Based out of both San Francisco and Los Angeles, TILAPIA FILM is a film collective that has created music videos, EPKs, interstitials, and documentaries for clients as varied as: Atlantic Records, Arista-Nashville, Capital Records, Geffen Records, ABC, Comedy Central, Current TV, Fox, Noggin, Documentary Channel, PBS, and the Sundance Channel.

TILAPIA FILM consists of filmmakers, Chris Metzler, Jeff Springer, Josh Kurz, and Lev Anderson who in traveling the USA, are attempting to capture the unseen corners of America.  Exploring what others have determined to be failures and finding out what happens when they’re wrong.

CHRIS METZLER, Director/Executive Producer
After graduating from USC with a degree in business and cinema, Chris’ film career has taken him from the depths of agency work, to coordinating post-production for awful American movies seen late at night in Belgium.  His film directing and producing work has resulted in frequent partnerships with Jeff Springer, where together they've criss-crossed the country with the aid of caffeinated beverages and made their way in the Nashville country and Christian music video industries, before finally forsaking their souls to commercial LA rock n’ roll.  These misadventures eventually culminated in their winning a Billboard Magazine Music Video Award.  Chris recently finished traveling the theatrical circuit promoting his John Waters’ narrated documentary, PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA, which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival and later won both the HBO Producer’s Award and the Robert Altman Award.  He is a recipient of the Bay Area Video Coalition’s AEA Award and has previously received funding support from the Pacific Pioneer Fund and the Fleishhacker Fund.

JEFF SPRINGER, Director/Executive Producer
Jeff Springer was born in an abandoned town in the California desert, raised in Hawaii, and educated at USC Film School.  After living for a winter in Russia, he returned to Los Angeles and began directing music videos and shorts, as well as editing for Fox, the WB, UPN, Lucasfilm, Capitol, and Geffen Records.  Burned out and hungover on WWF and bad R&B, he fled to San Francisco to start work on the feature documentary PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA with co-director Chris Metzler.  After weeks in the desert and a couple of burnt cameras, the film went on to win 33 awards for Best Documentary and premiered on the Sundance Channel.  Meanwhile, Springer was going “undercover” investigating the East German Wild West in Berlin and following the Ska-Funk-Rock band Fishbone around Europe.  Now, after all that unexpected funkadelic excitement, he suddenly finds himself very content, in a little editing studio overlooking San Francisco.

JOSH KURZ, Director
Josh started out as an embryo, 53 times smaller than a US nickel.  Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, his attempts at an early age to fuse the abstract concepts of comedy and science through home video led to many nights filming in the basement.  Eventually this passion (and the desire to leave New York) drew him out to sunny California where he became educated at USC Film School.  Four long years without a car turned out to be hell and soon after graduation, with a longing for subways, Josh returned to New York and began directing offbeat interstitial segments for Comedy Central, ABC, Fox, and Noggin.  The segments ranged from an explanation of cloning using large balls of Jell-O to an infomercial that explained how the ancient pyramids were built.  Determined to reinvent children’s television programming, he has returned to the West Coast (with car) and currently lives in the megalopolis that he now loves, Los Angeles.  Josh can whistle in German and lives by the motto: “Always smell your food before you eat it.”

LEV ANDERSON, Director
Lev jumped feet first into filmmaking after working as an Urban Planner designing bike paths and other transportation projects for five years, after graduating from Beloit College.  He recently left the bureaucracy behind and put his remarkably savvy film and communication skills to work as the Outreach Coordinator for the 25-time award-winning documentary THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN, currently being released in select cities around the country and broadcasting on PBS’ Independent Lens.  As a fine art photographer with recent exhibits in San Francisco, Japan and Mexico City, Lev has honed his ability to create dynamic images through composition and his sharp eye for finding contradiction and beauty where it may be least expected.  His first attempt at capturing the magic of music on video was at 12 years old, when working with his father, they produced a lip-sync rendition of the Suicidal Tendencies song “Institutionalized.”