“HIGH”
TISHA ROBINSON-DALY AND JONATHAN MASON
Drama
Scaling life defying telecom towers fueled on cigarettes and little sleep is how Butch Robbins and his nomadic crew make a living. But the aftermath of a freak accident sends Butch on a downward spiral, away from the connections he needs most—his wife Maya and their 9-year-old daughter Olive.
Tisha Robinson-Daly is a writer and director from Maryland, who lives in a suburb of Philadelphia. She has written, directed, and produced several short films and is a SAGindie honoree, a Sundance Institute and Knight Foundation Fellow, a recipient of two Sundance/Knight Production and Development grants, and is a Stowe Story Labs Alumna. In 2020, Tisha was invited to the Stowe Story Lab Writers Retreat with High. That same year, the project was accepted into the Sundance Collab Director’s Workshop. A telecommunications worker herself, Tisha is also an activist in the field and the writer, director, and producer of the episodic series High Climber Stories, a twelve-episode series that advocates for and chronicles the lives of tower climbers. In 2020, The Hubble Foundation collaborated with Tisha to create the six-episode series, In Their Own Words, which allows those who have been directly affected by the dangers within the climbing community to tell their stories. Both shows air monthly on Phillycam, a Philadelphia public access station, along with Vimeo, Facebook, IGTV, and streams on the Higher Than 7 network.
Jonathan Mason is a filmmaker raised in Paris, France, now based in Philadelphia. After earning his MFA from Columbia University's School of the Arts, he served as Creative Director for Belladonna Productions (Jim Mickle's Stakeland and Cold in July, Afia Nathaniel's Dukhtar, Richard Laxton's An Englishman in New York) and co-founded New York-based production service company Bullet Pictures (Abel Ferrara's 4:44 Last Day On Earth, and Welcome to New York). A fellow alumnus of the Sundance Institute and IFP writers programs, his work typically explores themes of cultural identity. He is currently developing several projects with Oscar-nominated writer/producer Braulio Mantovani (City of God) and his debut feature collaboration with activist/filmmaker Tisha Robinson-Daly. Mason teaches screenwriting and film production at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ, and plays in the Philly soul band PJ Brown & Her Resistance.
