The Team

Marlon Johnson is a ten-time Emmy award-winning producer and director. A native of Miami, Marlon earned bachelor’s degrees in both Anthropology and Communications with a special focus on Motion Pictures from the University of Miami. He has produced award-winning documentary films exploring music, social and cultural issues. In 2005 he was commissioned by the Florida Film Consortium to produce and direct Coconut Grove: A Sense of Place which examined race-based gentrification in the West Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami, the historic home of the first Bahamian immigrants. In 2006, The Ford Foundation commissioned Marlon to direct the short documentary Breaking the Silence which chronicled the rise of HIV infection in the Black-American South.    

 Later that year, Marlon served as Head of Production and Senior Producer/ Editor for Plum TV, a multi-platform lifestyle network. It was while producing at Plum TV he would receive eight regional Emmy nominations and won his first Emmy for his work on Local Arts and Entertainment Programming. In 2010, he began producing for the John and James L. Knight Foundation where co-directed the award-winning short Sunday’s Best, a film about the rich history of African-American women’s head adornments in church.

In 2014, Marlon co-produced and directed a feature-length documentary entitled, Deep City: The Birth of the Miami Sound, which chronicles the 1960’s Soul Music scene in Miami. The film had its world premiere at South by Southwest, was considered one of the top picks that year and won a regional Emmy award. The film is currently airing on PBS stations around the nation.  In 2016, Marlon received the top prize from the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual Media Artist. This award is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and recognizes professional artists who are creating at the highest level of their craft.

Marlon completed his second feature length documentary, Symphony in D, which takes the viewer on a symphonic journey across the city of Detroit as seen through the eyes of a Pulitzer Prize-nominated composer. It went on be awarded Best Documentary at the Regional Michigan Emmy Awards. 

 Marlon is currently showcasing two feature documentary films to audiences around the country. The film, River City DrumBeat, produced by Owsley Brown Presents, is a contemplative portrait of the leader of a Pan-African drumline in Louisville who has dedicated his life to mentoring youth in his neighborhood for the last three decades. The second feature Singular, is a concert documentary and love letter to the artistry of the multi Grammy award-winning Jazz vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant, considered by most to be the greatest living Jazz vocalist.

Chad Tingle is a Miami-based documentary filmmaker whose mission is to tell Miami stories with themes that mirror what is happening beyond the city’s borders. A native of Jamaica, Chad spent his adolescence living in New York City before moving to Miami in his late teens. His roots in both countries provide a unique perspective that informs how he approaches filmmaking and storytelling.  

After receiving a B.S in Communications with a focus in Film and Video Production from the University of Miami, Chad began his career as a director on documentaries that explore social and cultural issues in Miami. In 2006 he was a co-director/producer for the documentary short West Coconut Grove: A Sense Of Place. In 2009, he worked as a co-director/producer on Sunday’s Best, which explores the rich tradition of African American women wearing hats to church. In 2014 he worked as a co-director/producer on the feature-length documentary film Deep City: Birth Of The Miami Sound, which chronicles Miami’s 1960s soul music scene. 

His films have garnered two Sun Coast Emmy awards and been invited to screen at SXSW, Aspen Shorts Fest, The Maryland Film Festival, The Miami Film Festival, The Cleveland Film Festival, the Cork film festival, and many others. In between films, Chad directs television commercials and digital content for Crown Street Films, the production company he founded in 2009. Sweet Soul is his third collaborative effort with director/producers Marlon Johnson and Dennis Scholl.

Dennis Scholl is an award-winning documentary filmmaker focusing on arts and culture. His interview subjects have included Robert Redford, Frank Gehry, Wynton Marsalis, Ai Wei Wei, and Tracy Emin.

He is the director of the feature documentary The Last Resort, which won the Miami Jewish Film Festival Audience Choice Award, received a national theatrical release, and is currently available on Netflix. 

He recently released Lifeline, the story of 50s Ab Ex Painter, Clyfford Still, distributed by Kino Lorber, and Singular, a documentary on Cecile Mclorin Salvant, three-time jazz vocal Grammy winner, which was awarded Best Documentary by the Haiti International Film Festival and it is currently screening in syndication on public television stations across the US, via American Public Television. 

His first feature documentary, Deep City – The Birth of the Miami Soundpremiered at the 2014 SXSW International Film Festival, screened at film festivals worldwide and was acquired by public broadcast station, WLRN for international distribution.

His second feature documentary, Queen of Thursdays, which he co-wrote and produced with noted Cuban filmmaker Orlando Rojas, had its world premiere at the Miami International Film Festival and was named Best Documentary.

He produced and directed Symphony in D, the story of America’s first crowdsourced symphony, performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He also produced Sweet Dillard about the national champion Dillard High School jazz orchestra and their journey to the Essentially Ellington competition at Jazz Lincoln Center.

He has received 16 regional Emmys from the National Academy of Television Arts and Science, all for documentaries on art and artists.

He is the director of Inside My Studio, a series of fifteen short films, exploring the art-making practices of some of the greatest visual artists in the world, including Ai Wei Wei, Wangechi Mutu, Doug Aitken, Vik Muniz, Catherine Opie, Robert Longo, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. 

He is the executive producer of over a dozen films including six short films that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and Yearbook, the winner of the 2014 Animated Short category at Sundance. He also produced the animated short, The Sun Like a Big Dark Animal, which premiered at Sundance, along with Glove, which also premiered at Sundance and won Best Animated Short at SXSW. He also produced the experimental film Hearts of Palm and was executive producer of Namour and Leave the Bus Through the Broken Window. 

His short film, Sunday’s Best, won Best Documentary Short at the South Dakota Film Festival. His film, Dancing with the Trees, won the Audience Choice Award at the Magnolia Film Festival. His film, Everyone has a Place, about Wynton Marsalis’ Abyssinian Mass concert tour, was named Best Documentary Short at the Capital Cities Black Film Festival and is currently screening on public television stations across America. 

He is currently working on documentary films about pinup photographer and model Bunny Yeager and Jay Fletcher, America’s greatest teacher of the art of blind tasting wines.