Team

Director/Producer Eli Kao

Eli Kao is a documentary filmmaker with over two decades of experience ranging from mentoring community media makers at Cambridge Community Television in Cambridge, MA, to directing and producing programs for the National Geographic Channel and Discovery Networks in Asia. He wrote and directed Hualien Earthquake Decoded (Discovery Networks), which won a 2019 Asian Academy Creative Award. He currently works as Documentation Coordinator for public history project The Walk for Historical and Ecological Recovery, and as part of the leadership team at community media center Torchlight Media. Eli attended UnionDocs' 2024 Summer Documentary Lab, and has received grants including a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts grant via SPACE Gallery and a 2022 LEF Foundation Moving Image Fund grant for an ongoing project on eugenics, genomics, and memory. Eli is a graduate of Williams College, studied film scoring at Berklee College of Music, and has a master's in international communications from National Chengchi University (Taiwan).

Writer/Producer Michele Christle

Michele Christle is a writer whose work focuses on culture, ecology, and place. Her work has been published in Cultural Survival Quarterly, Eater, Down East, Insider, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She served in the Peace Corps in Cameroon, received an MFA in Creative Writing from UMass Amherst, and has worked extensively in nonprofit communications. Michele has produced work for Maine Audubon and Maine Sea Grant and worked as a producer/facilitator for StoryCorps’ One Small Step program through WERU Community Radio. Michele is the recipient of a Bodwell Fellowship and residencies at Hewnoaks and Shannaghe, and is a member of the Maine Community Foundation’s Waldo County Committee. Presently, Michele works as Communications Coordinator for public history project The Walk for Historical and Ecological Recovery, and as part of the leadership team at community media center Torchlight Media. She is working on a book about eels–reporting from which was featured in a 2024 feature story for Down East about Passamaquoddy eel conservation.