Sheila Laffey

Sheila is an award winning producer/director of documentaries and short dramatic films, mostly on the environment. She was the Associate Producer of Love Thy Nature, narrated by Liam Neeson that has won 26 awards. Laffey was Executive Producer of Who Bombed Judi Bari?, Oscar qualifying eco feature documentary, which won a Cine Golden Eagle, several other awards and screened in various theaters around the country.

Her Ballona Wetlands film series, hosted by Ed Asner with songs by Joni Mitchell, won 15 awards, including a Cine Golden Eagle, Best Documentary in several festivals and a Telly Award for Natural Heroes, the Public Television series in which it aired. Her short doc on South Central Farm also aired on this Emmy Award-winning series and premiered at AFI Fest. She was co-producer/co-director of Show Me The Way with Oscar nominated William Gazecki.

She produced dramatic shorts, We All Need the Forest and In the Middle of the Sea, and co-directed and produced Walden, all of which are distributed by Green Planet Films. Other docs include Hawaii in Transition: Vision for a Sustainable Future and Geo-Thermal: A Risky Business in Hawaii’s Wao Kele O Puna Rainforest which helped helped save the last lowland tropical forest in the U.S.

Laffey has taught many courses in Film Studies at Santa Monica College since 1999. She has been the host of SMC’s Green Screen eco film series for several years. She has a Ph.D. and M.A. in Cinema Studies from N.Y.U. and was Program Coordinator for the National Audubon Society in Hawaii. A chapter about her work appears in Search for Reality: The Art of Documentary Filmmaking. Laffey is also certified as a Nature Therapy Guide through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT)

SMC Green Screen Series