Greg O’Toole is an award-winning editor and director whose feature documentaries have screened at festivals around the world and broadcast on PBS, ESPN and others. Recent documentary features include Better This World (SXSW/POV 2011), cited by Variety for “O’Toole’s ace editing”; Two Escobars (Cannes/ESPN, 2010), called “a miracle in editing” by IndieWire; and Sons of a Gun (2009), called “riveting and fascinating” by Frontline Producer David Fanning.
In addition to his feature documentary work O’Toole creates award winning commercial and educational videos for corporate clients such as Saatchi & Saatchi, Fenton Communications, and Eleven Inc. His work on a recent Saatchi & Saatchi campaign helped earn an Effie, one of the most highly regarded awards in marketing.
O’Toole’s non-profit work includes short environmental films such as A Simple Question (Wild & Scenic/KRCB, 2010) and All Points South (Winner, NY Surf Film Festival, 2009) which have toured festivals around the world, and two hour-long series for the Pachamama Alliance, an organization focused on protecting rain forests and indigenous peoples, and The Ella Baker Center, which runs community empowerment campaigns related to jobs, health and safety.
In 2001 O’Toole founded GroundSwell Productions, a non-profit organization focused on increasing low-income community access to video production. GroundSwell’s signature program is a youth-led TV station based at the Youth Empowerment School in East Oakland, which has exposed hundreds of students to the skills and tools of filmmaking.