The filmmakers behind COMING HOME

COMING HOME FROM SHADOWLAND TO SPIRITWORLD - The film was shot over a period of 12 years by J.Mitchell Johnson & Daniel Golding (Quechan)

Daniel Golding, Co-Producer/Co-Director, is an award-winning Native American filmmaker. He graduated Cum Laude from San Francisco State University receiving a BA in Film Produc<on and a minor in American Indian Studies in 2000.
He started Hokan Media LLC (www.hokanmedia.com) in 1997 as a means to produce social issue documentary and narrative films that have screened both na<onally and internationally. Film credits include: When the Fire Dims, premiered in 1998 at the Sundance Film Festival; Journey From Spirit Mountain, 35 minute documentary on the Quechan Lightning Songs, Waila! Making the People Happy, 30 min documentary on Chicken Scratch music, the contemporary dance music of southern Arizona tribes, premiered nationally on PBS April 2009, Song of the Colorado, 54 min, examines the music of the Colorado River Tribes, Greed Energy, 50 min, about president Obama’s decision to open public lands to “fast track” renewable energy project and the destruction of sacred sites.
Most recently Dan served as co-producer on the Anne Makepeace documentary, Tribal Justice, which aired on POV in 2017. He is the producer of Chasing Voices: The Story of John P. Harrington, a one-hour documentary on esteemed ethnographer John P. Harrington, his work & legacy. Dan participated in the prestigious 2010 WGBH-Boston Producers Workshop.
He teaches hands-on digital filmmaking workshops to at-risk tribal youth through Hokan Media Digital Filmmaking Academy. A traditional singer, he is involved in a master apprentice language program with his uncle and is an enrolled member of the Quechan Indian Nation located in Winterhaven, CA.

J. Mitchell Johnson, Co-Producer/Co-Director -- A#er finishing the cinema graduate program at USC, Johnson began his professional career working for four-time documentary Academy Award winner Charles Guggenheim. Later Johnson founded his own independent media company which he has maintained ever since. His directorial debut was the 1977 Van Cliburn Piano Competition PBS documentary, Contest to Carnegie Hall. The award-winning piece ushered subsequent PBS/A&E projects including USA (now Sundance) Festival winner, Moses Pendleton Presents Moses Pendleton.
Johnson’s work with Russian subjects began in 1995 with a 22-part television series produced for Russia’s ORT, co-ventured with ABC News-New York. In 1996, Johnson was chosen by the California-based Internews to head a team of filmmakers, archivists and computer scientists in the creation of an online catalog project of Russia’s pre-eminent film archive at Krasnogorsk, Russia. From this effort sprung Abamedia’s year 2000 PBS prime-time Cold War television series, Red Files, which won the International Documentary Association’s “Best Limited Series” award.
2016 Johnson created the Norbert Wiener Media Project and a short film entitled Remaining Human is now in the process of becoming a feature documentary. His 2021 feature-length documentary entitled, Saving North: Rescuing the Wooden Churches of Northern Russia was filmed over a seven year period in California and in various locations around Russia. It was chosen by over a dozen countries around the world for exhibition. He is the past-President of the Lone Star Film Festival.

Bob Elfstrom, Coming Home Cinematographer, has over 40 years’ experience behind the camera. His work has appeared on prime time television and the silver screen, including: NOVA’s The Race for the Superconductor (Emmy Award winner); American Masters: Finding Lucy (Emmy—Best Documentary); NBC Prime Time Specials: Bill Gates (Tom Brokaw Special); Discovery Channel: Cathedrals of the Sky (astronomical telescopes); HBO: Paul Rodriquez Behind Bars (concert at San Quentin Prison); Feature Films: Gospel Road (with Johnny Cash), Hi Mom (directed by Brian DePalma, starring Robert DeNiro); Feature Documentaries: Gimme Shelter, The Running Fence, The Wrapped Islands (Maysles Films), and Moses Pendleton Presents Moses Pendleton which he made with J. Mitchell Johnson for A&E. Most recently, he shot with Johnson in Northern California on the feature-documentary, Saving North.