About

GROUND PRODUCTIONS is an independent, international production company based in Portland, Oregon and New York, founded by Tonje Hessen Schei and David Bee.

In 2006 Ground Productions released INDEPENDENT INTERVENTION, an award winning documentary about the media coverage of the war in Iraq, which focuses on the human costs of war.

For more information visit INDEPENDENT INTERVENTION.

Tonje Hessen Schei is a Norwegian filmmaker who has been working with independent documentary film since 1996. She is the director and producer of the award-winning documentary INDEPENDENT INTERVENTION (2006). She worked for ENG (Electronic News Group, LA) on All Power to The People! (1997). Other productions include Texas and the Death Penalty (1997).

In Norway Tonje worked for NRK, the Norwegian National Broadcasting Network. She has a masters in film from the University of Trondheim in Norway and a BA in film production from the University of Texas in Austin.

Tonje is the co-founder of Ground Productions, an independent international documentary production company based in Portland and Norway.

Tonje is a member of IDA, International Documentary Association, EDN, European Documentary Network and OMPA, Oregon Media Producers Association.

David Bee is a filmmaker and teacher with over fifteen years of professional experience working in documentary, narrative, experimental, and commercial film and video, who specializes in independent productions that deal with essential subject matter. He has edited over five feature-length and short-form documentaries in recent years.

His editing credits include GETTING MY CHILD BACK: FIGHTING AUTISM (2006), a short documentary on a school for children with Autism and winner of Best Educational Documentary at NYIIFVF, 2006.

In the same year he released INDEPENDENT INTERVENTION (2006), an award-winning documentary that examines both corporate and independent news coverage of the build-up to and opening chapters of the war in Iraq. This film received a Roy W. Dean grant in 2005, was awarded best film at the Hearts and Minds festival in 2006, and has been shown in over twenty countries worldwide. For the past three years, INDEPENDENT INTERVENTION has been distributed on DVD by Bullfrog Films to university and municipal libraries throughout the United States. In 2009 and 2010, the film will be made available in over 40 countries through the digital cable channel Russia Today.

MIRACLE BALL (2008), a soon-to-be released documentary and sports-mystery, edited by David Bee, deals with one filmmaker’s quest to find Bobby Thompson’s 1951 pennant winning, home run baseball.

He also edited and directed WHY DANCE FOR PARKINSON DISEASE? (2008), a short documentary that looks at how dancing greatly enhances the lives of individuals living with Parkinson’s disease.

And, currently, his full-length documentary PLAY AGAIN, in post-production, deals with the consequences of a childhood removed from nature, and the shifting balance between the virtual and natural worlds in the lives of children.

David Bee is a co-founder of Ground Productions, an independent international documentary production company based in Oregon, New York, and Norway.

He has worked as a freelance video editor for over a decade. His commercial editing credits include promotional and corporate videos for media companies such as Dentsu America, Kindred Keziah, Tangerine Films, Driver Media, and Plexifilms. His corporate clients have included Toyota, Canon, Mark Morris Dance Group, Woman’s Day, Grand Marnier, and Old Nassau Imports.

David Bee has also been a teacher of filmmaking and media studies at the lower, middle, and high school levels for fourteen years during which he has introduced many bright and talented young people to the craft of filmmaking, and has overseen the production of over a hundred student videos. In 2007 he served as the Acting Director of the film program at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn N.Y., where he has taught since 1995.