Black Helmet Productions has produced a number of documentaries, with the largest current project being a documentary about the use of police undercover agents against popular social movements.
The Black Helmet team
Jason Kirkpatrick began directing film in California in the 1990’s with 8mm and has filmed documentaries in Asia, North American and Europe. His films have shown in over 15 countries. Jason co-founded Black Helmet Productions in 2007 and is BHP’s main fire-starter. He co-produced the dvd ACTION IN ASIA, and is active in all aspects of documentary making and film production, including camera, audio design and editing. He has also been active in various libertarian social movements since 1989, including the anti-G8 Dissent! Network. He holds a B.S. in Political Science and a M.A. in Globalisation Studies, and also served as Vice-Mayor of Arcata, California.
Agostino Imondi received a Crystal Bear Prize for Best Feature Film at the 2010 Berlinale International Film Festival with his film NEUKÖLLN UNLIMITED. Released by Indi Film, Neukölln Unlimited has also received numerous other prizes and been shown at multiple international film festivals from Europe to Vietnam. Starting with a Melbourne community TV station in 2000, Imondi has collaborated under the name Videoteppista with various film groups and grassroots medias, including SKA TV in Melbourne, Indymedia Italy, and Berlin-based video activist collective AK Kraak. His first documentary, WAKING UP THE NATION, a guerrilla film, told the story of a group of Australian human rights activists, who travel on an old bus, the Freedom Bus, to visit asylum seekers imprisoned in immigration detention centres across the country. Agostino is the film editor on BHP’s current project on undercover police.
Francesca Araiza grew up between parents from Mexico and Germany, and began her film career as a so-called guerrilla film maker. Her lifelong political activism helped ignite a passion for documentaries, and reinforced her commitment to making genuine and provoking films such as her first feature documentary NOISE AND RESISTANCE, playing in German cinemas in 2011, released by Neue Visionen. She completed a 3 year-long camera training in Berlin, and has worked on numerous productions in short film, music, reportage and documentary film, often with Berlin collective AK Kraak. She has recently filmed in Spain, Holland, Russia, Mongolia, and Kyrgyzstan, and current projects have her filming in Germany, Russia, and Australia. Her aim is to support the concerns of protagonists in her films and to publicise areas that are hidden from most commercial film. She lends her camera expertise and film industry knowledge to BHP.
Ramtin Zanjani was born in Tehran, Iran, and graduated from the University of Pune, India, where he studied documentary film, fine arts and architecture photography. He has also worked in the fields of advertising and industrial photography professionally in Canada and the UK, and has done graphic design, photography and digital camera work with Black Helmet Productions. He says, “I am now based in Berlin, a city that allows me to bring everything together under one cohesive structure that can house and express my work with no restriction. Art direction is the idea and force. Applied art is the means. I am influenced equally by music, poetry and words. Stripping things down, removing the coating. It didn’t happen straight away. It was a long journey. A process of reducing things to their essential aspects. Lines, colours, forms and rhythms, the very basics of visual matters.” Ramtin runs Digital Lie.
Advisor: Matthias Monroy (Journalist, Activist)