Meet Our Team
Samantha Fogel
Founder/Executive Producer
Samantha has brought her passion for visual storytelling to the television and digital world for more than 25 years. She has produced and directed programming in a wide range of genres for major networks, corporations, marketing firms and boutique businesses including NBC, Lifetime, MTV Networks, Food Network, A&E, PBS, HGTV, Hearst, Sony Music, Yahoo!, Samsung, WebMD, Fast Company and Verdigreen Hotels. Samantha’s conducted hundreds of interviews that include A-list celebrities and musicians, entrepreneurs, designers, artists, teachers, kids, and survivors of trauma.
She’s now harnessed her love of storytelling and documentation to create Family Legacy Archives, and brings her expertise as a producer, interviewer and visual creative to this new venture.
“As an adult, I now understand why my grandparents told me their stories over and over again. Stories about living through the Depression, changing identities for the 1939 World’s Fair, surviving the pogroms in Lithuania, and the day my Nan & Pop fell in love. These are the stories that belong to my family. They are life affirming, awe-inspiring, heartbreaking. They are conduits to the past and lessons for the future. These stories should never be forgotten, and I look forward to sharing them with my children. Preserving my own family’s legacy in a digital library has been an invaluable experience and gift to so many that I was inspired to create Family Legacy Archives and help others do the same.”
Michael Pearlman
Director of Photography
Michael is an award winning Director of Photography, and has shot dozens of short films, multiple full-length features and hundreds of hours of broadcast productions. In his role as a multicam director, Michael helmed the wildly popular Food Network series, Chopped and directed more than 30 other culinary-based competition series. Fashion and design programming have also been a constant thread in his work, including the fan favorite, Project Runway. His client list runs the gamut and includes NBC, CBS, ABC, Quibi, Bravo, Food Network, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, AMC, HGTV, and Discovery Networks.
Scott Silva
Editor
Scott is an award-winning editor and colorist, producer and director and has been making his creative mark in the television and digital world for more than two decades. His ability to think outside the box coupled with his organizational skills and technical savvy make him an asset to every project. Scott’s versatile background in music programming, documentaries, unscripted television, docu-dramas, competition shows, promos and social media content, gives him a unique perspective and talent that he brings to his work. Some of his clients include ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central, Discovery, TLC, Bravo, A+E, HBO, Food Network, History Channel, USA, MTV, VH1, ID Network and Sony Music.
Debra Koffler
Producer/Editor
An award-winning documentary filmmaker, Debra’s work celebrates the hidden stories behind music, people, and places. Her subjects, from the underground to the iconic, delve into the richness of human experiences set against our diverse and collective histories.
Debra’s filmmaking expertise ranges from story development, archival research, writing, and producing to shooting and editing. She produced the widely acclaimed documentary film “Beats, Rhymes, and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest” (BRL), with actor/director Michael Rapaport. Hailed by critics for its fervent approach and compelling story, BRL won several festival audience awards, the prestigious 2012 Producers Guild Award, and a 2012 Grammy nomination.
Debra is also an arts educator with over two decades of experience, and the founder of Conscious Youth Media Crew, a Bay Area non-profit youth leadership program specializing in 21st-century digital filmmaking with the region’s most underserved communities. As a member of the Mission Mediarts Archive, she also works closely with community elders to preserve a unique collection of 16mms films shot by artists and activists during the seventies and eighties in San Francisco.
Jonathan Nastasi
Director of Photography
With over twenty years in the film and television industry, Jonathan’s body of work includes narrative films, branded content, television, and documentaries.
His latest documentary work includes UFO: Investigating the Unknown (National Geographic,) Extraordinary Stories Behind Everyday Things(Discovery +), My So-Called High School Rank (HBO), Surviving Death (Netflix), Surviving Jeffrey Epstein (LifeTime), The Preppy Murder (AMC/SundanceTV), and Suspicious Minds (Discovery ID).
His last narrative film, Barracuda, premiered in competition at the SXSW Film Festival before being acquired by Orion Pictures and Amazon. His previous film, Now Forager, premiered at the prestigious New Directors/New Films Film Festival at Lincoln Center and MoMA in New York City.
As a commercial Director and DP, his clients include Oracle, Nike, eBay, Meta, AccuWeather, MasterCard, Planned Parenthood, and Microsoft among many others.