Emanuel Altenburger
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Emanuel Altenburger was born in the Tyrol (Austria) in 1982.
He graduated from film school in London, England. Art tutors included Oscar and BAFTA winner Peter Capaldi, Director of Photography John Ward ("The 5th Element", "Final Cut", "Robin Hood", "Full Metal Jacket") and Hong Manley. His graduation film (DoP) stars Joerg Stadler (Saving Private Ryan, Spy Game).
Emanuel organized three very successful youth film festivals in Austria (2002, 2004, 2006); 200 films from 40 nations were entered in the 2006 competition.
Emanuel has worked as a Director and DoP on TV documentaries and magazines for major broadcasters such as Discovery Channel, ARTE, NHK Japan, ZDF, ARD, NHK, ORF, BBC and ServusTV. He has recently also DoP-ed and directed music films for the major classic music label Harmonia Mundi USA.
Tom Monasterios
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Tom Monasterios is a Journalist who graduated from the Central University of Venezuela and film studies at the New York Film Academy. He is the creator of successful radio formats for the most important youth radio stations in the country (92.9 FM, Mega 107.3 FM) and has more than 25 years of experience in Venezuelan media.
Currently, he is the producer and Host of the longest-running morning show on Venezuelan FM radio. (92.9 FM)
He is also the writer and creator of several TV Shows, co-creator and host of the late night show "Dementes Veloces" broadcast by Globovisión.
Chloe Kelsch
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Chloe Kelsch is a 23 year old filmmaker from Tampa, Florida, who has followed her dreams by making short documentaries about cryptozoology, which is the study of "hidden" creatures, such as Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. Her award winning documentary short, The Mothman Chronicles, dives into the unexplained mystery of a creature called the Mothman that terrorized the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in the 1960s.
Chloe graduated the University of Tampa in 2017 with a BA in Film and Media Arts. Currently, Chloe lives in Vancouver, BC, and is attending the Vancouver Film School, studying special effects makeup for film and television.
Core van der Hoeven
Award-Winning Filmmaker
2004 Mamma Mia, documentary; short fillm; script, directing, editing, camera shown at the Dokfest in Kassel 2005, Impakt festival Utrecht 2005
2008 One day in Cologne, short film, directing, editing, shown on the short film festival Hamburg
2009 One day in New York, short film, directing, editing
2010 Ziek(Ill), short film, directing, editing, shown on the impact festival in Utrecht
and the documentary festival in Kassel, Skepto International Film Festival, Cagliari
2012 Rotterdam a film about the post war architecture of the city Rotterdam
shown at the Architecture film festival Rotterdam and the debate: "Economics of Beauty" organized by the "Economic Development board Rotterdam" (EDBR),
5th Budapest Architecture Film Days, Hungary
2017 Core 2.1 Self portret 8 year after a brain abscess which causes a brain injury
Shown at the Dutch Film Festival (het Nederlands Film Festival NFF) in Utrecht
Outstanding achievement award at the Calcutta Cult Film Festival
Liviu Tipurita
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Liviu Tipurita is a Bafta-nominated Director/Producer. He has worked in television for over twenty years with flagship TV documentary strands in the UK and the US – at the BBC (Panorama, This World), CHANNEL 4 (Cutting Edge), ITV, CNN (CNN Presents), NBC (Dateline) and CBS (60 Minutes). He has won numerous prestigious international awards including The George Polk Award, Foreign Press Award and The Royal Television Society Award.
Liviu has a special interest in the Romani Gypsy culture and has made several films focusing on Romanian Gypsies, including: Gypsy Child Thieves, Gypsy Child Brides, Britain’s Child Beggars and The Gypsy Witch.
Born and raised in Transylvania, Liviu moved to the UK at the age of 20 to study Filmmaking. He has been living and working in London for the last 17 years.
Donnie Dodge
Award-Winning Filmmaker
A Professional Firefighter by day, this part-time Sports photographer turns his sights towards history. With a background in radio production, a new camera and a lot of free time, Donnie Dodge makes his initial step towards becoming a Documentary filmmaker.
Lana Marconi
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Lana Marconi, Ph.D., is an independent Canadian Filmmaker from Oakville (Greater Toronto Area). Since 2014, Lana has Written, Directed, and Produced five humanitarian documentary films including her newest called ORENDA. Her other four feature films are called: The Wellness Story; The Resonance; New Human, New Earth, New Humanity; and FEEL: The Waves Of Intelligence.
Her documentaries have won awards from Awareness Film Festival, Los Angeles; IndieFest, La Jolla, California; Mediterranean Film Festival, Cannes; The International Film Festival for Spirituality, Religion, and Visionary, Bali.
Maribel Apuya
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Maribel Apuya is an independent Filipino-American writer and filmmaker born in the Philippines and grew up in Hawaii. She is a graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she was both a Presidential Scholar and a National Science Foundation Scholar.
A former Miss Hawaii Filipina, Maribel spent a decade in New York City training in theater performance. She attended the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, a two-year acting conservatory and worked with renowned theater companies such as SITI Theater, Shakespeare & Company, the Linklater Center, and others. She is an alumnus of UCLA’s Professional Program in Screenwriting, and is currently a graduate student at the University of California at Riverside pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts (Screenwriting) where she was granted the Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellowship Award.
The preservation of the Filipino-American experience in Hawai’i has been a major topic of interest for Maribel, as explored in her series of short films, The Sakada Series. The Sakada Series won an "Award of Merit" from Impact DOCS Awards (2018) for bringing creativity, grit and determination to topics raising awareness around the globe; it also won “Best Documentary Short” from the Honolulu Film Awards (2018) and was granted the “Heritage Award” at the DisOrient Asian American Film Festival of Oregon (2018).
Filmography: The Sakada Series, 2017; recipient of "Award of Merit" from Impact DOCS Awards (2018), "Best Documentary Short" from the Honolulu Film Awards (2018), and the "Heritage Award" at the DisOrient Asian American Film Festival of Oregon (2018).
Jordan Brown
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Jordan Brown is an activist, artist, musician, and independent film-maker whose work focuses on the interface between the dominant culture and the real impact on people, society and the environment. The social and environmental implications of the pervasive technoculture is a current focus of Jordan’s work—specifically, research and development for a film project taking a critical view of today’s culture of screens, the ‘society of the spectacle,’ and the widespread fascination with simulacra facilitated by technology while the real world burns.
Chan Chow Wah
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Chan has a background in anthropology and is a independent film maker. He has produced films from World War Two, Heritage, Religion to Animal Welfare.
"We are not a nuisance!" is based on the real life story of 2 FIV+ cats, Ken Ken and Gold-D he adopted.
Ken Ken was abused while Gold-D was abandoned. Both were lucky to be rescued and went on to found their own brand of cat food Gold-D.
Chan hopes the film can reach out to new audiences to raise the issue of animal abandonment and abuse. The film hopes to promote cat love and to see animals as fellow beings to be loved and cared for.
Onir
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Onir is an Indian lm and TV director, editor, screenwriter and producer. He is best known for his lm My Brother...Nikhil, and has also won the ‘National Award’ for ‘I Am’ in two categories; Best Film and Best Lyrics. Born as Anirban Dhar in Samchi, Bhutan,
Onir spent much of his childhood going to the cinema. Born as Anirban Dhar in Samchi, Bhutan, Onir spent much of his childhood going to the cinema. Earlier, Onir studied comparative literature and took a few lm classes at Chitrabani lm school. He graduated from Jadavpur University in 1989, but left before getting his post-graduate degree when he received a scholarship to study lm editing at SFB/TTC in Berlin. He later returned to India and worked as an editor, scriptwriter, art director, music album producer and song/music video director.
Josh Stafford
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Josh Stafford is a 22-year-old Producer based in London most commonly known for Producing and Directing a wide range of short films ranging from both Narrative to Documentary. Josh also is known for his Directing / AD work on many films and commercials including a Channel 4 Random Acts film in 2017. Having recently graduated from the University Of Gloucestershire studying a BA in Film Production Josh is pushing his way into the industry working on many films and TV Programs including ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ and ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’. Josh looks to create impactful and meaningful content, always working collaboratively with the people around him. Josh has recently been filming in Russia for the Fifa World Cup.
Adam Ybarra
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Growing up in a single parent home, welfare surrounded around by drugs and gangs, to a life of success and influence. Dr. Adam Ybarra has Life-Coached over 1200 professional athletes & coaches. Founded The Tenacious Group, impacted over 350,000 young people in United States and Africa. Dr. Ybarra created the innovative high quality Raising Expectations Standards and Honor 180 (RESH 180) curriculum & DVD designed to set in motion purpose thinking.
Dr. Adam Ybarra has been featured in San Jose Mercury News, Bloomberg.com, Detroit Free Press, Pastors.com and New York Post.
Joanie Fox
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Joanie Fox is a writer/producer/director living in Portland, Oregon that began a career in the arts at the age of 11 dancing with Ballet West. At 17, she moved to Boston to dance professionally with jazz and tap ensemble "Boston Gold" before moving to New York City to perform on Broadway at Radio City Music Hall with "The Wizard of Oz, Live".
From there, Joanie went on to do national tours and off-Broadway productions before studying acting and moving to Los Angeles, where she landed a recurring role on the hit TV Series ER, along with numerous film and TV appearances including Grey's Anatomy, JAG and The Fighting Temptations.
Joanie produced the North American premiere of "Wedding Dress" at Theatre 40 in Los Angeles after being granted the rights by the family of Nelson Rodríguez, Brazil's most prolific writer, poet and playwright. The play received numerous Ovation awards and began her journey into producing. Fox is also the writer of "Skater Boy" with Paramount Pictures and MTV Films and her original screenplay, "Arranging Mia" was an official selection and award winner at the LGBT Toronto Film Festival 2017.
Francescu Artily
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Born in Ajaccio, Corsica, Francescu Artily obtained his secondary school leaving certificate from the French High School of Mexico. He graduated in Art and visual Art at the CAAV (Centre d’Arts Audiovisuels) of Guadalajara in Mexico in 2007. Francescu Artily earned his Master’s Degree in filmmaking from the ESCAC of Barcelona (Ecole Supérieure de Cinéma et d’Audiovisuel de Catalogne) in 2008.
The same year, he wrote and directed Entre-nous (Between Us), his first fictional short-film produced by Escandalo Films based in Barcelona. He has been making documentaries, fictions, investigations and cultural shows as a director of photography and filmmaker for the film industry and TV networks. In 2015, he founded White Chestnut Production, an independent production company that supports contemporary film auteurs and creativity. As part of the company, Francescu Artily produced and directed several films in France and in the United States.
Vaid Prakash Dhar
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Vaid Prakash Dhar has more than 40 years in the field of filmmaking. He has Produced & Directedmore than 180 Documentaries, 6 Tele-Serials, and 12 Tele-Films, about 30 Short-films and more than 25 Tele-Features, besides a huge range of other routine TV Programs.
His award-winning film, In Search of Godawan, is about the lifestyle and other aspects of one of the world’s most endangered species of birds- “The Great Indian Bustard”, locally known as “Godawan” – in the Indian state of Rajasthan.
Andrew Reed
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Andrew is the Assistant Professor of Film & Media Arts at the University of Pikeville in Kentucky. He has had almost 40 film festival screenings worldwide and has made 2 feature length award winning documentaries in addition to numerous shorts.
2018 AWARD-WINNING documentary
FILMMAKERS in the spotlight
Dr. Maria T. Luskay &
Aime Rodriguez Semder
Award-Winning Filmmakers
Dr. Maria T. Luskay: Professor Luskay leads the Media and Communication Arts travel documentary course at Pace University in Pleasantville, New York. The Producing the Documentary course is a well-regarded, award winning program at Pace. It has provided opportunities for many undergraduate and graduate students to broaden their knowledge and skill set in the areas of communications, research, and production. This marks the 15th year that Dr. Luskay has been teaching this course and this is the 15th documentary from that course.
Aime Rodriguez Semder: Started her News 12 career as an intern at News 12 Westchester. Aime was hired after college as an Assignment Desk Editor for News 12 the Bronx and later spent time on the desk at News 12 Long Island as a Planning Editor. She is a graduate of both Pace University's BA and MA in Media and Communication Arts programs.
Quinn Holliday
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Quinn Holliday is one of the world's leading Narcissist Survivor Experts in the field of understanding Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the diabolical behaviours that are associated with the disorder.
Quinn has compiled over 10 years of in depth research and experience in dealing with individuals that have NPD. His accurate and keen understanding of Narcissistic Personality Disorder has allowed him to take the stories of others, along with his own personal experience and share it with the world visually.
Quinn Holliday has found a dynamic way to transfer his expertise to film for visual insight and understanding of what it's like to experience individuals with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
SPOTLIGHT
DOCUMENTARY
FILM AWARDS
Chris Smead
Award-Winning Filmmaker
At this point Chris has logged over 60 treks, mostly in the Sierra. After completing and shooting on the trail, he spent over 500 hours editing, and animating photos from the early 1900’s to help tell the story. The goal: Create an immersive experience with multiple dimensions: The modern experience, some technical aspects, history, and of course a lighthearted human element that’s inherent with any backcountry experience.
Hiromi Takagi
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Hiromi Takagi was born in Karatsu City, Saga Prefecture ,Japan.
After graduation from university, he worked for NET Asahi Productions Co.,Ltd (presently TV Asahi Productions Co.,Ltd ), being involved in production of TV programs. Then he started his career as screenwriter and film director in the education film department of Toei Company, Ltd., dealing with many different social and educational subjects. The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995 made him realize the importance of disaster prevention education and in the same year, he launched Eigakusya Co.,Ltd. He has made a lot of films that featured life-related themes such as disaster prevention and traffic issues. He has won a number of awards in Japanese Educational Film Festival. His representative work “Fire, Smoke, Toxic Gas--- Shinjuku Building Fire” received the top award in the Fuego International Film Festival in Spain in 2004.Director Statement
Joshua Freake
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Joshua Freake is an aspiring filmmaker from Quebec City who is just at the beginning of his young career. He has just finished his second year of Film studies. Having worked on multiple projects, "From Darkness to Light" is his latest and most inspirational to date.
Timothy "Eli" Ruckman
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Timothy "Eli" Ruckman is a film maker from Richmond, Virginia who makes short form content based on technology and it's advances in the modern world. His first film, "Game Changer: Let's Get Physical!" was a passion project as he is an avid video gamer and lover of physical media, two subjects that the film focuses heavily on. The film was was a culmination of a semester's work in a documentary course at his alma matter, Virginia Commonwealth University and was featured in the Richmond International Film Festival.
The Distillery London
Award-Winning Filmmaker
The Distillery London is a London based boutique agency making content, creating conversations and telling great stories. We are Social Filmologists; a collective of Distillers of Great Ideas who work together to produce the best films and tell the strongest stories.
Adela Vrinceanu Celebidachi
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Adela Vrinceanu Celebidachi (1980) has a Bachelor Degree in Law at URA Bucharest and a Master Degree in PR and Communications at David Ogilvy University in Bucharest.
With an experience of over ten years in sales, marketing and fundraising for Ovidiu Ro, she decided to redirect her skills in the film production industry.
She produced the feature film “Octave” which was launched this year (2017).
The submitted documentary “I Am What I Have Learned To Be” represents the directorial debut of Adela.
Nora Große Harmann
Award-Winning Filmmaker
30 years old, born in Muenster, filmmaker and freelance journalist for television and radio. Lives in Leipzig. Did her traineeship at the German public broadcaster “Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk” (MDR). Studied Asian Anthropology and Journalism, graduated with an M.A. in 2015. Latest projects: “Sehnsucht nach Auroville”, “Beziehungsjunkies” (radio reportages), “Mein Gott, ich bin homosexuell!” (documentary for MDR television), "Forever Baby" (documentary, work in progress).
Beeswaranjan Pradhan
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Beeswaranjan Pradhan is a native of a small town of Odisha called Athmallik and has been working in advertising for the last 10 years in Mumbai.
Not formally trained in filmmaking, his passion for storytelling and his background in theatre lead him to pursue the art of filmmaking.
Inspired by the greats of the film world such as, Martin Scorsese and Satyajit Ray, Beeswaranjan wants to tell stories that are more character driven and personal.
Moved by social causes especially for the backward classes lead him to make his first feature length documentary, 'The Tribal Scoop' which took him 3 years to complete. He travelled extensively for the film and the more he met these tribal people, the more interested he became in their lives.
This is his first tryst with feature films with an appetite for many more to come.
David Harp
Award-Winning Filmmaker
David Harp has published five books of photography on the Bay with essays by Tom Horton. His stunning photography has graced the pages of the New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Audubon, Sierra, Natural History, Islands, Travel Holiday, and Coastal Living Magazine. He was the staff photographer for the Hagerstown Morning Herald and the photographer for The Baltimore Sun Magazine during the 1980’s. He is currently the photographer for the Bay Journal. He was awarded the Andrew White Medal by Loyola College of Maryland in 2004 and is past president of the American Society of Media Photographers.
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Marco Torres Walker
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Marco Torres Walker is 20 year experienced photographer. He is the DP in different shorts films like "No Life", "One Night at the Angel's Lair" and "The Crimes of All Hallows' Day" that have visited festivals such as Cannes, Sitges, Morbido or Horrorthon Dublin.
Recently he completed the cinematography of the feature film with the same name based on "The Crimes of All Hallows' Day" short which had just finished postproduction phase. He has also worked in other documentaries and commercials.
Nathan Hughes
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Award winning Writer/Director whose work 'demonstrates a distinctive cinematic and/or artistic vision’ (Encounters Festival 2012). Currently working on a dark comedy drama 'Mourning Glory', from his screenplay developed through London Screenwriters Festival's Talent Campus Initiative 2016, and London Comedy Film Festival’s Kick Start Your Comedy Career Masterclass 2017.
Rebecca Blumhagen
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Rebecca Blumhagen is an actor and filmmaker originally from Van Meter, Iowa. Her award-winning documentary short The Happiness Machine follows a man named Carl who grew up a sharecropper on 22 acres in rural Iowa, which he now calls The Promised Land.
Stefan Haberbosch
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Stefan Haberbosch started to study filmmaking in germany after watching documentaries from Michael Moore. In this time he realised four documentarys about nutrition and buddhism. Since 2014 he works as a cutter and production technician for the austrian broadcaster ORF.
Jeff Zorrilla
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Jeff Zorrilla is an independent filmmaker born in 1984 in the United States. He received his BA in Film and Digital Media at the University of Santa Cruz, California. Then he studied film at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark for a year studying the Dogma 95 movement. Upon completion he moved to New York where he worked in all the different aspects of the film industry. He worked as assistant director for the film New York, I Love You, in distribution at ThinkFilms, and finally worked in the exhibition department at Filmforum as a programming assistant. He soon became disillusioned with the commercial American film industry, so he decided to study psychology at the University of New York while still making independent Super 8 films.
In 2010, Jeff moved to Buenos Aires to pursue his passion for film. Here he met independent filmmakers like Ernesto Baca, Paulo Pecora, and Fernando Dominguez who taught him the particular aspects of filmmaking in Argentina. He continues to live and work in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
He directed many narrative, documentary and experimental short films, all on Super 8.
“Monger” is his first feature-length documentary.
Léo MATTEI
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Léo Mattei has worked as a freelance cameraman and reporter for the 10 last years for various news agencies (AP, AFP) and international channels, also directing his own documentaries. Léo speaks fluent Spanish, English and Hindi/Urdu. He had produced several pieces on the migration issue in Mexico, Central America and Middle East, he covered Libya and Syria conflicts, the people's demonstrations and political crisis in Thailand in 2014, and on the maoist Naxalites’ guerrilla in India (Arte TV). He is now based in Mexico city and has just released a documentary on the disappearing migrants from Central America on their attempt to get across Mexico for french television: "Looking For Lost Migrants."
Steve Wystrach
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Steve Wystrach is a film editor and restoration archivist who lives and works in Los Angeles.
Since bitten by the filmmaking bug in high school, Steve has practiced the art and science of motion picture post-production for over four decades. After graduating from Northwestern University film school, he began work in the commercial editing business in Chicago.
Later moving to Los Angeles, Steve began work as a freelance editor before opening his own post-production studio, Anchor Editorial, where his work garnered international awards, from Clios to Cannes.
Steve helped pioneer some key innovations in editing, post-production and archival method. In the early years of videotape post-production, he wrote one of the earliest computer programs to translate film footage to video timecode. Years later, he was selected as an alpha and beta tester for Avid's first Media Composer.
He has had a long involvement with archival practice and has personally rescued many millions of feet of priceless archival film from destruction, and developed a novel date code chart for accurately dating film.
He continues working as a consultant to large film archives and is the managing archivist of the US Borax Film Archives, which holds over 13,000 objects related to the vintage Death Valley Days television program (1952-1970). As part of that role, he was the executive producer supervising the digital restoration of the entire 452-episode series on behalf of the Library of Congress.
MANRY AT SEA is his first feature-length documentary film.
Will Feagins, Jr.
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Award-winning documentarian Will Feagins, Jr. earned his chops directing music videos for Atlanta indie hip-hop artists. “UNDEREXPOSED: Indie Hip Hop in Atlanta,” Feagins’s visual record of the scene, won Viewer’s Choice and Critics Choice in Creative Loafing’s ATL Short Cuts film contest. “Divided Time”, his look at how artists balance fatherhood and creativity, screened at the Atlanta Film Festival, BronzeLens, BlackStar and National Black Theatre Film Festival, amongst others. Feagins’s most recent work 2018’s “The Possibility of Her”, is currently screening at festivals across the country, while his music videos for artists such as Sha Stimuli, mikeflo (of Dead Prez), Noel Gourdin, Lyric Jones, Supastition, J-Live and Boog Brown continue to earn YouTube views.
Sergio García Locatelli
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Lima, Perú 1978. Graduated from the School of Communications at the University of Lima. Diploma in Screenplay and Direction of Documentary Film by the Madrid Film Institute (NIC). Screenplay studies at the School of Writers. Director of the documentary Internal Outskirts (2009), It's in your Eyes (2011), 9546 km. (2013), Our Own Sri Lanka (2015), Solari (2016) and Bread of Life (2016). All his films have received awards at international festivals and have been broadcast on TV in Spain, Italy and Brazil.
Currently he is carrying out the documentary project "Take a Walk" in advanced development. This film has participated in Meeting Doc Buenos Aires, Bolivia Lab, Talents Buenos Aires, Santiago Alvarez in Memoriam and in the Laboratory of FICBAQ Festival of Barranquilla.
Loraine Blumenthal
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Loraine Blumenthal is a documentary film maker from Berlin, Germany and graduated in theatre- and film studies, sociology and French literature in 2010. In 2012 she received her Master of Arts degree in Documentary Practice at the University of Bristol. Loraine has worked for TV-Channels such as ARTE and documentary production companies such as Avanti Media and Medienkontor. She was involved in film projects in Morocco, France, Vietnam and England. Mapi Liberia
(2009) was her first, mid-length documentary film, which was shown at national and international festivals. Loraine then has been working as a producer at Kloos & Co Medien, one of Germany's most active documentary companies on an international level and as head of research for Boekamp & Kriegsheim.
Alex GOHARI
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Alex Gohari worked as a video reporter for France Télévisions (2009-2017), living in Mexico for three years on. Alex speaks fluent Spanish, English and Persian, and already has a great experience in directing and producing too. He co-directed the « Looking For Lost Migrants" Arte documentary with Léo Mattei, and also produced his own pieces, such as the following one: "Les petites mains de Téhéran" on the illegal Afghan workers in Iran, in 2011, for Arte TV. Alex is also used to contributing to a great number of reports and films shot in Mexico as a fixer, such as "The devil's avocados" produced for the French Television’s "Envoyé Spécial" program, on the avocado agroindustry in Michoacan and the tensions created by the narcos' intrests for such a business and the self-defence militias founded to
resist them.
Steve Cale
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Steve Cale is a 21 year old cinematographer that, through the love of an idea, took up directing for the first time on his documentary short, B-Boy. Once arriving at the University of Gloucestershire he took roles outside of the camera department to further his understanding of other elements of film. Later in his degree he began to focus on cinematography and has maintained working in the camera department before directing B-Boy. Through his passion for sport and dance and telling stories through a lens, B-Boy was created. Following the completion of his degree, Steve plans to venture into the film industry and build a career as a cinematographer - hopefully specialising in sports cinematography.
Lei Chiu
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Lei Chiu (aka Li Chao) joined the stuntmen training course organized by Shaw Brothers and TVB in the late 1960s. After graduation, he worked as stuntman and actor under the choreography team of Tong Kai and Lau Kar Leung, participating in many Shaw Brothers productions, including films by director Lo Chen and martial-arts master Chang Cheh. Beginning in 1973, during the height of a martial-arts boom, he worked as action choreographer and actor on a number of low-budget action films in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Lee made his directorial debut in 1978 with the action film Ways of Kung- Fu, featuring the martial-arts star Chi Kuan-chun, who also invested on the film. The following year Lee formed Chao Lik Films, serving as producer and director on the kung-fu film Cantonese Iron Kung Fu (1979), starring Bryan Leung. Lee later directed many action films as well as the social realist film The Way To Hell (1980) and the gangster film Struggle For Leader (1983). In 1992 Lee started working in Mainland China, directing martial arts films such as Martial Arts Master Wong Fei Hung (1992), Kung Fu Kid (1994) and 3 Kung Fu Kids (1995).
John Long
Award-Winning Filmmaker
John Long is an up-and-coming filmmaker from North Carolina. His recent documentary short Two Days with Papou follows a series of reflective conversations with his grandfather, creating a story that’s both personal and universal in its discussions of love, loss, and those moments in between.
Mikael Lypinski
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Mikael was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden.
He graduated from the Directing Department of The Polish National Film School in Lódz, Poland.
Mikael has directed several fiction shorts, music videos and 200 commercials worldwide for major international brands.
"Desert Coffee" is Mikael's debut medium-length documentary. It premiered at the Krakow Film Festival to major critical acclaim and was part of the Official Selection at the American Documentary Film Festival in Palm Springs. The film was awarded a Gold Award at the Spotlight Documentary Film Awards 2018.
Mikael divides his time between Stockholm and Warsaw. He is an ardent traveller and photographer.
Stephen Linstead
Award-Winning Filmmaker
I studied English as an undergraduate and postgraduate in the UK and gained experience as a musical performer, with touring, TV and radio experience, also working in a variety of manual jobs. I moved into the social sciences taking a second Master's degree and PhD in industrial anthropology in 1984. I have played a leading role in introducing new methods into the field of management and organization studies, including those based on affect, music and poetry and in 2013 I trained in the handheld tradition to make films for fieldwork at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester.
Ladan Sahraei
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Ladan Sahraei the first Deaf filmmaker in Iran. She settles in Vancouver, B.C. from Tehran, Iran on July 2014. She has directed 6 short films and got few awards for her achievement in Iran.
From what she has seen in Canada and there seems a lacking enthusiasm of biography for Deaf in Canada. It is her first time to make a documentary film in Canada.
Dr. Jennifer Camota Luebke
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Dr. Jennifer Camota Luebke is co-founder and CEO of the not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization Ability Revolution, Inc., The mission is to advance authentic inclusion in workplaces, educational institutions, and communities.
"You Can Be Brave" is an Ability Revolution film in collaboration with Jaime Espiritu of Collaborate Films.
Jennifer has over 25 years of leadership, coaching, teaching, and sales experience in Fortune 1000 companies, higher education, and nonprofit organizations. Her volunteer board service includes organizations that advance disability rights, diversity and inclusion, women in leadership, social entrepreneurship, and education. In 2017, her academic research and extensive volunteer work in disability advocacy was recognized with a Jefferson Award for Public Service. "You Can Be Brave" is Jennifer's first film about dis(ABILITY) inclusion.
Dr. Maria T. Luskay
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Leads the Media and Communication Arts travel documentary course. “Each of these documentary projects presents unique challenges. We think we know what we’re going to shoot and the direction that the film is going to take, but what actually happens once we get there can be entirely different. Agility is needed to stay true to the original theme but remain open to what the reality is. This gives the students real-world experience in documentary film-making that will serve them well in their careers.”
Robert Fritz
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Robert Fritz studied composition and theater at the The Boston Conservatory of Music where he earned a BM and MM in composition. He also studied on scholarship at the Darmstadt Institute (Germany) for New Music.
As a filmmaker, Fritz studied cinematography at the Rockport Workshops, and directing with Jim Pasternak. Fritz has directed many theater productions. He also has made documentaries for government, industry, and television, has written and directed seven feature films and two dramatic shorts. He has directed and co-hosted Creating (a TV series made for a Canadian Network), directed episodes of the PBS series LeaderTalk with Garrison Krause, for which he also composed the theme music. Fritz wrote and directed the TV series Vermont Stories. He created She Was A Dancer, a multi –media work commissioned for the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center. His films have won over 90 awards from film festivals over the world. His credits include the feature films Chasing Rainbows, Past Tense, Twice, and Overload. His short films include that dramatic love story AKT 2, A Visit (2018), and documentaries of several artists. His latest feature film is a documentary Party On The Moon (2018.) His stage play I Used To Have This Cat premiered at the River Rock Players October 2017.
Christopher Wallace
Award-Winning Filmmaker
As a grad student at Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, I always try to make creative, original, and entertaining content throughout my works. I learned a lot in my undergraduate with a bachelor's of cinema studies what makes a great story. Throughout my years of learning and understanding different techniques in filmmaking, I'm now using different programs and adapting to new changes. Documentaries have always been a challenge for me because it was such a new genre I wasn't use to. However, after traveling to Iowa, with a Canon C100 and a monopod, I knew the story would come along the way, and I was happy with the result.