Kate McLean
Production
Biography
Kate Mclean is a filmmaker and producer living in San Francisco. She has co-directed a number of short documentaries including The Caretaker (Cannes Film Festival, New York Times OpDoc, POV Broadcast), Marathon (New York Times OpDoc, POV Broadcast), and Gut Hack (SWSW, New York Times OpDoc). Kate is producing Jamie Meltzer’s documentary TRUE CONVICTION which was supported by Sundance, Tribeca and the MacArthur Foundation, and tells the story of a group of exonerated men who form their own detective agency. The film premiered this year at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won a special jury prize. It will air on the PBS series Independent Lens next year. She is also the producer of Jason Sussberg and David Alvarado's film BILL NYE: SCIENCE GUY, which premiered this year at SXSW. She produced their previous film THE IMMORTALISTS which screened in competition at SXSW, BFI, and CPH: DOX in 2014. Kate is a 2015 Sundance Creative Producing Summit Fellow, a San Francisco Film Society KRF Grant winner and an SFFS Film House Resident. She has a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
Known For

Bill Nye is retiring his kid show act in a bid to become more like his late professor, astronomer Carl Sagan. Sagan dreamed of launching a spacecraft that could revolutionize interplanetary exploration. Bill sets out to accomplish Sagan's mission, but he is pulled away when he is challenged by evolution and climate change contrarians to defend the scientific consensus. Can Bill show the world why science matters in a culture increasingly indifferent to evidence?
Bill Nye: Science Guy

Two eccentric scientists struggle to create eternal youth in a world they call “blind to the tragedy of old age.” As they battle their own aging and suffer the losses of loved ones, their scientific journeys ultimately become personal.
The Immortalists

“We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” This is the audacious opening line of the Whole Earth Catalog, a compendium of wonderful tools compiled by counterculture legend Stewart Brand. A psychedelic experimenter, cyberspace pioneer, and environmentalist, he is now urging humanity to use our god-like powers to reframe our relationship with time and life itself. Today, Stewart is using biotech to resurrect extinct species. He and a team of scientists travel to Siberia to collect ancient DNA in an effort to make a hybrid Woolly Mammoth. Former allies in the environmental movement vow to stand in his way, but Stewart forges ahead in his life-long mission to conserve the whole earth.
We Are As Gods

Forced to go legal, an outlaw pot farmer fights to preserve her way of life.
Freeland

Facing the impending death of a loved one, a mother and son have a blackly comic encounter with a funeral home director.
Marty

As scandals rock the crypto industry, three Web3 startups are selected for a prestigious tech incubator. The brilliant and idealistic founders have three months to hone their technology and create compelling presentations for a room of crypto investors. Shot in a cinema verite style, punctuated by intimate interviews and funny moments, Any Problem Is No Problem upends assumptions about the world of crypto by revealing the histories and motivations of these coders and dreamers as they build on the rails of a new democratized internet.
Any Problem is No Problem
Julio Saucé came to the U.S. from Ecuador 15 years ago searching for a better life. In the midst of a struggling to make ends meet and living undocumented in the U.S., Julio runs 80 miles a week training for the biggest race in the world, the New York City Marathon. After years of dedication, sacrifice, and sweat, Julio lines up to compete against the world's most elite runners in an attempt to be the fastest man in New York City.
Marathon

A bio-hacker seeks to cure himself by swapping his microbiome with a donor's, a controversial and dangerous technique.
Gut Hack
This short documentary film focuses on Joesy, a Fijian woman who works long hours providing live-in care for 95-year-old Haru Tsurumoto. Through intimate and quiet scenes, we explore Joesy's complex relationship with Haru. The two respect one another, because at different times, both have felt like outsiders in the U.S. - Joesy as an undocumented immigrant who fears she could be sent back to Fiji, and Haru as a Japanese American who was sent to the internment camps during World War II.