Mark Schlicher | Producer and Director
I am a Nashville-based documentary filmmaker with over 30 years of experience.
Though I have shot everything from music videos to commercials, I have a passion for documentary filmmaking. I produced and directed an award-winning biography of George Washington Carver, among others. I also contributed to shooting of several documentaries, including “Mavis!”, about singer Mavis Staples, and “Nashville 2.0”, which aired nationally on PBS in 2013. My work has also been shown on Showtime/The Smithsonian Channel and Lifetime.
In addition to “The Past Is Prologue”, I’m currently creating a documentary on Nashville artist William Edmondson, who in 1937 became the first African American artist to earn a solo show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In 2018, I co-founded the “Save the William Edmondson Homesite Park & Gardens Coalition”, which aims to preserve, protect, and enhance the park where his house and sculpture workshop once stood.
I’m honored to be entrusted by the Cameron High School Class of 1969 to help tell their story.
Lisa Venegas | Producer
I am a graduate of the University of Georgia Grady School of Journalism with an ABJ in Radio/TV/Film Production with a minor in Drama. My experience as a Writer/Producer/Director/Production Manager includes creating advertising, awareness, educational, marketing and fundraising films, live awards shows, and now documentaries. I also work as a Format Producer for Viacom networks preparing movies, series and specials for air. I’m honored to have received nearly three dozen film festival awards as part of the Envision, Inc. production team as Writer/Producer and Co-Director.
Deborah Majors Bell, Ida Venson Currie & Tanya Coplen Gray | Executive Produers + Historians
We are Deborah Majors Bell, Ida Venson Currie and Tanya Coplen Gray are proud graduates of the Cameron High School class of 1969.
Though our careers are varied from Nurse to Insurance Executive to Social Work Counselor, a love for politics was fueled while growing up during the Civil Rights Era. We’ve all volunteered politically; from working on the Carol Moseley Braun campaign to the re-election campaign for President Barack Obama to a local campaign for District 33 Council Woman, Antoinette Lee.
People in our community gave their lives so that current and future generations would have the right to vote. It also gave us a voice for championing equality disparities. This is our reason for capturing on film, the injustice in the 1968-1969 TSSAA sports suspension. It was the key element in our decision to march peacefully to protest the suspension.
Though not 100% successful, we carved out a place in Nashville history; an important segment of history we’d like to capture for posterity in our film, The Past is Prologue”.