Kerry Candaele

Born in Vancouver, Canada, Kerry Candaele grew up in Lompoc, a small working-class town on the central coast of California. Mr. Candaele worked in the fields and factories around Lompoc before finding that reading books was more pleasurable than standing at a conveyor belt. After attending U.C. Santa Barbara, and Columbia University--where he was a Richard Hofstader Fellow and President's Fellow in U.S. history--Kerry taught history and politics at various colleges including Marymount Manhattan College, Occidental College and Cal State Dominguez Hills in California. He has taught courses in Italian Politics and Film, The Radical Tradition in the United States, and U.S. Labor History. Before starting Battle Hymns Productions, Kerry worked for Brave New Films as a producer and director in the field on Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price, Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers, The War on Greed and other projects. Mr. Candaele also worked for the Democracy Council, a Los Angeles-based NGO, concentrating on democracy-building projects all over the Middle East, Central America, and South East Asia, including East Timor, China, Gaza, the West Bank, Guatemala, Jordan, and several other countries. He filmed in thirteen countries on four continents for his film Following The Ninth: In The Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony, which has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered, Bill Moyers & Co, the BBC and other top news outlets including the New York Times. He is now at work on two new documentary films about Beethoven's music, the first called Love & Justice: In The Footsteps of Beethoven's Rebel Opera, and the second called Beethoven's Last Will & Testament: The Late Quartets. He is the author of three books on U.S. history, and many articles in both popular and academic periodicals. He resides in Venice, California, with his wife and three daughters