BLOODLINES: Technology Hits Home
premieres nationally on PBS Tuesday, June 10th at 9p.m. (check local listings)

BLOODLINES: Technology Hits Home A PBS documentary with partial funding from the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues of the U.S. Department of Energy Human Genome Program.

About the Filmmakers

Writer, Producer, Director, Noel Schwerin has been making documentaries for twenty years. Her prize-winning, two-hour PBS special, A Question of Genes won numerous awards, including the first-prize CLARION Award from the Association of Women in Communications, the CINE Gold Eagle and a special citation in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s “Public Broadcasting's Services to Minorities and Other Groups.” Schwerin wrote, produced, and directed the PBS documentary, Just Passing Through, and, at NOVA where she worked for six years, co-directed Yellowstone’s Burning Question, and worked on such award-winning films as So You Want to Be a Doctor?, The Big Spill, Freud Under Analysis, and the series, The Secret of Life. A graduate of Yale University, Schwerin has also worked for the Carnegie Corporation, ABC and CBS News, and a number of independent production companies. Schwerin has lectured about genetics and ethics at the Stanford University Medical School and at programs like UC Berkeley's Issues in Health and Medicine Program.

Cinematographers Robert Elfstrom and Mark Rublee have been Directors of Photography for countless award-winning programs. Elfstrom has been DP on documentaries and feature films, including Emmy-winning programs (PBS’ Finding Lucy, Race For The Superconductor, NBC’s Lifeline Series) and National Geographic’s Vietnam: Pictures From The Other Side, NOVA’s Building Big Series, and FRONTLINE’s Merchants of Cool. Rublee has been DP on many FRONTLINEs and NOVAs, including the Emmy-winning Siamese Twins, What’s Up with the Weather?, Breast Implants on Trial and State Lotteries. He was Cameraman for the award-winning PBS Special, A Question of Genes, and for the Emmy-winning Don’t Dance With Death.

Editor Josh Peterson has edited many documentaries, including The Nobel: Visions of Our Century, Baby, It’s You, a Sundance Film Festival Selection, ABC’s Teens, Coming to Light, The Story of Fathers and Sons and The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez.

Composer Todd Boekelheide has scored feature films, including Dim Sum and Nina Takes a Lover as well as many documentaries, including PBS’ Regret To Inform and Alice Waters and her Delicious Revolution. His score for Kids of Survival won an Emmy and he won an Academy Award for the rerecording mix of Amadeus.

Backbone Media is a nonprofit independent production company founded by Noel Schwerin in 1998. Specializing in documentaries about how people make sense of science, history, technology and the law, Backbone Media is committed to engaging and educating the public in new and thought-provoking ways.