Patricia Lee Smith is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter, author and photographer whose 1975 debut album Horses made her an influential member of the New York City-based punk rock movement. Smith has fused rock and poetry in her work. In 1978, her most widely known song, "Because the Night", co-written with Bruce Springsteen, reached 13th on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and fifth on the UK Singles Chart.
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. A pioneer of modern independent cinema, Soderbergh later drew acclaim for formally inventive films made within the studio system.
Robert Michael Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Mads Dittmann Mikkelsen is a Danish actor, former gymnast and dancer. He rose to fame in Denmark as an actor for his roles such as Tonny in the first two films of the Pusher film trilogy, Detective Sergeant Allan Fischer in the television series Rejseholdet (2000–2004), Niels in Open Hearts (2002), Svend in The Green Butchers (2003), Ivan in Adam's Apples (2005) and Jacob Petersen in After the Wedding (2006).
All the Pretty Horses is a 2000 American Western film produced and directed by Billy Bob Thornton, based on Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name, and starring Matt Damon and Penélope Cruz. It premiered on December 25, 2000 to mostly negative reviews. It grossed $18 million worldwide on a $57 million budget.
Ondi Doane Timoner is an American filmmaker and the founder and chief executive officer of Interloper Films, a production company located in Pasadena, California.
James Crump is an American film director, writer, producer, art historian and curator. His films include Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe; Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art; and Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco.
Steven Sebring is an American photographer, filmmaker and producer. His 2008 documentary Patti Smith: Dream of Life earned him a Sundance Award for Excellence in Cinematography and a Primetime Emmy nomination. He also directed the concert-documentary film Horses: Patti Smith and her Band premiering at Tribeca Film Festival in 2018.
Samuel Jones Wagstaff Jr. was an American art curator, collector, and the artistic mentor and benefactor of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and poet-punk rocker Patti Smith. Wagstaff is known in part for his support of minimalism, pop art, conceptual art and earthworks, but his aesthetic acceptance and support of photography presaged the acceptance of the medium as a fine art.
Robert Anthony De Niro is an American actor and film producer. Known for his collaborations with Martin Scorsese, he is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential actors of his generation. De Niro is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama in 2016.
Norman Seeff is a photographer and filmmaker. Since moving to the United States in 1969, his work has been focused on the exploration of human creativity and the inner dynamics of the creative process.
American actor and filmmaker Ben Affleck began his career as a child, appearing in several television shows, including the PBS educational program The Voyage of the Mimi (1984). He played an antisemite in the sports film School Ties (1992) and featured as a regular on the television drama Against the Grain (1993). He gained attention for playing the supporting part of a high-school senior in Richard Linklater's cult film Dazed and Confused (1993), after which he had his first leading role in Rich Wilkes's comedy Glory Daze (1995). In 1997, Affleck played a comics artist in Smith's art-house success Chasing Amy. He co-wrote the script and starred with Matt Damon in Gus Van Sant's drama film Good Will Hunting, for which they won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe is a 2007 American documentary film directed by James Crump. The film chronicles the symbiotic relationship between Sam Wagstaff, an American museum curator and collector of fine art, and Robert Mapplethorpe, the American fine art photographer whose controversial images were at the center of debate about public funding for the arts and the culture wars of the late 1980s. The film also explores the relationship both men shared with poet/musician Patti Smith in the New York art world of the 1970s.
Marianne Rendón is an American actress known for her role as Susan Atkins in the biopic film Charlie Says about the life of Charles Manson, as Julia "Jules" Langmore on the Bravo dark comedy television series Imposters, and as Leslie Bell on the CW crime drama In the Dark.
Swallow is a 2019 psychological thriller film written and directed by Carlo Mirabella-Davis and starring Haley Bennett, Austin Stowell, Elizabeth Marvel, David Rasche, and Denis O'Hare. Its plot follows a young woman who, emotionally stifled in her marriage and domestic life, develops an impulse to consume inedible objects.
Brandon Sklenar is an American actor best known for his roles in the films Midway, Mapplethorpe, Vice, and It Ends with Us (film). He is also known for his role as Spencer Dutton in the Paramount+ western series 1923 (2023–).
Mr. Soul! is a 2018 American documentary film produced, written and directed by documentary filmmaker Melissa Haizlip. The film was co-produced by Doug Blush and co-directed by Sam Pollard. The film tells the story of Ellis Haizlip, the producer and host of SOUL!, the music-and-talk program that aired on public television from 1968 to 1973 and aimed at a Black audience. It was released in 2018 and has since received 21 filmmaking awards. Attorney Chaz Ebert, record executive Ron Gillyard, producer and director Stan Lathan, producer Rishi Rajani, producer Stephanie T. Rance, actor Blair Underwood and screenwriter, producer and actress Lena Waithe are the executive producers of the film.
A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks is a 2021 documentary film that follows the life of the photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks. Its title derives from Parks’ 1967 autobiography. The film features Devin Allen, Jelani Cobb, Anderson Cooper, Ava DuVernay, Nelson George, Jamel Shabazz, Spike Lee, and LaToya Ruby Frazier.
Relative is a 2022 American drama/comedy feature film written and directed by Michael Glover Smith. The film is about a family reunion centered on a college graduation party in Chicago. It premiered at the 2022 Gasparilla International Film Festival in Tampa, Florida where actor Cameron Scott Roberts won the Grand Jury award for Best Performance.
