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CRAIG STRONG has spent 30 years in the theater as a director,
producer, actor and administrator.
His focus has historically been on the production of new plays and
running theater and dance festivals.
In the Wake is the first
film he has directed.
TAMARIND KING first discovered digital animation while visiting
the Intel Computer Clubhouse, a community center in Albuquerque. After learning to animate in Macromedia
Flash, she set out to make as many short films as possible before college,
submitting these films to festivals nationwide, and putting any prize money
toward film education. Tamarind is
currently interning at Channel 27, Albuquerque, and teaches an animation
workshop at the Clubhouse.
MICHAEL CASTRO is a truly independent filmmaker. With no formal training and only his
own experience from three prior films, he set out to make Truelove with no
financial backing and no professional assistance. With an all-amateur cast and crew and makeshift equipment
(the microphone boom is a hockey stick!), Castro wrote, directed, filmed and
edited Truelove over the course of 18 months.
JONATHAN ARI YUDIS graduated with a BFA from New York University Tisch
School of the Arts and Film. His
completed short films included: “Perpetual Descent: A Living Holocaust”,
“Racist Hero”, Eclipse”, (Producer) and “Union”. After a four month pilgrimage through the Indian and Tibetan
Himalayan Mountains, Jonathan created and directed a multi media performance
piece exploring the evolution of GAIA: the living Earth, entitled:
“Sunflowers”.
Following a move to Los
Angeles, he directed the live action production on Walt Disney’s “Pocahontas
II: Journey to a New World” and in 1998, became a Directing Fellow at the
American Film Institute, from which he graduated from in 2000 with a Masters
Degree. In 1999, Jonathan produced
and directed his first feature film: “Hands” a documentary exploring the
millennial vision at the 1999 ‘Burning Man’ performing Arts festival. Following “HANDS” was the production of
his thesis film for AFI, “Spirit Rising”.
He has continued his directorial career and currently resides in Los
Angeles with his wife and two children.
SCOTT AND PAULA MERROW recently retired from previous careers, Scott after
30 years in the Air Force, and Paula after 25 years as a medical speech
pathologist. The Merrows write
screenplays together as a team.
Individually, they write short fiction, primarily for children and young
adults. Their first
screenplay, “ A Piece of Pie”, won the 2006 New Mexico Governor’s Cup Short
Screenplay Competition.. The film,
directed by Janet Davidson, has been screened at several film festivals
nationwide, including the International Family Film Festival in Hollywood where
it was named best short comedy film.
Their short screenplay, “The Spider Experiment,” won the 2007 Duke City
Shootout short screenplay competition.
The movie was produced in July 2007 with Scott and Paula directing. It features a cast of four ten-year-old
kids from Albuquerque and was shot and edited in seven days with an
all-volunteer crew.
ERIN
HUDSON is a producer, director,
cinematographer, editor and educator and a freelance filmmaker and videographer
for local and national organizations. Her priority is to share stories with
depth, dignity and respect. She received her graduate degree in Documentary
Film and Video from Stanford University and is originally from Albuquerque but
currently based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her most recent project, In
Place Out of Time, is a 50-minute
documentary portrait of Hillsboro, New Mexico's life-long resident and rock art
photographer, Embree "Sonny" Hale.
BILL
PLYMPTON grew up in a large family in Oregon. He credits it’s rainy climate for nurturing his drawing skills and
imagination. At Portland State University, he edited the yearbook and was a
member of the film society, creating posters for them. It was here where he
picked up his obsession for film and where he first attempted animation, making
a yearbook promo that was accidentally shot upside-down, rendering it totally
useless. In
1968, he moved to New York City and began a year of study at the School of
Visual Arts. Between toting his portfolio and catching cheap matinees, he
designed for numerous magazines including Vogue, The Village Voice, and Vanity Fair. His cartoons
appeared in such magazines as Rolling Stone and National Lampoon.. In 1975 he began "Plympton," a
political cartoon strip. By 1981, it was syndicated in over twenty papers. It
wasn't until 1983 that he was approached to animate a film. The
Android Sister Valeria Wasilewski asked Plympton to direct and animate a film
she was producing of Jules Feiffer's song, "Boomtown." Immediately
following the completion of "Boomtown," Plympton began his own animated
film, "Drawing Lesson # 2." Production was
slow due to inclement weather, so Plympton decided to start another film. For
this one, he contacted Maureen McElheron, an old friend with whom he had
performed in a Country Western Band. She agreed to score "Your Face” and
due to budgetary considerations, she also sang. Her voice, eerily decelerated
to sound more masculine, combined with a fantastically contorting visage helped
garner the film a 1988 Oscar nomination for Best Animated short.
Plympton became hot in the commercial business and after a string of short films he began
thinking about making a feature film and what
came to be called THE TUNE was financed entirely by the animator himself. After
THE TUNE, Plympton moved to live-action and made J. LYLE, his first live-action
feature, a wacky, surreal comedy about a sleazy lawyer who meets a magical
talking dog that changes his life. In
1998, Bill returned to animation with I MARRIED A STRANGE PERSON and again
single-handedly drew and financed the animated feature extravaganza - only this
time for adults and the politically incorrect. It was released by Lions Gate
Films and still plays today on cable TV.
MUTANT ALIENS, was completed in January 2001 and
premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and Plympton's HAIR HIGH, was completed in 2004 and will soon be out on DVD. Bill’s
short film GUARD DOG brought Bill his second Oscar nomination and two
equally successful sequels soon followed, "Guide Dog" in 2006 and
"Hot Dog" in 2008. His new feature film, IDIOTS AND ANGELS, will be
released sometime in 2008. Featuring the music of Tom Waits, Moby and Pink
Martini, it's much darker and more mysterious than his previous
comedies.
MARY LANCE is an award-winning filmmaker with more than 25
years experience in documentaries. Her film AGNES MARTIN: WITH MY BACK TO THE
WORLD has been shown widely in the USA and abroad. DIEGO RIVERA: I PAINT WHAT I SEE was awarded a jury prize at the Biennial of Films on Art at
the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, A Gold Plaque at the Chicago Int’l. Film
Festival, and other awards. Her
current project, BLUE ALCHEMY: STORIES OF INDIGO is about indigo, the blue
dye—its connections to history, folklore, and uses in sustainable development.
BONNIE BURT has been documenting Jewish life for
20 years. Her videos have been seen at the Museum of Modern Art and at Lincoln
Center in New York as well as in film festivals world wide and on television.
She lives in the Bay Area with her husband and son.
LAURA BIALIS says in her Director's statement "My Refusenik journey began with interviewing the American activists, some of who dedicated thirty years of their lives to the struggle. They had been students, housewives, businessmen...but every waking hour of their personal lives had been taken with activism. Remembering the days of the Cold War and what the USSR represented, I could hardly imagine my parents leaving their children for a two-week "vacation" in the Soviet Union. Yet these individuals did precisely that... These people became my heroes and the telling of their story became the challenge of my career. We conducted 180 interviews for this film across the United States, the former Soviet Union, Canada and Israel. The film is told without a narrator, by the voices of the activists and Rufuseniks themselves".
RALPH BAKSHI is a director
of animated and occasionally live-action films. He started
his career as a cel polisher at the Terrytoons studio, working his way up to inker, then animator, and eventually to direct animated
television shows for the studio. Bakshi started his own studio in 1968 and made his debut feature film, FRITZ THE CAT in
1972. The film was followed by HEAVY TRAFFIC and COONSKIN.
All three films were controversial for their approach to
animation. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Bakshi made AMERICAN POP and the fantasy
film WIZARDS; and FIRE AND ICE with fantasy painter Frank Frazetta; as well as the first
film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS, a film that laid
the groundwork for future adaptations of the book. In the mid-1980s, Bakshi
returned to his roots in TV cartoons with THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MIGHTY MOUSE and the animated specials CHRISTMAS IN TATTERTOWN and THE BUTTER BATTLE BOOK, based on the writing of Dr. Seuss. Though he has continued his work in cartooning and animation and his films have been ranked among the greatest animated films of all time, Ralph has been focused on his fine art painting of late and has had several gallery exhibitions. Recently UNFILTERED, a book about his life and career
was released by Rizzoli Books.
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