Kenneth Douglas Taylor, was a Canadian diplomat, educator and businessman, best known for his role in the 1979 covert operation called the "Canadian Caper" when he was the Canadian ambassador to Iran. With the cooperation of the American Central Intelligence Agency, Taylor helped six Americans escape from Iran during the Iran hostage crisis by procuring Canadian passports for the Americans to deceive the Iranian Revolutionary guard by posing as a Canadian film crew scouting locations. Before the escape, the six Americans spent several weeks hiding in the homes of Taylor and another Canadian diplomat, John Sheardown.
Alanis Obomsawin, is an Abenaki American-Canadian filmmaker, singer, artist, and activist primarily known for her documentary films. Born in New Hampshire, United States and raised primarily in Quebec, Canada, she has written and directed many National Film Board of Canada documentaries on First Nations issues. Obomsawin is a member of Film Fatales independent women filmmakers.
The "Canadian Caper" was the joint covert rescue by the Canadian government and the CIA of six American diplomats who had evaded capture during the seizure of the United States embassy in Tehran, Iran, on November 4, 1979, after the Iranian Revolution, when Islamist students took most of the American embassy personnel hostage, demanding the return of the US-backed Shah for trial.
John Chambers was an American make-up artist and prosthetic makeup expert in both television and film. He received an Academy Honorary Award from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1968. He is best known for creating the pointed ears of Spock in the television series Star Trek (1966), and for his groundbreaking prosthetic make-up work on the Planet of the Apes film franchise.
Les Harris is a Canadian television producer and filmmaker.
Kensington Communications is a Toronto-based production company that specializes in documentary films and documentary/factual television series. Founded in 1980 by president Robert Lang, Kensington Communications Inc. has produced over 250 productions from documentary series and films to performing arts and children's specials. Since 1998, Kensington has also been involved in multi-platform interactive projects for the web and mobile devices.
Robert Lang is a Canadian film producer, director, and writer. His career began in Montreal in the early 70s working on independent productions and at the National Film Board of Canada as a documentary film director and cinematographer. In 1980, he moved to Toronto, where he founded his own independent production company, Kensington Communications, to produce documentaries for television and non-theatrical markets. Since 1998, Lang has been involved in conceiving and producing interactive media for the Web and mobile devices.
Barry Michael Avrich is a Canadian film director, film producer, author, marketing executive, and arts philanthropist. Avrich's film career has included critically acclaimed films about the entertainment business including The Last Mogul about film producer Lew Wasserman (2005), Glitter Palace about the Motion Picture Country Home (2005), and Guilty Pleasure about the Vanity Fair columnist and author Dominick Dunne (2004). In addition, Avrich produced the Gemini-nominated television special Caesar and Cleopatra (2009) with Christopher Plummer. Avrich also produced Canada's Sports Hall of Fame Awards (2015) as well as the Canadian Screen Awards (2015-2017) and The Scotiabank Giller Prize (2015-Current).
Steve Weslak is a Canadian film editor. He is most noted as a Canadian Screen Award winner for Best Picture Editing in a Documentary Program or Factual Series at the 3rd Canadian Screen Awards for his work on the documentary film Our Man in Tehran.
Elena Semikina is a Russian-Canadian actress, executive producer, and beauty pageant titleholder. Semikina was crowned Miss Universe Canada 2010 in Toronto, Ontario, on June 14, 2010. She represented Canada at the Miss Universe 2010 beauty pageant held in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. on August 23, 2010. Semikina conceived and executive-produced the feature documentary film Our Man in Tehran, which premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and set the record straight on the Iran hostage crisis after Ben Affleck's feature film, Argo, premiered at the same festival only one year prior.
Mahboubeh Honarian is an Iranian-Canadian film director and film producer. She was awarded her MSc in engineering multimedia and BA in Humanities with a media and cultural studies bias in the United Kingdom.
Katerina Cizek is a Canadian documentary director and a pioneer in digital documentaries. She is the Artistic Director, Co-Founder and Executive Producer of the Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab.
Steven Silver is a South African / Canadian media entrepreneur, producer, and director. Together with media industry veteran Peter Sussman, Silver co-founded and was the CEO of Kew Media Group Inc., a publicly listed content company that produced and distributed multi-genre content worldwide.
Argo is a 2012 American historical drama thriller film directed, produced by, and starring Ben Affleck. The screenplay, written by Chris Terrio, was adapted from the 1999 memoir The Master of Disguise by U.S. C.I.A. operative Tony Mendez and the 2007 Wired article "The Great Escape: How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran" by Joshuah Bearman. The film deals with the "Canadian Caper", in which Mendez led the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran, Iran, under the guise of filming a science-fiction film during the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis.
The Canadian Screen Awards are awards given for artistic and technical merit in the film industry recognizing excellence in Canadian film, English-language television, and digital media productions. Given annually by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, the awards recognize excellence in cinematic achievements, as assessed by the Academy's voting membership.
Teddy Wilson is a Canadian television personality, actor and producer originally from Ottawa, Ontario, best known as host of the interactive real estate show Hot Property on CP24, and the documentary series Mighty Trains on Smithsonian Channel, Discovery Canada, and over 100 other international broadcasters; host of the factual entertainment series Never Ever Do This At Home (2013–2014) on Discovery Channel in Canada and Spike in the United States, and host/producer on the Canadian daily entertainment talk-show InnerSpace on Space (2008–2018). He was also an actor on the internationally syndicated series You Can't Do That On Television, and a senior producer on the Gemini Award-winning series MTV Live.
Liz Marshall is a Canadian filmmaker based in Toronto. Since the 1990s, she has directed and produced independent projects and been part of film and television teams, creating broadcast, theatrical, campaign and cross-platform documentaries shot around the world. Marshall's feature length documentaries largely focus on social justice and environmental themes through strong characters. She is known for The Ghosts in Our Machine and for Water on the Table, for which she also produced impact and engagement campaigns, and attended many global events as a public speaker. Water on the Table features water rights activist, author and public figure Maude Barlow. The Ghosts in Our Machine features animal rights activist, photojournalist and author Jo-Anne McArthur.
Larry Weinstein is a Canadian film director of theatrical and television documentaries, performance films, and dramas. The majority of his films centre on musical subjects and the depiction of the creative process, while his other subjects range from the horrors of war to the pleasures of football.
Desert One is an 2019 American documentary film directed and produced by Barbara Kopple. It follows Operation Eagle Claw, a mission that was an attempt to end the Iran hostage crisis by rescuing 52 embassy staff held hostage.
John Minh Tran is a Canadian cinematographer. He is most noted as a two-time winner of the Canadian Screen Award for Best Photography in a Documentary Program or Factual Series, winning at the 3rd Canadian Screen Awards in 2015 for Our Man in Tehran and at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022 for Borealis.
