Kerry Candaele, Director, Writer and Producer

Kerry Candaele, Director, Writer and Producer

Kerry Candaele was born in Vancouver, Canada, and grew up in Lompoc, a small town on California’s central coast.

He has produced and directed several documentaries. His producer credits include Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven’s Final Symphony, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price and Iraq For Sale for Brave New Films. He has also collaborated with his brother on the documentary, A League of Their Own, about their mother’s experience in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. This documentary was later turned into a blockbuster hit by Columbia Pictures with the same title starring Tom Hanks, Madonna, and Geena Davis. Kerry has also made films for the Raiford Rogers Dance Company of Los Angeles, the Festival of Sacred Music (UCLA), and other organizations.

The first part of Kerry’s Beethoven | Hero trilogy was Following The Ninth: In The Footsteps of Beethoven’s Final Symphony, which followed the impact of the Ninth across the globe. The film premiered in 2013 and has won critical acclaim while showing in more than 250 cities across the U.S. and around the world.

Kerry attended Columbia University, where he was a Richard Hofstadter Fellow and President’s Fellow in U.S. History. Earlier, he studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and California State University, Chico. He has worked all over the world—including China, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Jordan, South Africa, Gaza, and the West Bank—for the Democracy Council (DemocracyCouncil.org), an NGO dedicated to peaceful reform in developing nations.

The most recent of Kerry’s three books is Journeys With Beethoven: Following the Ninth and Beyond, co-authored with journalist Greg Mitchell. He has also has written extensively about U.S. history, and has published articles and opinion pieces in scholarly and popular publications including USA Today, Symphony Magazine, Irish America Magazine, The Nation, and The Huffington Post. Having made music a passionate hobby, he has written and released two CDs, Gas Money and Icarus Descending, for Battle Hymns Records, and has produced a CD for Western Beat, a collection of Los Angeles-based singer-songwriters.

He lives in Venice, California with his wife and three daughters.