Films by Filmmaker

Heather Courtney

Heather Courtney is a filmmaker and cinematographer based in Austin, Texas. She has produced several films for PBS, including LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE, which uses cross-border video letters to tell the immigration story from the perspective of the women left behind in Mexico. LETTERS premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 2006, screened at the South by Southwest International Film Festival (SXSW) and numerous other festivals around the world, and was funded by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and a Fulbright Fellowship. Heather also organized over 20 grassroots screenings with churches, schools, and community centers all over Texas. In Fall 2006, LETTERS was broadcast on over 60 PBS stations across the country.

Her previous film, LOS TRABAJADORES/THE WORKERS, won the Audience Award at SXSW in 2001 and an International Documentary Association award, and was broadcast nationally on the PBS series Independent Lens. She recently produced the Texas segment of Roger Weisberg’s CRITICAL CONDITION, a PBS documentary on the health insurance crisis, which aired nationally in Fall 2008.  Prior to receiving her MFA in Film Production, Heather spent eight years writing and photographing for the United Nations and several refugee and immigrant rights organizations, including in the Rwandan refugee camps after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

 For her most recent ITVS-funded project, WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM, Heather returns to her hometown in rural northern Michigan to follow the lives of a group of 20-year-old friends before, during and after their National Guard deployment to Afghanistan. She is currently embedded with the unit in Afghanistan and returns in July 2009.

 For more information www.lettersfromtheotherside.com or www.daylabormovie.com