Fork Films
Fork Films LLC is a film production company based in New York City founded in 2007 dedicated to the development and production of films that move, inspire and enlighten.
In the belief that film has a unique capacity to shed light, evoke compassion and stir action, Fork Films invests in and creates media that make an important social contribution, with a particular emphasis on material that has been overlooked, people who tend to be underestimated, and stories that have been left out of the mainstream historical record.
Abigail E. Disney (President & Producer) is a filmmaker and philanthropist. Her longtime passion for women’s issues and peacebuilding culminated in her first film, the acclaimed Pray the Devil Back to Hell, about the Liberian women who peacefully ended their country’s fourteen-year civil war. She is currently Executive Producer of the groundbreaking PBS mini-series Women, War & Peace, the most comprehensive global media initiative ever mounted on the role of women in peace and conflict.
Along with her husband, Pierre Hauser, Abigail co-founded the Daphne Foundation, which works with low-income communities in the five boroughs of New York City. Her work in philanthropy, women’s engagement and leadership, and conflict resolution has been recognized through the Epic Award from the White House Project, the Changing the Landscape for Women Award from the Center for the Advancement of Women, and the prestigious International Advocate for Peace (IAP) Award from the Cardozo Law School’s Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution. In addition, Abigail holds degrees from Yale, Stanford, and Columbia. She lives in New York City with her husband and four children.
Gini Reticker (Producer & Director) is one of the world's leading documentary filmmakers whose primary focus is on individuals, particularly women, engaged in struggles for social justice and human rights. Her films cover subjects often overlooked by mainstream media, such as women in war zones whose stories have largely gone untold. Her filmmaking has taken her to conflict zones around the globe, including.Liberia, Rwanda, and Afghanistan.
Ms. Reticker is an Executive Producer on a groundbreaking five-part special series, Women, War & Peace for PBS, which will be broadcast on October 11th, 18th, 25th and November 1st and 8th 2011. The series challenges the conventional wisdom that war and peace are solely the domains of men, examining how war affects women and highlighting their efforts to bring about peace. Previously, Ms. Reticker directed the award-winning documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell. Produced by Abigail E. Disney, the film presents the story of Liberian women who overcame barriers of gender and politics to end their country’s century-long civil war. “If you don’t tell the story, then it’s not history; it just totally evaporates,” Ms. Reticker said of this film—a statement that aptly describes her work as a whole.
Ms. Reticker currently sits on the board of Peace Is Loud, an organization launched from the groundswell of interest in Pray the Devil Back to Hell that supports female voices and international peace-building through nonviolent means.
Ms. Reticker produced Asylum, a 2004 Academy Award®-nominated short focusing on the story of a Ghanaian woman who fled female genital mutilation to seek political asylum in the U.S. She was also the producer/co-director of Heart of the Matter, the first full-length documentary about the impact of HIV on women in the U.S. The film won a Sundance Award in 1994. She produced and directed the 2005 Emmy Award-winning documentary Ladies First for the PBS series Wide Angle, which focuses on the role of women in rebuilding post-genocide Rwanda. For Wide Angle she also directed The Class of 2006, which told the story of the first fifty women in Morocco to graduate from an imam academy in Rabat.
Reticker's other credits include: Producer: A Decade Under the Influence, a look at the heyday of 1970s filmmakers, winner of a National Review Board Award and an Emmy nomination for Best Documentary; Director: In the Company of Women, IFC's spotlight on women in Hollywood; Co-Producer: The Betrayal, Nerakhoon, Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phravasath's brilliant portrayal of a Laotian refugee family’s epic tale of survival and resilience, 2009 nominee for both an Academy Award® and Independent Spirit Award; Executive Producer: Live Nude Girls Unite, Julia Query and Vicki Funari's raucous look at the successful union organizing efforts of San Francisco-based strippers.
Reticker started her career as an editor on renowned documentaries such as Michael Moore's Roger & Me; Deborah Shaffer’s Emmy-nominated Fire From the Mountain; and The Awful Truth: The Romantic Comedy, for the PBS American Cinema Series.
Fork Films Staff
Juli S. Kobayashi (Operations Director & AP) has been working in various capacities in film and TV production in NY for over 10 years. After graduating from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, she began her career at a commercial production company, where she was the office manager. In-house production coordinator and in-house AVID editor.
Juli then went on to freelance on productions ranging from music specials and concerts to reality shows and live talk shows for Bravo, MTV, CBS, A&E, and Warner Bros. Joining the team at K2 Pictures in 2003, Kobayashi worked on pilots and specials for VH1, Comedy Central, PBS, Sci-Fi Channel, Independent Film channel, Court TV, ESPN, and the Sundance Channel.
She has also served as producer/writer/editor on short form projects.
Juli joined Fork Films to oversee distribution of Pray the Devil Back to Hell in May 2008.
Kat Vecchio (Operations Coordinator) has a diverse background in both film and theatre. Recently she directed a production of Rebecca Gilman’s Blue Surge for Extant Arts Company. She has also created documentary style promotional shorts for Extant Arts and Gotham Girls Roller Derby as well as other companies in New York. Additionally she is working on her first feature length documentary This Is How I Roll.
Women, War & Peace Outreach Team
Angie Wang (Outreach Director) has worked in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors for over fourteen years, primarily developing and supporting programs for women, children and families. Her previous positions include serving as Director of Programs for The New York Women’s Foundation and Program Director of the September 11th Fund, where she oversaw a grant program for case management and health care services for dislocated worked in New York and Washington D.C. Prior to this, Angie worked for six years at Safe Horizon, one of the largest victim assistance organizations in the U.S., where she directed programs for victims of domestic violence and abuse, rape and sexual assault, child sexual abuse, as well as relief assistance and services for individuals and families impacted by 9/11. Prior to coming to NYC, she worked as a community organizer and advocate in the areas of public health, environmental health, and housing and homelessness prevention in Northern California. Angie also is the Director of the Asian Women Giving Circle, and serves on the boards of the LCU Foundation, the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families and is a Commissioner on the NYC Commission on Women’s Issues.
Angie joined Fork Films in January 2011 as Outreach Director for Women, War & Peace.
Carla Fleisher (Community Outreach Coordinator) joins the Women, War & Peace team with experience in outreach and engagement for documentary films. In the role of project coordinator at Film Sprout, a consulting and booking agency that broadens the audience and social impact of independent documentaries, she was the engine driving the nationwide screening campaigns for the environmental documentaries Big River and Tar Creek. She has also served as an audience engagement maven for the production company Wicked Delicate, spearheading screening efforts and coordinating a school-garden contest and campus tour for their documentary and public art project Truck Farm. Carla ignited her interest in socially-conscious media and honed her research skills while an editorial intern with The Charlie Rose Show. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, she majored in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology.
