Daniel Miller

Co-FOUNDER

Daniel Miller is a professor, scholar, and filmmaker living in Eugene, Oregon today. He teaches Civil Rights, Human Rights and Documentary Cinema at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Cinema Studies.  

Daniel was born in Ohio, raised by a single mother artist, teacher and social justice advocate.  He attended Kent State University in Kent, Ohio between 1967 and 1970.  While there he experienced and participated in The Civil Rights and Anti-War movements.  On May 4, 1970, he witnessed the National Guard shootings that wounded nine and killed four students at Kent State University.  These experiences influenced his teaching, scholarship and documentary production career and influenced his lifelong dedication to social justice and education.

At the University of Oregon, he teaches Civil Rights, Human Rights, and War and Cinema and Documentary Production courses. His students have produced numerous award-winning documentary films for public television.  His own company, Fire River Pictures, has produced numerous award-winning films. These include public television’s Fire in the Heartland: The Kent State Story (2020); Citizen Blue: The James Blue Story (2022); Dream to Fly: The Howard Hughes Story; What we Could Carry: Japanese American Students and Internment and others.  His film websites include company site fireriverpictures.com, and film websites fireintheheartland.tv and citizenblue.com.

While working on his film on Kent State Daniel met Congressman John Lewis and was invited to interview him at his office in Washington D.C.  John Lewis is his inspiration.

“We all live in the same house, and it doesn’t matter whether we are black or white, Latino Asian Americans or Native Americans.  It doesn’t matter! We are one People. We are one Family. We are one House…. Long Live the Spirit of Kent State.  - John Lewis

Suzanne Clark

Co-FOUNDER

Suzanne has accompanied Dan Miller on his documentary shoots since about 2005, the year he took his students to film women in an Oregon prison and she went along, and the next year when went to IDFA and he interviewed the filmmakers of Five Broken Cameras, about the situation on the West Bank of Israel where Jewish settlers were challenging the Palestinians who lived there. Dan and Suzanne are both professors at the University of Oregon. He films not only trouble spots, but also, closely, what was most troubling about them.  We decided to form Fire River Pictures, LLC, in 2010 to make personal films about subjects like Fire in the Heartland, about the Kent State shootings, where Dan had been with his friends in those times of the Vietnam War.  They interviewed them.  Their most recent film, Citizen Blue: The James Blue Story, is about the astounding filmmaker, James Blue, whose films about humanity around the globe are masterpieces of the focus on people, especially their faces--and who died young and left a largely undiscovered heritage of films and students who are the great masters of our time.

Suzanne’s university teaching and writing about modernist literature and artistic cultures, has included a book called Sentimental Modernism about the gender conflicts of modernism (which largely tried to eliminate women as writers) and Cold Warriors, about the gendered cultures of the severely masculine cold war, and several articles and talks about all this, including an interest in the new revolutions in the films of those times. But when she started working with Dan Miller on producing documentary films, she found herself in amazing collaborations to make the lives of others come into a vivid reality.  The company makes strenuous, detailed, up close films, short and long, about the personal history of our difficult times, often focusing on questions of human rights and the history of civil rights.  She is a producer in this effort, and her work is largely about pragmatic duties:  arrangements, records, bills, plus offering her views and commitments to the current film--and carrying stuff.

Kevin May

Editor

Kevin May is an educator and filmmaker living in Cottage Grove, Oregon. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism in 2006 and a Master’s Degree in Education in 2010. He has been a part of Fire River Pictures for over 10 years and hasworked with Daniel Miller and Suzanne Clark on several documentaries including Citizen Blue: The James Blue Story, The March Continues: The 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington and Fire in the Heartland: The Kent State Story. He currently teaches in the University of Oregon Cinema Studies Department teaching classes in both production and post-production.