Sam Longoria (born March 12, 1956, in Seattle, Washington, United States) is a Hollywood producer-director and visual effects engineer. He produces independent feature movies, (digital and 35mm and 65mm film), and serves as writer, director, actor, editor and cinematographer.
Longoria began making movies in 1970 at the age of 14. He made a feature-length 35 mm film in Enumclaw, Washington, moved to Hollywood in 1978, with occasional film and theatre work in Portland, Oregon, New York, and Chicago.
Longoria's Hollywood work (frequently uncredited) begins in the 1980s, as a member of the technical crew on films such as Ghostbusters , 2010 , Return to Oz , and Captain EO .
In 1985, he photographed President Ronald Reagan in the White House for a large-format film documentary. In 1992, he created 35 mm projected backgrounds from small-format film and video elements, for Peter Sellars's production of Paul Hindemith's Opera Mathis der Maler, at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. In the 1990s, Longoria built camera electronics for the 1994 film Terminal Velocity , optically enlarged Charlie Sheen and Martin Sheen's Super 8 mm home movies for the 1999 film Five Aces , and performed hydraulic special effects on the 1997 film Dante's Peak , which had the largest water dump (650,000 gallons, weighing 5.4 million pounds) in cinema history.
From 1985 to 1994, Longoria Produced six live stage comedy shows a week, a Russian Drama, and two successful comedy radio shows, in Hollywood at The WILD SIDE Theatre. He loves Improv, and uses it in his shows and films.
In 1998–2001, he helped out in the studio with his friends' "The Firesign Theatre" comedy recordings, and attended the Grammy Awards in 1998 and 2002 to root for their nominated discs. He is credited as "Mascot," and "Nuts and Berries."
Since 2001, he splits his year, working both in Hollywood and Seattle. Longoria is a member of the Visual Effects Society and the Masquers Club in Hollywood, and focuses now on making his own films.
Tootsie is a 1982 American satirical romantic comedy film directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Dustin Hoffman. Its supporting cast includes Pollack, Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, Bill Murray, Charles Durning, George Gaynes, Geena Davis and Doris Belack. The film tells the story of a talented but volatile actor whose reputation for being difficult drives him to adopt a new identity as a woman to land a job. The film was adapted by Larry Gelbart, Barry Levinson (uncredited), Elaine May (uncredited) and Murray Schisgal from a story by Gelbart and Don McGuire.
Tsui Hark, born Tsui Man-kong, is a Hong Kong film director, producer and screenwriter. Tsui has directed several influential Hong Kong films such as Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), the Once Upon a Time in China film series (1991–1997) and The Blade (1995). Tsui also has been a prolific writer and producer; his productions include A Better Tomorrow (1986), A Better Tomorrow II (1987), A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), The Killer (1989), The Legend of the Swordsman (1992), The Wicked City (1992), Iron Monkey (1993) and Black Mask (1996). He is viewed as a major figure in the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema and is regarded by critics as "one of the masters of Asian cinematography".
The Hudsucker Proxy is a 1994 comedy film co-written, produced, and directed by the Coen brothers. Sam Raimi co-wrote the script and served as second unit director. The film stars Tim Robbins as a naïve but ambitious business school graduate who is installed as president of a manufacturing company, Jennifer Jason Leigh as a newspaper reporter, and Paul Newman as a company director who hires the graduate as part of a stock scam.
Robert Lee Zemeckis is an American filmmaker. He first came to public attention as the director of the action-adventure romantic comedy Romancing the Stone (1984), the science-fiction comedy Back to the Future film trilogy (1985–1990), and the live-action/animated comedy Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). He subsequently directed the satirical black comedy Death Becomes Her (1992) and then diversified into more dramatic fare, including Forrest Gump (1994), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director and the film won Best Picture. He has directed films across a wide variety of genres, for both adults and families.
Cinerama is a widescreen process that originally projected images simultaneously from three synchronized 35mm projectors onto a huge, deeply curved screen, subtending 146° of arc. The trademarked process was marketed by the Cinerama corporation. It was the first of a number of novel processes introduced during the 1950s, when the movie industry was reacting to competition from television. Cinerama was presented to the public as a theatrical event, with reserved seating and printed programs, and audience members often dressed in their best attire for the evening.
Sleepless in Seattle is a 1993 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Nora Ephron, from a screenplay she wrote with David S. Ward and Jeff Arch. Starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, the film follows a journalist (Ryan) who, despite being newly engaged, becomes enamored with a recently widowed architect (Hanks), when the latter's son calls in to a talk radio program requesting a new partner for his grieving father. In addition to Bill Pullman, Ross Malinger, and Rob Reiner, the film features an ensemble supporting cast also consisting of Rosie O'Donnell, Gaby Hoffman, Victor Garber, Rita Wilson, Barbara Garrick, and Carey Lowell.
Michael Christopher Sheen is a Welsh actor, television producer and political activist. After training at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), he worked mainly in theatre throughout the 1990s and made notable stage appearances in Romeo and Juliet (1992), Don't Fool with Love (1993), Peer Gynt (1994), The Seagull (1995), The Homecoming (1997), and Henry V (1997). His performances in Amadeus at the Old Vic and Look Back in Anger at the National Theatre were nominated for Olivier Awards in 1998 and 1999, respectively. In 2003, he was nominated for a third Olivier Award for his performance in Caligula at the Donmar Warehouse.
Emilio Estévez is an American actor and filmmaker.
David Alan Grier is an American actor, singer, and comedian. He is best known for his work as Bernard on Damon (1998), as David Bellows on Life with Bonnie (2002–2004), as Joe Carmichael on The Carmichael Show (2015–2017), as Hal on A Series of Unfortunate Events (2018), and for his movie roles such as Roger in Streamers (1983), Carl Bentley in Jumanji (1995), and Jim Fields in Bewitched (2005).
The double feature is a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatres would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.
Paul Bartel was an American actor, writer and director. He was perhaps most known for his 1982 hit black comedy Eating Raoul, which he wrote, starred in and directed.
Super 35 is a motion picture film format that uses exactly the same film stock as standard 35 mm film, but puts a larger image frame on that stock by using the space normally reserved for the optical analog sound track.
Robert Trebor is an American character actor, perhaps best known for starring as Salmoneus on the cult hits Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. The surname of his stage name (Trebor) is an anadrome of his given name, Robert.
Fred Olen Ray is an American film producer, director, and screenwriter of more than 200 low-to-medium-budget feature films in many genres, including horror, science fiction, action/adventure, erotic thrillers, crime dramas, and holiday films.
The single-camera setup, or single-camera mode of production, also known as portable single camera, is a method of filmmaking and video production.
Linwood G. Dunn, A.S.C. was an American pioneer of visual special effects in motion pictures and an inventor of related technology. Dunn worked on many films and television series, including the original 1933 King Kong (1933), Citizen Kane (1941), and Star Trek (1966–69).
Barnet Kellman is an American television and film director, television producer and film actor.
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic psychological war film directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, and Dennis Hopper. The screenplay, co-written by Coppola and John Milius with narration written by Michael Herr, is loosely based on the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, with the setting changed from late 19th-century Congo to the Vietnam War. The film follows a river journey from South Vietnam into Cambodia undertaken by Captain Benjamin L. Willard, who is on a secret mission to assassinate Colonel Kurtz, a renegade Army Special Forces officer accused of murder and who is presumed insane.
Robert Blalack was a Panamanian-born American mass-media visual artist and producer. One of the founders of Industrial Light & Magic, he received the Visual Effects Academy Award for his work on the original Star Wars. He also received the Visual Effects Emmy for his work on the television motion picture The Day After. He produced and directed USA and international mixed-media TV commercials, location-based theme park rides, and his independent, experimental feature films.
The Seattle Asian American Film Festival was founded in 1985 and has been revived over the years by different producers. The current iteration was founded in 2012 and made its debut in 2013 by co-founders Kevin Bang and Vanessa Au. It is a revival of of the previously running Northwest Asian American Film Festival, which was directed by Wes Kim from 2003 to 2007 and which had experienced a five-year hiatus. The inaugural film festival was also held at the Wing Luke Asian Museum from January 25 to 27, 2013. The festival is currently run and directed by Executive Director, Vanessa Au, and Festival Director, Victoria Ju.