True Adolescents marks Craig's feature film writing and directing debut. His short films include Maui, The Trachtenburg Family Easter Special, and Vivian Campbell's Daydream-1964. He is the co-author of the feature scripts The Skeleton Twins (2007 Sundance Writer's Lab Finalist) and Working Stiffs, now in development with Benderspink (American Pie, A History Of Violence). His feature script, Alex Strangelove, is currently under development by Furnace Films as his next directing project.
In May 2008 Craig received his MFA from New York University's graduate film program, where he was awarded a Clive Davis Award for Excellence in Music in Film and a Graduate Assistantship in Editing. He has edited numerous short films and also teaches directing and editing to teenagers in New York City.
Prior to moving to New York in 2002, Craig worked as a writer, director, and actor in the Seattle theater scene. He was a member of the popular sketch comedy troupe KAZOO and was a Science Demonstrator at the Pacific Science Center, where he developed and wrote interactive science shows. He holds a BA in Theater from The University of Washington and played Macbeth at age 10. He is the only Macbeth with braces on record.
Thomas is currently in post-production on Bass Ackwards, a feature film written and directed by Linas Phillips (Walking To Werner). Together with his Furnace Films partner Jennifer Lee, he is also in development on a number of projects, including the comedy feature Alex Strangelove, Craig Johnson's follow-up to True Adolescents. His television credits include episodes of Made for MTV and commercials for J. Walter Thompson.
Thomas's first feature was Shadows, written and directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Milcho Manchevski. A five-country co-production with participation from Italy, Germany, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Spain, Shadows premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007 and is currently rolling out in theaters across the globe.
A graduate of New York University's film school, Thomas is a two-time winner of the Wasserman Award in Producing and the recipient of both the Steven J. Ross Fellowship and the Evalee C. Schwarz Fellowship. He graduated from Yale University with a degree in Humanities.
Independent Spirit Award nominee for Producer of the Year Gill Holland has worked on over 50 films, including Sundance faves Flow: For Love Of Water, Adventures Of Power, Spring Forward, Loggerheads, triple-winner Hurricane Streets, the FOX sitcom Greg the Bunny, the Spirit Award winner and first carbon-neutral independent film Sweetland, Al Gore's 2008 Reel Current Award winner Mountain Top Removal, and the Emmy-nominated Dear Jesse. He produced three volumes of cineBLAST!, the short film compilations. He is partner at The Group Entertainment, the KY/NYC management/production company.
Emanuel Michael is the founder and president of Unison Films. Most recently, he produced and distributed The Elephant King, featuring Academy Award winner Ellen Burstyn. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival before going on to a theatrical release that earned the Number 1 US box office per screen average in its opening weekend.
Emanuel also produced the Miramax release Eagle Vs. Shark and The Dreams Of Fish (Sonhos De Peixe), which won the Prix Regards Jeune at Cannes. His upcoming releases include Tonight At Noon, directed by Michael Almereyda and starring Ethan Hawke, Connie Nielsen, Lauren Ambrose, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Joan Chen, and Rutger Hauer; and Sundance Lab Project Tiny Dancer, written and directed by Eva Husson.
Other future projects include Volcano, Taika Waititi's feature-length version of his Academy Award nominated short film; Jernigan, Jeff Roda's adaptation of David Gates' Pulitzer Prize Finalist novel; The Breakers, written and directed by Adrienne Weiss; In Defiance Of Gravity written and directed by Ned Benson; and A Late Quartet written and directed by Yaron Zilberman.
Also on the horizon is the documentary Resilient, featuring Mariane Pearl (A Mighty Heart) and directed by Academy Award nominees Sean and Andrea Fine (War Dance), with Angelina Jolie as executive producer.
A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Stu Pollard is a producer, director, and film consultant. Feature producing credits include Dirty Country (2007 SXSW Audience Award for Best Music Doc) and the Magnolia Pictures release Ira & Abby, starring Jennifer Westfeldt (Kissing Jessica Stein) and Chris Messina. Directing credits include the HBO release Nice Guys Sleep Alone (adapted from Bruce Feirstein's bestselling book) and the psychological drama Keep Your Distance, starring Gil Bellows and featuring Stacy Keach and Elizabeth Peña.
Among Stu's projects in development are Harmony, a dramedy written by Brad Riddell, The Buffalo Solider, a drama based on the novel by Chris Bohjalian, and the southern comedy Wonderdog, based on the novel by Inman Majors. He is also a partner in the Your Half Film Fund, joining producer Ryan Harper (Steel City, Witch Hunt) in a development and production entity that will specialize in creating films with budgets in the $2.5 million range.
Stu's film consulting work (www.pollardfilm.com) specializes in private equity financing, investor relations, and distributor delivery. He has lectured extensively on filmmaking around the country at dozens of venues, including the Sundance Institute, Film Independent (FIND), the Independent Feature Project (IFP), the Oxford Film Festival, and universities such as Flashpoint Academy, Yale, Indiana, and the University of Southern California (his alma mater).
Prior to attending film school at USC, Stu majored in business at Georgetown University and worked for McCann-Erickson advertising in New York. He is a member of the Director's Guild of America and currently resides in Santa Monica.
Jennifer Lee is a veteran story editor with over a decade of experience spanning film, comics, and prose. A former comic book editor, she worked for the top two companies in the industry, Marvel and DC Comics. Her credits include Wolverine, Daredevil, Black Widow, Stardust, 100 Bullets, Transmetropolitan, and the multi-award winning The Sandman: The Dream Hunters. Since moving into film, Jenny has worked in both documentary and narrative forms. She was an additional editor for The Youngest Candidate (produced by Lawrence Bender and David Letterman) and assisted on Nanette Burstein's American Teen. Most recently, she edited Vincent D'Onofrio's forthcoming directorial feature film debut. Together with Thomas Woodrow, Jenny is half the dynamic duo comprising Furnace Films, a boutique production company based in New York. She is an Apple Certified Trainer, a women's self-defense instructor, and holds a degree in English from Columbia University.
Laurie Hicks has been working in the Northwest film community since graduating from Seattle Central Community College's Film & Video program in 2002. She produced and directed the 16mm short film, Love, Inc., which screened at the 2002 Bumbershoot and won a Telly Award. By 2006, she was line-producing the largest locally produced feature film in Seattle, Cthulhu, directed by Daniel Gildark.
Laurie also produced Sweet Crude, a feature documentary directed by Sandy Cioffi and shot on location in Nigeria. Sweet Crude screened at the 2007 Seattle International Film Festival along with Rainbow, a short directed by Dayna Hanson, for which Laurie worked as producer, UPM and assistant director. She has also edited short documentaries for several socio-political organizations such as The Japanese American Citizen's League, The Vera Project, and the Hate Free Zone.
Kat left a career in still photography to begin the prestigious graduate film program at New York University in 2001. During her time at NYU she shot many award-winning short films and received the Nester Almendros Award for Excellence in Cinematography and the Best Cinematography award from the Fusion Film Festival for her work on the film Ernie.
Today, Kat continues to work as a New York-based DP on music videos, documentaries, and commercials. Recently she lensed three feature films: Day On Fire starring Olympia Dukakis and Martin Donovan, Life is Hot in Cracktown with Kerri Washington, Laura Flynn Boyle, Mark Webber and Ileana Douglas, and True Adolescents. In addition, Kat has extended her visual expertise to the commercial world, shooting for high-profile clients such as L'Oreal, Condenast, Liz Claiborne, and MTV. This summer she was asked to work as presidential candidate Barack Obama's personal photographer and videographer. She spent five months on the trail with the Obama campaign, documenting the new president's historic route to the White House.
Film credits include: Frozen River (2 Academy Award Nominations), The Great Debaters (co-composed with James Newton Howard, directed by Denzel Washington), I.O.U.S.A., Wordplay, The Laramie Project, and American Gun. His score for the documentary Stolen won a Best Music Award at the 2005 Avignon Film Festival. For the theatre he has composed music for: Come Back, Little Sheba (Tony Award nomination); Suddenly Last Summer (starring Blythe Danner); Macbeth (starring Liev Schreiber); and productions at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Mark Taper Forum, Playwrights Horizon, American Repertory Theatre, Old Globe, Huntington Theatre and others. His musical Amphigorey, written with Edward Gorey, received a Drama Desk Award. He is also the composer of numerous concert works and ballets. Since 1998 he has been the Director of the Sundance Film Music Program.
Sandy moved to LA in 1995 to begin his career in film production, working for the likes of Rocky Schenk, Big TV!, Francis Lawrence, and in a strange twist of fate, his long lost next-door neighbor, Dean Karr. It was also at this time that he immersed himself in the burgeoning music scene in LA's Silverlake neighborhood. He soon started collaborating with documentary filmmaker Ondi Timoner, who enlisted him to work on her film Dig! as a cinematographer.
After moving back to Seattle, Sandy met Light In The Attic Records founder Matt Sullivan, who recruited him to helm the Film & TV licensing department for the label. During his tenure at LITA Records he has licensed its music to such films as The Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men, the upcoming Jim Jarmusch film The Limits Of Control, Showtime's Weeds and Californication, FOX's Fringe and Bones, CBS's Brothers & Sisters and How I Met Your Mother, and in advertisements for Budweiser, Nestle, Nike, and Harley Davidson.
Sandy resides in West Seattle with his girlfriend Leigh and their two cats, and is currently in production on two other films.
Meg Zeder is a designer for film, TV and theatre. She received her MFA from NYU in 2005 and over the past few years has designed clothes for the plays Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, The Crucible, Anne Of Green Gables, and many new works in New York. She costumed the operas Carmen, Cosi Fan Tutti, Pagiacci, The Impresario, Susannah, Acis And Galatea, and Turandot for companies in New York and New Jersey. Meg helped realize new sets for CBS' Early Show, Inside The NFL, Real Sports, and The Isaac Mizrahi Show. Her work on feature films includes The Marconi Brothers, Asylum Seekers, and Marvelous. At this writing Meg is currently working on costumes for a new play about the 1804 battle between the Tlingit and Russians in Alaska, while her 7 month old gnaws on her with his two new teeth.
Meg Morman and Sunday "Sunny" Boling met in the Feature Casting office of 20th Century Fox, working on such films as Ice Age, Dude, Where's My Car?, From Hell, One Hour Photo, Unfaithful, Behind Enemy Lines, and Big Momma's House.
After working in the independent casting world, Meg and Sunny reunited in 2004 and opened the door to Morman Boling Casting. Credits include Fox Searchlight's Waitress (starring Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Jeremy Sisto, Cheryl Hines and Andy Griffith), which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, Dr. Dolittle 3 and Like Mike 2 for 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, and Another Cinderella Story for Warner Premiere. They also cast the 2005 Sundance Film Festival selections Steal Me and Me & You & Everyone We Know, which went on to win the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision and the Golden Camera Award at Cannes.
Other credits include Serious Moonlight (starring Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton, Justin Long, and Kristen Bell), Ball Don't Lie (starring Mykelti Williamson, Nick Cannon, Ludacris, Harold Perrineau, Rosanna Arquette, Emilie de Ravin, Cress Williams, Mathew St. Patrick), and GI Jesus, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at CineVegas, to name just a few.
Cliff Chiang's artwork has been hailed for its "fluid and confident storytelling" and "sweeping linework and nuanced style." Graduating from Harvard University with a joint degree in English Literature and Visual Arts, he worked in editorial at Disney Adventures Magazine and DC Comics before making the leap into freelance illustration. Best known for his work on Human Target, Doctor 13, and Green Arrow & Black Canary, he is currently collaborating with rock legend Neil Young on the Greendale graphic novel for DC/Vertigo Comics. More artwork can be seen at his website, www.cliffchiang.com.
