Benjamin Bratt is an American actor. He is most known for playing Paco Aguilar in Blood In Blood Out. He had supporting film roles in the 1990s in Demolition Man (1993), Clear and Present Danger (1994), and The River Wild (1994). From 1995 to 1999, he starred as Detective Reynaldo Curtis on the NBC drama series Law & Order.
Sarah Miriam Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. She holds an endowed chair in nonfiction at Northwestern University and is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. She is a recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award and the Lambda Literary Award.
Benjamin Fong-Torres is an American rock journalist best known for his association with Rolling Stone magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Thomas King Butt is an American politician and architect and the former mayor of Richmond, California. He was vice-mayor in 2002 and 2012 and a member of the Richmond City Council for over 20 years before being elected mayor. He is the longest continuously serving council member in Richmond's history.
Liza Colón-Zayas is an American actress and playwright. She is best known for playing Tina Marrero on the comedy-drama series The Bear.
Jennifer Lynn Siebel Newsom is an American documentary filmmaker and actress who is the First Partner of California, as the wife of Governor Gavin Newsom. She is the director, writer, and producer of the film Miss Representation (2011), which premiered in the documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival. The film examines how the media has underrepresented women in positions of power. The Mask You Live In (2015), the second film that she wrote, produced and directed, scrutinizes American society's definition of masculinity.
Pollo Del Mar is an American drag queen performer, wrestling personality, journalist, activist and recording artist.
Richard Arlook is an American talent manager and film producer. Arlook was a senior partner and head of the Motion Picture Literary department at The Gersh Agency. In 2008, he formed The Arlook Group production company.
Hrag Varoujan Yedalian is an Armenian-American political consultant and documentary film director and producer. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and holds a Masters of Public Administration degree from the University of Southern California. He has attended UCLA School of Law and studied film editing at the AFI Conservatory. Hrag runs the Los Angeles-based consulting firm Blue State Campaigns. His work has been featured in Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, and San Francisco Chronicle. He previously worked at Steven Spielberg’s organization, the USC Shoah Foundation.
Suzi Yoonessi is an American filmmaker. She wrote and directed the award-winning feature film Dear Lemon Lima, and directed the Duplass Brothers film Unlovable and Daphne and Velma for Warner Brothers. Yoonessi's short films No Shoulder and Dear Lemon Lima are distributed by Shorts International and Vanguard Cinema and her documentary film Vern is distributed by National Film Network and is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Sasha Anawalt, born Marcia Evelyn Cunningham, is an educator, dance critic and former journalist who founded several arts journalism programs at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles, including a master's degree program in arts journalism (2008). She is author of The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company.
Natalia Leite is a Brazilian writer and director. She is best known for directing the indie hit film M.F.A., a feminist rape-revenge thriller that spurred debates at the start of the #MeToo movement. Subsequently, she went on to direct episodes of The Handmaid's Tale. Her work has been described as having “a bracing, assertive style” (Variety), "emotional intelligence", and as “cementing the reign over highly stylized, sexually progressive dramas” (Slant). Leite is known to incorporate her documentary subjects into her scripted films.
Speaking in Tongues is a 2009 documentary film that focuses on the language barrier within society. Spanning 60 minutes this documentary is programmed by California Visions. It included languages of English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Spanish. Directed by Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider it was released April 2009 in the United States but has languages such as English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish.
Dawn Valadez is a Mexican-American documentary filmmaker and fundraiser based in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. She directed and produced the documentary film, Going On 13 (2008) and co-directed The Pushouts.
Marcia Ochoa is a United States-based professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They are the co-founder of El/La Para TransLatinas and is credited with popularizing the term "translatina."
Los Seis de Boulder were six Chicano activists and students killed in two car bombings in Boulder, Colorado. The bombings occurred at the end of May 1974, with the name Los Seis de Boulder coined posthumously. The students were protesting the negative treatment of Mexican-American students at the University of Colorado, Boulder at the time of their death. Memorials to the bombing victims have been installed on the University of Colorado campus and in Chautauqua Park.
Octavia Broske was an American actress and musical performer.
Levelfilm, stylized as levelFILM, is a Canadian film distribution company based in Toronto, Ontario. The company was founded by David Hudakoc and Michael Baker in 2013, and later acquired two other Canadian distribution houses: Search Engine Films in 2018 and KinoSmith in 2021. It has released more than 200 titles, with a focus on independent Canadian films.
Ken Schneider, ACE is a director, producer, and editor for PatchWorks Films, a production company in San Francisco. He has traveled and made films in Cuba for many years alongside wife and film collaborator, Marcia Jarmel. They co-directed Los Hermanos/The Brothers, which tells the story of virtuoso Afro-Cuban brothers living on opposite sides of a geopolitical chasm, one in New York, the other in Havana. The film follows their parallel lives and poignant reunion through their momentous first performances together after so long apart.
