The sun had finally emerged after four days of heavy rain when the old man found the diamond. At first, he thought it was one of the thousands of quartz crystals he had found on his land over the years, but he saw the facets of this crystal did not appear to have the familiar hexagon...

The most terrible thing I ever saw was in the highlands above the Rio Tomebamba in southern Ecuador. I was helping filmmaker Mark Birnbaum document the lives of a community of women who were forced by circumstance to live and work at the Cuerna garbage dump. We drove out to the dump to film...

Over the years, I have worked on many film projects in Africa, but perhaps the most memorable and most frightening, was working with a White South African film crew in the beleaguered Black township of SOWETO. The community of SOWETO (Southwest Townships), just outside Johannesburg, was...