Keiko was a male orca captured in the Atlantic Ocean near Iceland in 1979. He was best known for his portrayal of Willy in the 1993 film Free Willy. In 1996, Warner Bros. and the International Marine Mammal Project collaborated to return Keiko to the wild. After years of preparing Keiko for reintegration, Keiko was flown to Iceland in 1998 and in 2002, became the first captive orca to be fully released back into the ocean. On 12 December 2003, he died of pneumonia in a bay in Norway at the age of 27.
Manick Sorcar is an Indian American artist, animator, engineer, and laserist. Sorcar is an artist in various media, including fine arts, cartoons, animations, laser arts, and world-touring stage shows with live action mixed with laser animation. His animated films, all based on children's stories from India, have won prestigious awards at international film festivals and been broadcast on the Public Broadcasting Service for 25 consecutive years. His laser arts and animation in various forms have won global awards from the International Laser Display Association.
Marc Levin is an American independent film producer and director. He is best known for his Brick City TV series, which won the 2010 Peabody award and was nominated for an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking and his dramatic feature film, Slam, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 1998. He also has received three Emmy Awards and the 1997 DuPont-Columbia Award.
Lourdes Portillo was a Mexican film director, producer, and writer. The political perspectives of Portillo's films have been described as "nuanced" and versed with a point of view balanced by her experience as a lesbian and Chicana woman. Portillo films have been widely studied and analyzed, particularly by scholars in the field of Chicano studies.
Stephen Low is a Canadian film director and screenwriter who works extensively in the IMAX and IMAX 3D film formats. Based in Montreal, Quebec, over his 30-plus year career Low has directed numerous award-winning film documentaries including Challenger: An Industrial Romance (1980), Beavers (1988), Titanica (1991), Super Speedway (1997), Volcanoes of the Deep Sea (2003), Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag (2004), Ultimate Wave Tahiti 3D (2010), Legends of Flight 3D (2010), Rescue 3D (2011), Rocky Mountain Express (2011) and Aircraft Carrier (2017).
Péter Forgács is a Hungarian media artist and independent filmmaker. He is best known for his "Private Hungary" series of award winning films based on home movies from the 1930s and 1960s, which document ordinary lives that were soon to be ruptured by an extraordinary historical trauma that occurs off screen.
Arthur Dong is an American filmmaker and author whose work centers on Asia America and anti-gay prejudice. He was raised in San Francisco, California, graduating from Galileo High School in June 1971. He received his BA in film from San Francisco State University and also holds a Directing Fellow Certificate from the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies. In 2007, SFSU named Dong its Alumnus of the year “for his continued success in the challenging arena of independent documentary filmmaking and his longstanding commitment to social justice."
Debra Chasnoff was an American documentary filmmaker and activist whose films address progressive social justice issues. Her production company GroundSpark produces and distributes films, educational resources and campaigns on issues ranging from environmental concerns to affordable housing to preventing prejudice.
Aviva Kempner is a German-born American filmmaker. Her documentaries investigate non-stereotypical images of Jews in history and focus on the untold stories of Jewish people. She is most well known for The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg.
Chilean cinema refers to all films produced in Chile or made by Chileans. It had its origins at the start of the 20th century with the first Chilean film screening in 1902 and the first Chilean feature film appearing in 1910. The oldest surviving feature is El Húsar de la Muerte (1925), and the last silent film was Patrullas de Avanzada (1931). The Chilean film industry struggled in the late 1940s and in the 1950s, despite some box-office successes such as El Diamante de Maharajá. The 1960s saw the development of the "New Chilean Cinema", with films like Three Sad Tigers (1968), Jackal of Nahueltoro (1969) and Valparaíso mi amor (1969). After the 1973 military coup, film production was low, with many filmmakers working in exile. It increased after the end of the Pinochet regime in 1989, with occasional critical and/or popular successes such as Johnny cien pesos (1993), Historias de Fútbol (1997) and Gringuito (1998).
Stephane Gauger was a Vietnamese-born American film director, screenwriter and cinematographer.
These Amazing Shadows is a 2011 documentary film which tells the history and importance of the National Film Registry, a roll call of American cinema treasures that reflects the diversity of film, and indeed the American experience itself.
Dorothy Fadiman is an American documentary filmmaker, director, and producer.
Tales From the Organ Trade is a 2013 Canadian documentary film written and directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Ric Esther Bienstock. It was produced by Ric Esther Bienstock, Felix Golubev and Simcha Jacobovici. The film was created in association with HBO Documentary Films, Shaw Media and Canal D. The film examines the shadowy world of black market organ trafficking. The film is narrated by David Cronenberg.
Sung-Chang Leo Chiang is a documentary filmmaker. Born in Taiwan and based in San Francisco, Leo received his MFA in film production from University of Southern California. He lectured in the Social Documentation program at University of California, Santa Cruz, and was a fellow in the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program.
Kevin McCarey is an Emmy and Peabody Award winning filmmaker and author. He has worked extensively for National Geographic Television and the Turner Networks as producer, writer and director of documentaries. His narrative film work includes festival winners Coyotes, San Juan Story and Extinction.
Phillip Rodriguez is an American documentary filmmaker and veteran content provider for PBS.
Judith Dwan Hallet is an American documentary filmmaker.
Kimberlee Bassford is an independent documentary filmmaker from Honolulu, Hawai‘i. In 2005, she founded Making Waves Films LLC, which is a documentary production company. She advocates for gender equity and diversity in films and television. Most of her work focuses on Asian American women and young girls, and her films actively seek to correct underrepresentation of those groups in the media.
