Bill Chayes began his career in film production, exhibition design and education by working with classic film documentarians Richard Leacock at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and John Marshall at the Center for Documentary Anthropology in Cambridge, Mass.

Bill began a teaching career at Tufts University and Clark University in Massachusetts that culminated when he became Senior Lecturer in Film Production at San Francisco State University and was awarded the Meritorious Performance and Professional Excellence Award.

He served Berkeley, California’s Magnes Museum as Exhibition Designer and Curator of Film, Photography, Digital Art and Music where he designed and/or curated over 70 major exhibitions.

As producer/director of documentary, experimental and educational films, Chayes has won many national and international awards. Birth of a Community: Jews and the Gold Rush is a staple in 4th grade public and Jewish schools and has played frequently on PBS. Divine Food: 100 Years in the Delicatessen Trade has been on 25 PBS stations, in many festivals and has played with a deli lunch at hundreds of Jewish gatherings across the country. Jews and Buddhism: Belief Amended, Faith Revealed, narrated by actress Sharon Stone, has been seen frequently on PBS and in 60 festivals worldwide, and was named "…one of the outstanding documentaries of 1999” by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and is in over 50 university libraries across the country. Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar had national PBS prime time broadcasts in September 2001 and February 2002 and was nominated for an EMMY. His most recent film, Call it Home: Searching for Truth on Bolinas Lagoon, a film chronicling the efforts to preserve the world famous estuary North of San Francisco, premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival and on PBS affiliate KQED as part of their "Truly CA" series. In production now is a film about ocean rower Roz Savage, who recently became the first woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean and a film about 103 year old metal artist/craftsman Victor Ries.

As exhibition designer, for the Petaluma, CA Museum, Bill recently completed the installation design for the Smithsonian traveling exhibition "Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes".

Bill graduated with a degree in Architecture from the University of Michigan. He and his wife Michelle, an artist and RN, live and work in Petaluma, California with their two daughters, Imogene and Frida.

CONTACTS:

Bill Chayes
Chayes Productions
956 Chileno Valley Road
Petaluma, CA 94952
Tel: (707) 782-9131 E-mail: billchayes@gotsky.com
www.chayesproductions.com 

Bay Area Video Coalition
2727 Mariposa Street – 2nd floor
San Francisco, CA 94110
Tel: (415) 861-3282 www.bavc.org