Sugar Pictures, LLC 2006
Company founders Thom Powers and Meema Spadola have been producing and directing documentaries for a dozen years. Their work has appeared on HBO, Cinemax, PBS, Sundance Channel, and over a dozen other stations around the world.

Sugar Pictures selectively accepts commissions for educational and corporate videos. Our past clients include Breakthrough, Amerada Hess, Barnes and Noble, Sakhi for South Asian Women, and Westchester Capital Management and the Center for Court Innovation.

The company’s mission falls broadly into the following categories:

SOCIAL ISSUES: RED HOOK JUSTICE, directed by Spadola, examines an experimental Brooklyn court and premiered on PBS's Independent Lens in 2005. Spadola previously directed OUR HOUSE (ITVS), about children of gay and lesbian parents. GUNS & MOTHERS, following women on both sides of the gun control debate, was directed by Powers for Independent Lens. In conjunction with Five Spot Films, Sugar helped develop Westrate's documentary A FAMILY UNDERTAKING (ITVS) which explores the emerging movement of home funerals and was broadcast on POV in 2004.

SEXUALITY: Powers directed LOVING & CHEATING, a doc about monogamy and infidelity, which premiered on Cinemax. Spadola and Powers’ first project BREASTS - covering puberty, motherhood, sex, cancer and aging – became Cinemax’s highest-rated documentary. They followed with PRIVATE DICKS: MEN EXPOSED (HBO), exploring men’s attitudes about their bodies. Spadola produced documentary segments for THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES, which aired on HBO.

ARTS: Spadola and Powers produced the four-part series SHORTS FROM THE UNDERGROUND (Sundance Channel), featuring profiles of experimental filmmakers. Both Spadola and Powers have directed segments for PBS’s EGG: THE ARTS SHOW and Barnes and Noble’s BOOKVIDEOS. Spadola has produced several episodes of ANATOMY OF A SCENE for the Sundance Channel.

TEACHING: Powers teaches a class on documentary development and marketing for New York University’s School of Continuing Professional Studies. He has developed the one-day Sugar Pictures Documentary Workshop, most recently presented at the Ohio Independent Film Festival. He has lectured about documentaries at the John F. Kennedy Library and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences "Mondays with Oscar" series; and moderated panels for NY Women in Film & Television and Hot Docs. Spadola has given classes at Sarah Lawrence College and Women Make Movies.

WRITING: Powers is currently writing STRANGER THAN FICTION, a history of American documentaries covering the past four decades, to be published by Faber & Faber. He has also written about documentaries for the Boston Globe and Real Screen. Spadola wrote the book BREASTS (Wildcat Canyon Press); and an essay in the anthology OUT OF THE ORDINARY (St. Martin’s Press).

RADIO DOCS: Spadola has produced radio documentaries for the public radio shows This American Life, on topics ranging from boxing to her back-to-the-land childhood in Maine.