Sarah Kerruish
Director, Producer, and Writer
“The making of GENERAL MAGIC was a very personal journey for me. Not only had I filmed the early days of that company but I also experienced the catastrophic failure of a startup that I had been very involved in. So often we hear about the great success stories in Silicon Valley but what about all those people who don't make it? This was my way of understanding the role of failure in any creative endeavor and what it takes to bring important ideas to life.
Our hope is that this film will inspire the next generation of technologists and makers to learn from those who have gone before them and apply the lessons of General Magic to solving the most important problems of our day.”
Before moving back to London, Sarah Kerruish lived in Silicon Valley for 15 years where she worked as a filmmaker with some of the great inventors of our age. Her films have been distributed worldwide and won many awards, including a Peabody and an Emmy nomination. In 2017, she made a short film about the last few days of the tech team at the White House under President Obama. Sarah is currently Chief Strategy officer at Kheiron Medical, working with an incredibly talented deep learning team to improve the detection and treatment of breast cancer. In 1993, she worked with a documentary crew filming the team at General Magic. As a former Magician herself, Sarah’s unparalleled access to the subjects in our film allows her the greatest insight and intimacy to the heart of our story.
Matt Maude
Director, Producer, Cinematographer and Writer
“When I began working on GENERAL MAGIC, there was this amazing moment reviewing the archival films shot at the company in 1992, seeing all these young people sitting on the floor of a tiny office. It was incredible to see the founders of eBay, Linkedin, Android, and Nest sitting there. Engineers that now lead Samsung, Apple, Facebook, Google.
Imagine one class at high school and every single student going on to change the lives of billions. What was the special ingredients that led to the technology we use today? What was discovered or learned? Watching that archival tape I wanted to make their story. Humanize and de-mystify the people that shape the industries and technologies we use every day. Show the emotions behind those who made the emoticon. The touch screen, the software modem, the tools we now can’t imagine living our lives without.”
Matt Maude is an award winning director, writer and producer. After starring in the UK ITV soap Crossroads during his teenage years, Matt moved to working behind the camera, directing and producing adverts, promos, music videos and narrative shorts. As a screenplay writer and director, Matt won the Kirin First Press Award for direction and the Epic Award for Best Screenplay and was nominated for the Virgin Media Shorts Award. He is a member of a UK’s regional screen agencies ‘Super 8’ - one of eight filmmakers to watch. In 2017, he joined Sarah Kerruish in creating a film about the last week of the Obama Administration. General Magic is his first documentary feature film. At the Tribeca Film Festival, Matt was nominated for the Best New Director Award.
Michael Stern is senior counsel in Cooley’s technology transactions group in Palo Alto. He has practiced law in Silicon Valley for 35 years, working with startups and established companies such as Pixar, NeXT, eBay, Adobe and Cisco.
A former English professor and newspaper reporter, Mike's articles and reviews have run in publications as varied as The American Prospect, Science Fiction Studies, The American Lawyer (where he was a contributing editor), The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle. As an active Dickens scholar, Michael co-endowed a chair in Dickens studies at UC Santa Cruz, where he participates in the Dickens Universe every year. As General Magic’s general counsel, Mike saw the cracks before they came through the ceiling. As the film’s executive producer, Mike connects the legal dots with the financial tees.
"Working at General Magic was an all-consuming, life-changing experience for me. The company was full of the smartest and most creative people I had ever known. It was a story that cried out to be told, something unique amid the routine frenzy of life in Silicon Valley. I carried the ache of the untold tale with me for many years.
That was until Sarah said that it was time to make a film instead. This story could add a whole new perspective to the past by focusing on the subsequent triumphs of the whizkids— the young Magicians and their success over the last twenty years—those who have done so much to make the Magic vision a reality in the present. Best of all, making the movie recapitulated the experience of being there—working with incredibly talented people, forming deep and lasting friendships, walking through walls to ship a final cut. Having two peak experiences like that—how lucky can you get?"
John Giannandrea
Executive Producer
John Giannandrea left General Magic to become one of the first employees at Netscape. Today he is a senior executive at Apple Inc., leading its Machine Learning and AI strategy effort.
Ceridwen Tallett
Co-Producer and Story Creator
D&AD Yellow Pencil winner, Ceri Tallett, is co producer and part of the film’s writing team. Having worked at Pentagram, Apple and an array of leading ad agencies and brands on tone of voice, copywriting and branding, Ceri’s style eye leads the direction of the project’s feel and design.
Claire Ferguson
Senior Editor
Claire Ferguson is a documentary film director and editor. Her previous work includes the award-winning The Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003), The End of The Line (2009) and the Grammy winning A Concert for George (2005). Prior to documentaries, Claire worked in drama features alongside the likes of Terry Gilliam, Mike Leigh, Stanley Kubrick, Richard Attenborough and The Beatles.