Sharon Bartlett and Maria LeRose (in attendance)

Beyond Memory
Award winning producers/directors Sharon Bartlett and Maria LeRose share a commitment to create programs that refl ect the realities of peoples’ lives. They have worked as a team for almost twenty years and have completed nine biographies for the CBC series Life & Times, a Knowledge Network documentary series on Child and Youth Mental Health, and numerous other documentaries that tell the stories of ordinary people who live through extraordinary life events.

Håkan Berthas

Thin Ice
Born in 1958, Håkan Berthas studied at the New York International Centre of Photography and has worked as a photographer and cameraman for film and television. Since 1998 he has directed several films and documentaries for Swedish television. His work has won several awards, including the 2005 European CIVIS television prize for directing the documentary Nabila, a profile of a popular Muslim female rapper living in Sweden.

Barri Cohen (in attendance)

Toxic Trespass
Barri Cohen is a Toronto writer, editor and filmmaker. Her work includes acclaimed and award-winning documentary series for television focused on social justice issues, health and the environment. Since 2001, she has produced and directed for Breakthrough Films over 30 hours of verite television including the multiple Gemini-nominated series Family Dance: Tales from the Sandwich Generation; Heartbeats, on women in health crisies; and Situation Critical, hour-long documentaries on trauma room medicine. She was the lead director on the ground-breaking series Little Miracles, about the Hospital for Sick Children. Her 2003 film Dove Days: Journeys With Pakistan’s Insan Street Theatre, premiered to critical acclaim at the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival. Her first film, Not Yet Diagnosed (1997) won multiple prizes at U.S. Film Festivals, including a Chris Award from the prestigious Columbus Film Festival. From 1993 to 1998, Cohen was editor, critic and policy analyst of Point of View Magazine, Canada’s singular journal of the independent documentary scene, and since 2004, she has functioned as its publisher. Cohen is currently producing and directing the second season of Crimes of Passion for Summhill TV and the W Network.

Maya Gallus (in attendance)

Girl Inside
Maya Gallus directed, wrote and co-produced her first film, the award winning documentary Elizabeth Smart: On the Side of Angels in 1991. It won Best Production, Best Documentary and Best Editing at the 1991 Yorkton Golden Sheaf Awards, as well as Best Narration at the 1991 Atlantic Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Direction at the 1992 Gemini Awards. Her feature-length documentary Erotica: a Journey into Female Sexuality was nominated for a Genie Award and Best Arts documentary at the 1998 Hot Docs. With co-producer Justine Pimlott she has produced the award winning reality series Punch Like a Girl and feature documentary Fag Hags.

Malcolm Guy (in attendance) and Eylem Kaftan

Bledi, This is Our Home/Bledi, mon pays est ici
Malcolm Guy is a Montreal-based director/producer of documentaries and fiction films and is President and co-founder of Productions Multi-Monde. He has co-directed the feature-length documentaries Rebel Music Americas, Turbulent Waters, Pressure Point: Inside the Montreal Blockade and The Suit War. Malcolm has produced several award-winning films, is active in the independent film community and sits on a number of Boards of Directors.

Eylem Kaftan was born in Turkey and completed a Masters degree in Cinema at York University in 2002. Her first documentary, Faultlines, investigates the aftermath of the earthquake which hit Turkey in 1999. It won Best Short Film and the Jury Prize at the Planet Indie Film Festival in Toronto. Eylem then wrote and directed Vendetta Song (2005), about her personal journey into the honor-killing of her aunt in a small Kurdish village in Turkey. It has received several awards including CIDA Prize for Best Canadian Documentary on International Development at Hot Docs and the Quebec Film Critics Association Award for Best Medium Length Documentary, among others. Eylem is presently working on her new documentary on Kurdish youth.

Patricio Guzmán

The Pinochet Case/El Caso Pinochet
Multiple award-winning filmmaker Patricio Guzmán was drawn to documentaries as an adolescent growing up in Chile in the late 1950’s. He studied filmmaking in Chile and Madrid. When he returned to Chile in 1971 he directed his first documentary, The First Year (which covered the first 12 months of Salvador Allende’s government), which was shown in commercial theaters that very year. He was filming The Battle of Chile up until the very day of the coup d’etat that removed Allende from power. Guzmán was imprisoned for 15 days in Chile’s National Stadium, after which he relocated to Europe where he has continued to make documentaries, many of them focusing on Chilean concerns. Guzmán has been a professor of documentary film at various schools in Europe and Latin America. Since 1997, he has been the Director of the Santiago Documentary Film Festival.

Bregtje van der Haak

Saudi Solutions
Bregtje van der Haak is a political scientist, journalist and documentary maker. Since 1994, she has been making programs for the public broadcasting network. For VPRO, she makes documentaries for Tegenlicht (Backlight), DNW-Rooksignalen uit De Nieuwe Wereld (Smoke Signals from the New World) and Laat op de avond na een korte wandeling (Late in the evening after a short walk), among others. She graduated from the University of Amsterdam in political science and law and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Her television career began on “The Charlie Rose Show” in New York. Since 1990, she has written about art, media and culture. In 2002, Bregtje van der Haak, in cooperation with architect Rem Koolhaas and The Harvard Project on the City, made Lagos/Koolhaas, a documentary on self-organization and urbanization in Nigeria.

Ido Haar

9 Star Hotel/Malon 9 Kohavim
Ido Haar was born in 1974 in Jerusalem. He is a graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film School, Jerusalem. The short films Step by Step and Tricks, which he directed as a student, participated in the Wolgin Competition of the Jerusalem Film Festival and in film festivals around the world. Recently he has been working as a therapeutic guide at Summit, a psychosocial rehabilitation institute for adolescents in Jerusalem. His first feature-length documentary, Melting Siberia, received a Special Mention at the Jerusalem Film Festival 2004.

Avi Hershkovitz and Sharon Hammou

Galil: A School With No Walls/Galil: Beit Sefer Lelo Homotis
Galil: A School With No Walls/Galil: Beit Sefer Lelo Homotis is Avi Hershkovitz and Sharon Hammou’s second feature length documentary. Their first film, Fantasy-Another Country (1999) is the story of Samy Gaber, a Palestinian, and Michael Shimon, a Yemenite Jew, who put together a Drag show in Tel Aviv. The film was shown on Belgian television and participated in the Haifa International Film Festival, in DocAviv and in many Film Festivals around the world. The directors also participated in the film series Hunger with the short video Reality Show (2003). The series was screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

Blandine Huk (in attendance)
A Sunday in Pripyat

Blandine Huk is a journalist and historian specializing in Central and Eastern Europe. She worked with Frederic Cousseau on the film Sakhaline before their collaboration on A Sunday with Pripyat.

Allan King

EMPz 4 Life
One of Canada’s leading filmmakers, Allan King’s career began in CBC in 1956 with Skidrow, a favourite of John Greirson. King moved to Ibiza in 1958, then opened a London studio in 1961, producing documentaries for the BBC, PBS, CBC and Bayerische Rundfunk. Acclaimed by Jean Renoir, King’s Warrendale, a film about emotionally disturbed children, won the Priz d’art et d’essai at Cannes, the British and the New York Critics’ Award in 1967. A Married Couple, described by the New York Time’s critic Clive Barnes as “quite simply one of the best films I have ever seen,” was featured at Cannes in 1970. He has also produced and directed an extensive body of fiction films including Who Has Seen the Wind, Paris Grand Prix winner. His other films, including 2004’s Dying at Grace, have been featured in international retrospectives. In 2003 King was named an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Jean-Daniel Lafond

American Fugitive: The Truth about Hassan
Born in France, Jean-Daniel Lafond is a former philosophy professor, a documentary filmmaker and a writer. He has written and directed over a dozen films that embody his commitment to creative documentary filmmaking: Dream Tracks (Les traces du rêve) (1986), Le Voyage au bout de la route (1987), Le Visiteur d’un soir (1989), La Manière Nègre ou Aimé Césaire, chemin faisant (1991), Tropic North (Tropique Nord), Freedom Outraged (La Liberté en colère) (1994), Haiti in All Our Dreams (Haïti dans tous nos rêves) (1995), Last Call for Cuba (L’Heure de Cuba) (1999), The Barbarian Files (Le Temps des barbares) (1999), Salam Iran, A Persian Letter (Salam Iran, une lettre persane) (2001), Le Faiseur de théâtre (2002), The Cabinet of Dr. Ferron (Le Cabinet du Docteur Ferron) (2003), American Fugitive: The Truth about Hassan (2006). He is married to the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada, and is actively involved in the activities of the office.

Morgan Matthew

Quitters
Morgan Matthew’s previous directing credits include My Crazy Parents and Taxidermy: Stuff The World, which was nominated for an RTS as well as a BAFTA. Since 2005 he has been working with the independent production company Bast! Films as a Producer/Director. He is currently working on a series for BBC2.

Yuki Nakamura (in attendance)

No More Hiroshima, No More Nagasaki
Yuki Nakamura was born in Tokyo, and moved to Canada in 1989 to study at York University’s Faculty of Fine Arts. Since graduation, she has gone on to work as a free-lance reporter, anchor, and associate producer. No More Hiroshima, No More Nagasaki is her first documentary.

Jordan Paterson (in attendance)

Os Tres de Portugal/The Three of Portugal
Jordan Paterson is a Vancouver based writer, musician and filmmaker whose award winning documentary and experimental films have screened in film festivals such as the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Montreal World Film Festival. Jordan is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s Film program and has worked for many years as a media producer with not for profit organizations in Vancouver and BC. In 2006 Jordan was selected to participate in the NFB-Praxis “Art of the Documentary” workshop with Allan King and Thomas Redelsheimer. As an editor, he has assisted on feature length documentaries including Werner Herzog’s My Best Fiend, and Lou Nelson’s portrait of local artist Jeff Wall. Jordan and his partner Natasha are the founders of Andorinha Films, a production company devoted to documentary and ethnographic film.

Katarina Peters

Stroke
Born in Hamburg, Katarina Peters has lived in Berlin since 1981. She has studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (Sculpture, Film, Performance) and the Berlin University of the Arts (Visual Communication). She operated Katarina Peters Filmproduktion from1990-98, has worked in management for film and television production studios in Berlin, and has been a sound engineer and set designer for theater, film and television productions. Several of her films have screened internationally.

Justine Pimlott (in attendance)

Justine Pimlott's directorial debut Laugh In The Dark, won the Best Social Issue Documentary Award at the 2000 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and Best Canadian Film at the Inside Out Film & Video Festival in Toronto. Since producing and directing Laugh In The Dark, Justine has gone on to direct several episodes of the reality series, Fire Station, for the Discovery Channel, and Chasing The Dream, a pre-Olympic one hour special for CBC Sports on international women's hockey. In 2003 Justine co-produced and co-directed the critically acclaimed 6 part reality series on women's boxing for the Life Network, entitled Punch Like A Girl, which received two Gemini nominations for Best Direction in a Documentary series. In 2005 Justine directed Fag Hags: Women Who Love Gay Men, winner of the Audience Award for Best Film at the Inside Out Film & Video Festival and the Audience Award for Best Canadian Film at the Reel Out Festival. Recently Justine produced Girl Inside, a feature length documentary directed by Maya Gallus.

Morvary Samaré and Astrid Schau-Larsen (in attendance)

Remains/Skyggenes Dal
Morvary Samaré was born in Iran, 1981. She grew up in Sweden and has studied poltics and economics at the University of Lund. She also studied film in Denmark in 2004/05. Moment of Fury, her short film debut, has been screened at different festivals on human rights.

Astrid Schau-Larsen was born in Bergen, 1981. She studied religion, economics and Middle-East studies at the University of Bergen. She studied film in Denmark in 2004/05 and made Moment of Fury with Morvary.

Nima Sarvestani

Iranian Kidney Bargain Sale
Nima Sarvestani started his career as a journalist in Iran and has been concentrating on documentary filmmaking since moving to Sweden in 1984. Focusing on social and political issues, he is inspired by those who fight passionately for their cause. Iranian Kidney Bargain Sale is his latest production.

Patricia Tassinari (in attendance)

Unbuckling My Bible Belt
Patricia Tassinari has worked in the Canadian film industry and in Québec as a director, writer and editor. She wrote and directed two half hour dramas: Goodbye Federico, about a woman’s surreal obsession with Federico Fellini, which won the Golden Sheaf, best Canadian short (Yorkton) and Paul and Christina, a powerful short about memory loss. She directed Broken Promises, a documentary about the forced relocation of a small group of Inuit families from Northern Quebec, which won the Public’s Choice Award (Far North Film Festival) and Special Mention (Pordenone Film Festival, Italy). She scripted and co-directed The Québec -Canada Complex, a docu-drama about a married couple representing Canada and Quebec, awarded Best Documentary by the CAJ (Canadian Association of Journalists). She has edited all of her own films and many award-winning productions for the National Film Board of Canada and independent companies.

Jeff and Sue Turner (in attendance)

The Edge of Eden: Living with Grizzlies
Jeff and Sue Turner are a Canadian husband and wife wildlife filmmaking team that have been making films professionally for the past 20 years for BBC, CBC, PBS, Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel. They have written, directed, produced and photographed more than twenty films in that time and have won numerous awards for their work including a British Academy Award Nomination. Their films have been seen around the world in over 40 countries from Singapore to South Africa and from Portugal to Peru. They work with wild animals in wilderness settings and some of their film projects have included the white Ghost Bears of coastal BC; the grizzly bear in Canada, Alaska and the lower 48 states; wolves and buffalo in Wood Buffalo National Park; wolves and caribou in the high Arctic and in the barrenlands; as well as ravens, black bears, cougars and many others. Jeff and Sue have a strong connection to bears, producing six different films on bears since 1991.

Gereon Wetzel

Castells
Gereon Wetzel was born in Germany in 1972 and received an M.A. in Prehistory and Archaeology at the Heidelberg University. In 2000 he began his studies at the Munich Filmschool in the department of documentary studies. Castells is his graduation project. Several of his films have screened at the Munich International Documentary Festival.

María Elena Wood

The General’s Daughter/La Hija del General
A journalist from Universidad Católica de Chile, María Elena Wood has worked as an editor, columnist and adviser in content development for diverse communication media. She has lead programming projects for major Chilean television broadcasters and pay TV channels. The numerous challenges she has taken on include implementation of the Research and Development department of Televisión Nacional de Chile (TVN, 2001 -2003), executive production of the documentary series Our Century (1999), and executive co-production of the feature film El Último Grumete de la Baquedano (1982).