DOCUMENTARY
Documentaries directed, produced or filmed by Kathy Kasic. Scroll down for selected documentaries.
World-renowned French composer and pianist, Julien Brocal, shares an introspective and hopeful perspective on nature, art, and human connection. In collaboration with violinist Caroline Goulding, the two bring his environmental philosophy to life through music.
Director, Camera, Editor: Kathy Kasic
Fine Arts Film Festival, Best Short Documentary Award
Portland Art Museum Screening and Panel, “An Evening with Kathy Kasic”
Los Angeles Lift-Off Film Festival Online, Screening
Bogotá Music Video Festival, Screening
The documentary was filmed entirely at Tippet Rise, an 11,000 acre art center celebrating the concept that art, music, architecture, and nature are inextricably linked in the human experience, each making the others more powerful.
Produced for BBC, by Kathy Kasic, this film received over 8 million viewers on BBC, and traveled to numerous film festivals. Quirky sound recordist and Montana local, Mike Kasic, has an unmatched obsession for the underwater wilderness of the Yellowstone River. He swims the Yellowstone like a human-fish through swift river canyons and scenic mountain views, watching trout in fast currents filled with frothing water tornadoes, stopping only to body surf river waves. His message is simple: a river is more than its water; what lies beneath is a wilderness that is often overlooked, but critical for the Yellowstone ecosystem to thrive.
Credit: Producer; also was Director, Cinematographer and Editor
TRT: 10 minutes
Completed: 2010
SCREENINGS/AWARDS:
Human-Wildlife Interaction Merit Award, International Wildlife Film Festival, 2010
Best Short Film Nomination, Wildscreen Wildlife Film Festival, 2010
Telluride Mountain Film Festival – Three screenings, one by popular demand, 2010
Wild and Scenic On Tour Selection, Wild & Scenic Film Festival, toured over 50 theaters, 2010-12
Festival Selection, Wild & Scenic Film Festival, 2011
Banff Mountain Film Festival Selection, two award nominations, 2009
Screened at over 50 festivals and broadcast on BBC to more than 6 million people
Read an article in the Billings Gazette about the film.
billingsgazette.com/entertainment/movies/article_3ba33f5b-934a-557e-bff9-ab89ad62a835.html
Loose Horses is a feature length documentary about horses that are caught up in human politics and cultural preferences. Every year in the US about 160,000 domestic horses are sold for meat in European and other foreign markets. Set in Billings, Montana, horse #1052 is dropped off at the biggest loose horse auction in the United States. He has two paths: to be purchased as a saddle horse or to be bought by a meat buyer. Amongst the stark, dusty pens we come to know horse 1052 and a gruff Montana cowboy named Buzz. Loose Horses explores the purgatory of the auction through an observational style, capturing the genuine grit of the livestock market subculture and the complicated human-equine connection in the real American West.
Director, Cinematographer and Editor
TRT: 1 hour (view trailer by clicking on thumbnail)
Completed: July 2015
BBC's natural history portrait of a year in Yellowstone, following the fortunes of America's wildlife icons as they face the challenges of one of the most extraordinary wildernesses on Earth.
Credit: Assistant Producer of "Yellowstone" / Producer of "Yellowstone People"
Directed / Field-produced shoots for 3 years for all the of three one-hour programs: Winter, Summer, Autumn
Cinematography on the series (Summer / Autumn): osprey, underwater beaver sequence, trout spawning sequence
TRT: 3 x 1 hr mini-series
Completed: 2010
AWARDS:
Nominated for Best Science and Natural History Film, Royal Television Society (RTS), 2010
Best Specialist Factual Nomination, British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), 2010
Winner Photography Factual, BAFTA, 2010
Cinematography Nomination, Emmy, 2009
Best Cinematography, International Wildlife Film Festival, 2009
Best Ecology, International Wildlife Film Festival, 2009
Best Wildlife Habitat Program, Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, 2009
Best Series, Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, 2009
Special Jury Award (Yellowstone Winter), Banff Mountain Film Festival, 2009
Winner, Best Environment, Festival de l’Oiseau, 2009
Broadcast on BBC2 to more than 6 million people, 2009
In the West, there's a saying that goes, "Whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting". The competition for water in the arid West has long been a fact of life for ranchers and farmers. But as the population of the West has grown, it is no longer just irrigators competing between themselves for scarce water. Growing towns and cities, sustained drought, the quest for national energy independence, and climate change are all putting new pressures on dwindling water supplies. In the face of such water demand, fish and wildlife are often left out. And there is one simple fact: fish need water, every day.
"Against the Current" underscores the importance of healthy rivers and streams in the arid West. Told through the wisdom of four people: two ranchers, a biologist and an environmental lawyer, this film tells the story of a rancher who, after 70 years, restored water to the stream that feeds his ranch.
Director, Cinematographer, Editor
TRT: 26 minutes
Completed: 2007
SCREENINGS / AWARDS
Best of Festival, Great Falls Fly Fishing Festival, 2008
Finalist, Intelligent Use of Water Film Competition, 2009
Neuse River Film Festival Selection, 2008
Winston Rods Best Conservation Film, 2008
Schoolyard Films Selection, 2009
On Tour Selection, Wild and Scenic Film Festival, 2008
Silver Telly – Nature and Wildlife / Bronze Telly – Non-profit, 2008 Wild and Scenic Film Festival Selection, 2008
Best of Festival, American Conservation Film Festival, 2007
A devastating natural disaster may be brewing beneath the calm blue Caribbean. A vast web of geologic faults could give way at any moment, unleashing catastrophic earthquakes, potent volcanic eruptions and tsunamis capable of inundating coastlines from Puerto Rico to New York. Wild Caribbean’s Deadly Underworld is an unprecedented attempt to take the pulse of these hidden threats. Renowned ocean explorer Robert Ballard will lead a team of scientists on a daring deep-sea expedition to the most active submarine faults and volcanoes along the perimeter of the Caribbean plate. A pair of remotely operated vehicles armed with a powerful suite of HD cameras and hi-tech tools will allow them to examine these potential hazards like never before. And they won’t just be looking for geological threats. These dangerous hot-spots also support some of the richest and most bizarre biological communities on our planet – alien-looking creatures that can survive in total darkness miles beneath the sea. From massive sharks and giant mussels to microscopic bacteria, Ballard and his team will be on the lookout for exotic extremophiles and ultimately, clues about the origins of life in the universe.
Caribbean's Deadly Underworld Site
View Clip
Credit: Director of Photography
Completed: 2014
TRT: 1 hr
Aired on NatGeo Wild
A team of dedicated scientists take on the historic conservation project of rebuilding the great American plains. More than 200 years ago, the Great Plains were an American Serengeti. Since then, human encroachment has slowly deteriorated the land and its wildlife. To rebuild an ecosystem on more than 3 million acres, conservationists must track and reintroduce populations of iconic American species, some on the brink of extinction. These include the bison, the pallid sturgeon and prairie dog.
Credit: Additional Camera Operator (sturgeon sequence)
Completed: 2011
TRT: 1 hr
SCREENINGS/AWARDS
Merit Award for Cinematography, International Wildlife Film Festival, 2011
Best Made in Montana, International Wildlife Film Festival, 2011
Best TV Program Over $500,000 Budget, International Wildlife Film Festival, 2011
“Between the Notes” is a short documentary that features a musical collaboration between internationally acclaimed pianist Julien Brocal and 13-time Grammy Award winning recording engineer Richard King. It reveals a behind-the-scenes glance into the recording studio, where the two artists work together to record and produce a solo piano album of works by Ravel and Mompou. Hand-held shots, candid footage, and close-ups reveal the personal dialogues within the studio, whether between instrument and microphone, engineer and pianist, or sound and silence. At once conversational, technical, and deeply musing, the film dives deep into the beauty of recorded music.
Director and Cinematographer: Kathy Kasic, Producer: Mickey Houlihan, Interviews: Julien Brocal, Richard King, Music performed by: Julien Brocal, Music: Federico Mompou, “Paisajes: No. 2, ‘El Lago’”; Maurice Ravel, “Miroirs: No. 4, ‘Alborada del Gracioso’”, Camera Operator: Colleen Harvey; Editor: Kathy Kasic; Assistant Editors: Evangeline Koonce, Sarah Lanier, Emily Rund; Titles and Credits: Emily Rund; Music Consultant: Devanney Haruta; Piano Tuner: Mike Toia; Film Sound Recording: Mickey Houlihan; Music Recording: Richard King; Music Mastering: Richard King; Film Sound Mixing and Mastering: Monte Nickles
Inside of Patrick Dougherty's sculpture, Daydreams, Matt Haimovitz muses on Bach, his love of the cello, and the magic of music.
Director: Kathy Kasic; Producer: Mickey Houlihan; Music: Cello Suite No. 5, prelude by J.S. Bach; Performer: Matt Haimovitz; Cinematographer: Kathy Kasic; Assistant Cinematographers: Billy Collins, Sarah Lanier, and Emily Rund; Editor: Kathy Kasic; Titles and Credits: Emily Rund; Interview Sound Recording: Mickey Houlihan; Sound Mixing and Mastering: Monte Nickles
Come Hell or High Water—the first feature-length film to be made about the sport of bodysurfing. A winner of Best Film and Best Cinematography awards on the festival circuit, Come Hell or High Water explores the history and development of bodysurfing alongside the purity of experience that is riding a wave, taking a unique look at the culture and beauty of the sport, while capturing the stories and locations of those who belong to its community. The film’s unanticipated popularity may well reflect the less-is-more, environmentally aware consciousness of our times; as the simplest of all ocean sports, bodysurfing requires little more than swim fins and some waves.
Credit: Additional Camera Operator
Completed: 2011
TRT: 41 minutes
The Lake at the Bottom of the World is about our collective science and survival on an ice sheet hundreds of miles from civilization. In 2018-19 we camped above an Antarctic subglacial lake buried three-quarters of a mile below the ice surface. After burrowing down 3600 feet to reach the lake, we unearth new information about our planet’s changing climate and its hidden life forms. Lake Mercer is named in memory of scientist John Mercer, who was the first person to suggest that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could collapse as a result of human-induced climate change. We are driven not only by a thirst for knowledge, but by an ever increasing need to understand the history and future of Antarctica’s ice sheets. The Lake at the Bottom of the World, in its sensory vérité style is an intimate portrayal of our experience living in the extremes of Antarctica and following our passion for science. Though this journey, the film weaves a tale of curiosity about what compels us, as humans, to brave one of the most inhospitable environments and about the answers we hope to uncover there—about our planet, and perhaps more importantly, about ourselves.
Film by the SALSA Science Team
Director: Kathy Kasic
Producers: Elisabeth de Kleer and Kathy Kasic
Editor: Tony Hale
Cinematographers: Kathy Kasic and Billy Collins
Sound Design: Jason McDaniel
Color: Sean Wells
Music by: Billy Collins