Jennifer Abbott is a Sundance and Genie award-winning film director, writer, editor, producer and sound designer who specializes in social justice and environmental documentaries.
Jon Mikl Thor, better known as simply Thor, is a Canadian bodybuilding champion, actor, songwriter, screenwriter, historian, vocalist and musician.
Screamfest Horror Film Festival is a horror film festival founded by film producers Rachel Belofsky and Ross Martin in August 2001. It runs over ten days during the month of October and is hosted at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Los Angeles, California. In 2015, the festival celebrated its fifteenth anniversary and has been credited as being the largest and longest running horror film festival in the United States. The 2016 Screamfest was from October 18 through the 27.
The Genesis Awards are awarded annually by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to individuals in the major news and entertainment media for producing outstanding works which raise public awareness of animal issues. Presented by the HSUS Hollywood Outreach program, the awards show takes place every March in California. The awards have honored such well-known personalities as Michael Jackson, Aaron Sorkin, Anderson Cooper, Peter Gabriel, Ellen DeGeneres, Jane Goodall, David E. Kelley, Paul McCartney, Arthur Miller, Stephen Colbert, Oprah Winfrey, Prince, Jacques Cousteau and Ian Somerhalder, as well as journalists, film and documentary writers and producers, print and broadcast news outlets in the United States.
Jane Velez-Mitchell is a television and social media journalist and author with specialties in vegan lifestyles, animal rights, addiction, and social justice. She is a New York Times bestselling author, former CNN Headline News (HLN) host, and founder of UnchainedTV.
Baron Peter Von Puttkamer is a Canadian filmmaker known for his unique approach to adventure documentary series for network television, and for his work with Indigenous communities in his country and around the world. He has won major international awards for his work as a writer, director and producer, and was recently nominated for the 2015 Environmental Media Awards for his Nat Geo series, Biggest & Baddest, which he directed and co-produced with his wife and business partner, Sheera Von Puttkamer. For over thirty years, the couple has run Gryphon Productions and has a catalog that includes hundreds of finished films and videos, many that have appeared on television and cable networks globally and continue to be used in classrooms and outreach centers as educational and advocacy videos.
Cynthia Wade is an American television, commercial and film director, producer and cinematographer based in New York City. She has directed documentaries on social issues including Shelter Dogs in 2003 about animal welfare and Freeheld in 2007 about LGBT rights as well as television commercials and web campaigns. She has won over 40 film festival awards, won an Oscar in 2008, and was nominated for her second Oscar in 2013.
Planet Earth Live is a 2010 BBC nature documentary film that celebrated its premiere in the U.S. A tour featuring narration and live orchestral performance featuring the score by composer George Fenton, who serves as conductor, accompanies the film. Each show runs 90 minutes plus an intermission, featuring the highlights from the television series Planet Earth in a full HD screening, with live orchestra and narration. The tour features some of the leading classical orchestras providing accompaniment in prominent music venues in several large cities. The tour which was originally scheduled to visit Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles, has added performances in Philadelphia and the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area. In 2011, the documentary played in the United Kingdom.
David Zeiger is an American film director, writer and producer. He is most well known for the documentary Sir! No Sir! (2005), which is the only full-length film chronicling the extensive antiwar and resistance activity of U.S. troops during the Vietnam War; and for Senior Year (2002), a 13-part PBS documentary series about the senior year of a group of students at Fairfax High, the most diverse school in Los Angeles.
Teta, Alf Marra is an Arabic documentary film about a feisty Beiruti grandmother.
Surviving Progress is a 2011 Canadian documentary film written and directed by Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks, loosely based on A Short History of Progress, a book and a 2004 Massey Lecture series by Ronald Wright about societal collapse. The film was produced by Daniel Louis, Denise Robert, and Gerry Flahive.
Gorman Bechard is an American film director, screenwriter and novelist best known for his independent feature films Psychos in Love,Friends, and You Are Alone; his four rock documentaries Color Me Obsessed: A Film About the Replacements,What Did You Expect? The Archers of Loaf Live at Cat's Cradle,Every Everything: The Music, Life & Times of Grant Hart, and Who is Lydia Loveless?; his animal welfare documentary A Dog Named Gucci; and his debut novel The Second Greatest Story Ever Told.
Words of Witness is a 2012 feature-length documentary film produced and directed by Mai Iskander. follows 22-year-old journalist Heba Afify as she navigates Egypt's revolution and the rigid boundaries of her concerned mother to examine the struggles, hopes and fears of a people on the brink of democracy.
Vanessa Schulz is a South African born documentary filmmaker, director, producer, writer, editor, photographer and political activist. In 1998, she established 21paradigm.com; her projects include the award-winning Cull of the Wild and Cost of Freedom.
A River Changes Course is a 2013 documentary by Kalyanee Mam. The film explores the damage rapid development has wrought in her native Cambodia on both a human and environmental level. The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2013 and won the Grand Jury Prize for World Documentary. The film also received the Golden Gate Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2013 San Francisco International Film Festival.
The Arlington International Film Festival (AIFF) is an annual nonprofit film festival dedicated to promoting and increasing multicultural awareness and showcases world cinema and independent films in their original language with English subtitles. Independent film producers, directors and actors within the US and abroad are invited to participate in engaging panel discussions and Q&A sessions after the screenings. Each year the festival greets more than 2,000 movie aficionados and shows about fifty films from all over the world with an impressive lineup of premieres. The Arlington International Film Festival also includes a year-round events such as poster contest competitions, pre-festival screenings and art exhibitions with local artists and performances by musicians, singers and dancers.
Sanjay Rawal is an Indian-American documentary film director who lives in New York City. His first feature length film Food Chains premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in its Culinary Cinema Programme in 2014 and had its US premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Food Chains was produced by Smriti Keshari, Eva Longoria, Eric Schlosser, and Rawal himself. Forest Whitaker narrates. Rawal was a winner of the 2015 James Beard Foundation Award for Special/Documentary for Food Chains. The film itself shared the 2016 BritDoc Documentary Impact Award.
Gabriela Cowperthwaite is an American filmmaker. She has directed documentaries and feature films, and she also produces, edits, writes, and directs for television and documentary films. Her films often deal with social, cultural, and environmental issues relating to real life events. Her most notable film is Blackfish (2013), which received a BAFTA nomination for Best Documentary.
Alex Sangha is a Canadian social worker and documentary film producer. He is the founder of Sher Vancouver which is a registered charity for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) South Asians and their friends. Sangha was the first Sikh to become a Grand Marshal of the Vancouver Pride Parade. Sangha received the Meritorious Service Medal from Governor General Julie Payette in 2018 for his work founding Sher Vancouver. Sangha's first short documentary film, My Name Was January, won 14 awards and garnered 66 official selections at film festivals around the world. Sangha's debut feature documentary, Emergence: Out of the Shadows, was an official selection at Out on Film in Atlanta, Image+Nation in Montreal, and Reelworld in Toronto. The film was the closing night film at both the South Asian Film Festival of Montreal and the Vancouver International South Asian Film Festival where it picked up Best Documentary. Emergence: Out of the Shadows also had a double festival premiere at the KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival and the Mumbai International Film Festival during the same week, where it was in competition at both film festivals for Best Documentary. The film also had an in-person and online screening at the 46th annual Frameline: San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival which is "the longest-running, largest and most widely recognized LGBTQ+ film exhibition event in the world."
Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth is a feature-length documentary film on the indigenous Maya in Mexico and Guatemala and their opposition to gold mining in their nation.
