Mining the Mother Lode

H. Paul Moon (zenviolence.com) is a filmmaker based in Washington, D.C. focusing on music and visual art profiles. He also creates experimental films of cities, landscapes and contemporary dance. He teaches documentary editing at George Mason University, and manages a network of online communities at focuspulling.com that keeps pace with new camera technologies. His body of work includes short and feature-length documentaries, dance films, and experimental cinema, regularly featured at film festivals worldwide. He worked as a small camera specialist for a Paramount feature film starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, and as cinematographer for director Josephine Decker’s film in "collective:unconscious" that debuted at the South by Southwest Festival. Recent films include "Sitka: A Piano Documentary" (sitkadoc.com) about the craftsmanship of Steinway pianos, and "Quartet for the End of Time" (quatuor.xyz) about Olivier Messiaen’s transcendent composition, that premiered on the commemorative date and at the place where the imprisoned composer debuted his work. Moon's latest film, a feature-length documentary about the life and music of American composer Samuel Barber (samuelbarberfilm.com), recently premiered on PBS, and he is currently finishing another documentary feature about Western folklife, cowboy poetry, and the American frontier (westdocumentary.com).