime, politics, television, theater and pop music at the Miami News, Bergen Record, Milwaukee Journal and Dallas Morning News, where he was one of 112 journalists who accepted a buyout offer in 2006. He and Mark Birnbaum began shooting Stop the Presses that summer. Mendoza is a winner of the Florida Bar Award and a finalist for the Katie Award. He is now a freelance writer, blogger, film marketer and college journalism instructor.

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Mark Birnbaum
Producer-director-cinematographer-editor

From Nicaragua in the 1980s to Tom DeLay in 2006, Birnbaum’s documentary films have probed, celebrated and exposed people to places and personalities all over the globe. In Larry v. Lockney, he tells “a riveting story of good people — on both sides — trying to do the right thing for their children and their town” (Houston Chronicle). The Big Buy, about Tom DeLay’s rise and fall, “presents its evidence clearly and with a welcome sense of humor” (New York Times) and is “more feisty and fun than a drunken barbecue in Beaumont” (Tallahassee Democrat). His films have chronicled the Second Vatican Council, women trash recyclers in Ecuador, American high school kids in China, medical science, sailboat racing, and salsa dancing. Birnbaum took home gold medals from film festivals in Chicago, Houston and Charleston and is a winner of the George Foster Peabody broadcasting award.