The Team
Annika Hylmö, Ph.D., WRITER/DIRECTOR
Annika Hylmö, Ph.D., is an award-winning filmmaker and documentarian whose films have screened at CameraImage, Tribeca Film Festival, as well as smaller specialty festivals. She co-produced IMAGE MAKERS: THE STORY OF AMERICA’S PIONEER CINEMATOGRAPHERS for TCM and her narrative short film DR. PENELOPE is winning awards and hearts around the world. Annika comes from an academic background that has transitioned into filmmaking to tell complex stories that reveal our shared humanity through visual art. She is particularly drawn to stories about the juncture between reality and spirituality and is currently developing a screenplay about the Andover side of the Salem Witch Trials together with descendant Cassandra Hesseltine, film commissioner of Humboldt & Del Norte Counties.
Cassandra Hesseltine, PRODUCER
Cassandra Hesseltine, producer, has worked in film for over twenty years in various capacities including as the Film Commissioner for the Redwood Region in Northern California. In addition to producing three feature films and an episodic television show, Cassandra has directed two shorts and a television show pilot. One of her shorts was featured at the New Filmmakers Los Angeles film festival in August of 2018 and won best of at Royal Wolf Film Festival in October 2019. Cassandra is, also, a descendant of many of the accused and accusers from the 1692 Witch Trials. She is as passionate about her family heritage as she is about film.
Dawn Green, LINE PRODUCER
Dawn Green, p.g.a., is a New York based filmmaker and documentarian. Her work as a producer in television has included shows for the SyFy Channel and the Oxygen Network. Previously, she served as a Lecturer of Italian Literature and Film for over a decade at Stanford University and U.C. Santa Cruz. She was a Fellow at the American Film Institute where she received an MFA in Producing. Her AFI thesis film, LE JEU DES SOLDATS (THE SOLDIER'S GAME), won first place in the 2011 BAFTA/LA Student Film Festival and was a national finalist for the 38th Annual Student Academy Awards competition.
Geoff Schaaf, Directory of Photography
Geoff Schaaf began a career in news/documentary films, earning a total of 4 Emmys and 13 Emmy nominations. In 1986, Schaaf made the shift from documentaries to narrative drama. His first feature credit as DP was the 1990 China Lake Murders. Schaaf has DP’d hundreds of hours of episodic TV, including SeaQuest, Fortune Hunter, Early Edition, Swamp Thing, The Burning Zone, Fire Company 132, Jack and Jill, and Charmed. Schaff as shot numerous pilots, TV movies, and award winning features. Schaaf’s first credit as feature director was Shelter Island, followed by Portal. Schaaf is co-producer on a feature with the rock group Imagine Dragons, which has been acquired by Paramount Pictures for distribution. Postproduction is expected to be complete in 2022. Currently, Schaaf is producing and directing Bring Tokitae Home, a feature doc about the efforts of the Lummi Nation to repatriate a captive Orca whale to her native waters of Puget Sound. See the trailer at https://vimeo.com/266726774
Keren Weinberg, Editor
Keren Weinberg is an Emmy award-winning video editor and filmmaker based in Los Angeles CA, Her broad range of experience and expertise includes entertainment and educational television, documentary features, commercials, promos and trailers, as well as conceptual filmmaking. Keren’s artistry and professionalism have served industry upstarts and established leaders such as; NBC Universal, Nickelodeon, E! Entertainment, MGM, and United King Films.
Marilynn Roach, HISTORIAN ADVISOR
Marilynne K. Roach works as a free-lance writer, illustrator, researcher, and presenter of talks on historical subjects. She has written for publications as varied as the Boston Globe, the New England Historic Genealogical Register, and the Lizzie Borden Quarterly. She is a member of the Gallows Hill Project that verified the correct site of the 1692 hangings, a discovery listed in Archaeology Magazine’s list of the world’s ten most important discoveries of 2017.
Richard Hite, HISTORIAN ADVISOR
Richard Hite is State Records Coordinator at the Rhode Island State Archives and Public Records Administration. He has a B.A. in history and political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an M.A. in Archival Management from North Carolina State University, and an M.A.
Hite is the author of In the Shadow of Salem: The Andover Witch Hunt of 1692, which tells for the first time the fascinating story of this long overlooked phase of the largest witch hunt in American history.
Carrie LaPierre, PARTICIPANT
Carrie LaPierre, an 8th grade school teacher whose passion for history and justice inspired 250 of her students to take on Elizabeth Johnson Jr’s case as the last person to be exonerated from the conviction of witchcraft.
State Senator Diane DiZoglio, PARTICIPANT
As the daughter of a single mother who had her at 17, Diana has always had to fight for the things that have mattered to her, including the injustice done to Elizabeth Johnson Jr.