Elisa Stone Leahy and Matthew Leahy studied documentary filmmaking in Vancouver, BC. Together they formed Noonday Films in 2006, filming and producing documentaries and commercial videos. They are now based in Columbus, Ohio.
A SHELTER FOR EDITH, a 25 minute documentary about Edith Espinal’s life in sanctuary, premieres in the NYC Latino Film Festival in September 2021.
In 2018, they co-directed and produced their first feature documentary, THE BRIDGE MASTER’S DAUGHTER. Set in the highlands of Peru, a father and master of a 300 year-old bridge weaving tradition struggles to maintain his culture as his daughter tries to escape it. The film is currently distributed by First Run Features and available to view on Kanopy.
In conjunction with that project, Noonday Films produced a video highlighting the Qeswachaka bridge for the National Museum of the American Indian exhibition, “The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire.” The video is on display in Washington, DC and on the Smithsonian’s online content from 2015-2020. Additional use of their bridge footage was broadcast on Discovery Science and TVPERU.
The documentary they filmed and directed, MONTANA DE LUZ, (a film about a home in Honduras for children with HIV/AIDS) won the Crystal Heart Award at the Heartland Film Festival and is currently being distributed by Icarus Films.
Their 7 minute short documentary, OLD RADICALS, premiered at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto and won the DER Award in the International Documentary Challenge. The 45 minute version of OLD RADICALS is available to view on Vimeo.