Meet the Filmmakers
(View supporting personnel) (Back to homepage)

John Travers -- Co-Producer & Co-Director, Cinematographer and Editor Born in New Orleans, raised in Westport, CT, and now residing in Los Angeles, John Travers has devoted his life to the art and craft of filmmaking. Inspired by his father's (novelist Robert Travers) passion for writing and his half-sister's (Mary Travers of Peter, Paul & Mary) love of music, John began making movies at the age of eleven, many of them music-related. At 15 John studied documentary filmmaking with Westport filmmaker William Jersey; at 16 he was directing, photographing and editing his own Super 8 sound documentary and experimental films. While earning his BFA in Cinema at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, John was selected as one of three national finalists by A.C.E. (American Cinema Editors) in the student editing competition. Flown to Beverly Hills, California, he was awarded the first-place trophy, beating out such highly regarded film schools as the University of Southern California. For his 16mm, 45-minute thesis film, Jenny, John was awarded the coveted national Student Academy Award -- the highest honor attainable for a student film produced in the United States. After graduation he was hired by documentary filmmakers Bill Buckley and Tracy Sugarman, editing such PBS-aired films as Never Turn Back: The Fannie Lou Hamer Story and the documentary, The Time Has Come, about dangers posed by nuclear weapons. In the early 1990s John relocated to Los Angeles, where he began working as editor and cameraman for independent filmmaking legend Roger Corman, assisting future Academy Award-winning editor Zach Staenberg (The Matrix). In 1995 he edited prize-winning short films for Sasha Stallone and The Usual Suspects storyboard artist John Coven; in 2001 he photographed the well-received documentary, Creature, broadcast nationally on HBO. Recently John has photographed and edited numerous documentaries and concert films, working with such musicians as Peter, Paul & Mary, Madonna, Iron Butterfly, Donovan, Bill Haley's Comets, The Spencer Davis Group, Grace Slick, Eric Burdon, Charlie Terrell, Sweetwater, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Jennifer Stills and Happy Chichester, among others. He looks forward to combining state-of-the-art digital technology with his three decades worth of photographic and editorial skills to bring The Power of Their Song to cinematic life. Read what others say about John's work

John Summa  -- Co-Producer & Co-Director, Writer Born in Bronxville, NY and raised in Connecticut, John Summa attended the Graduate Faculty at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where he earned a Ph.D. in political economy. Residing in Burlington, VT since 2004, he is a documentary film producer, author, educator and journalist. Throughout the past 30 years, John has been devoted to educating North Americans about social, political and cultural issues in Latin America, where he frequently travels.  John's first visited Latin American as a journalist to report on the Sandinista Revolution in 1981. In 1986, following several more trips  to Nicaragua, John produced his first documentary, The Contra War, a film critical of a U.S.-sponsored insurgency against the popular Sandinista government.  In 1987, Herbert Mitgang of The New York Times wrote that the documentary, well before the Iran-Contra scandal, references the "same names that [eventually] turned up during the [Congressional] hearings as supporters of the Contras against the Sandinista Government." Following the 1995 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, meanwhile, John traveled inside the rebel zones to cover Mexico's national elections, where voting was allowed to take place. John has also reported from Asia and Europe, and is a former contributor to the Washington, DC-based publication Multinational Monitor. His articles on media, culture, politics, economics, the environment and Third World underdevelopment have appeared in the New Haven Advocate and Fairfield County Advocate, as well as in the publications Extra!, Toward Freedom, The Guardian (no longer publishing), Dollars & Sense, Business Digest, and E/The Environmental Magazine. Listening to New Song artists for over 30 years, John became inspired to make The Power of Their Song  6 years ago following several visits to Uruguay, South America. He discovered during his trips how extremely popular New Song music remains for a new generation, not just in Uruguay but across Latin America. He hopes The Power of Their Song will offer the rest of the world an opportunity to experience New Song music and its universal message. Evidence of Subversion Exhibit C - The Quena