Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film. Her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997 and received eleven Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving Tony Awards for her direction and costume design. Her 2002 film Frida, about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Original Song nomination for Taymor's composition "Burn It Blue". She also directed the 2007 jukebox musical film Across the Universe, based on the music of the Beatles.
Dirty Sanchez is a British stunt and prank TV series featuring a group of three Welshmen and one Englishman harming themselves, and each other, through dangerous stunts, which ran from 2003 until 2007. It was known as Sanchez Boys and Team Sanchez in the U.S. The performers are the Welshmen Mathew Pritchard, Lee Dainton, Michael "Pancho" Locke and the Englishman Dan Joyce and was originally based in Newport, Wales, but later series of the show took place elsewhere in the United Kingdom and the world. Pritchard and Locke also starred as the "Pain Men" in Channel 4's Balls of Steel. The series is similar to the American series Jackass and the Finnish series The Dudesons. The show aired on MTV in the United Kingdom and on MTV2 in the United States.
Florence Lowe "Pancho" Barnes was a pioneer aviator and a founder of the first movie stunt pilots' union. In 1930, she broke Amelia Earhart's air speed record. Barnes raced in the Women's Air Derby and was a member of the Ninety-Nines. In later years, she was known as the owner of the Happy Bottom Riding Club, a bar and restaurant in the Mojave Desert, Southern California, catering to the legendary test pilots and aviators who worked nearby.
The Happy Bottom Riding Club (1935–1953), was a dude ranch, restaurant, and hotel operated by aviator Florence "Pancho" Barnes near Edwards Air Force Base in the Antelope Valley of California's Mojave Desert. Barnes and her club were featured in Tom Wolfe's 1979 book, The Right Stuff, and its 1983 film adaptation.
Maryam Keshavarz, is an American filmmaker, of Iranian descent. She is best known for her 2011 film Circumstance distributed by Participant Media and Roadside Attractions, which won the Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival.
Planet Earth is a 2006 British television series produced by the BBC Natural History Unit. Five years in the making, it was the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC and also the first to be filmed in high definition. The series received multiple awards, including four Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and an award from the Royal Television Society.
Nick T. Spark is an American documentary filmmaker and writer. Films he has written, directed or produced include Regulus: The First Nuclear Missile Submarines (2001) the Emmy award-winning The Legend of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club (2009) and Right Footed (2015). In addition to being a contributing editor to Wings and Airpower magazines, his articles have appeared in the Annals of Improbable Research, Naval History, the Journal of the American Aviation Historical Society, and Proceedings. People he has interviewed include President Gerald Ford, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Secretary of State Colin Powell, disability activist Jessica Cox and numerous test pilots including Charles "Chuck" Yeager. In 2007 Spark was interviewed on National Public Radio, concerning an article he wrote about the USS Panay incident, and he appeared on PBS' History Detectives in 2011 as an expert on the Navy's World War II drone, the TDR-1.
Raymond De Felitta is an American independent film director, screenwriter, musician, blogger and podcaster.
Carla Garapedian is a filmmaker, director, writer and broadcaster. She directed Children of the Secret State about North Korea and was an anchor for BBC World News. After leaving BBC World, she directed Dying for the President about Chechnya, Lifting the Veil, about women in Afghanistan, Iran Undercover and My Friend the Mercenary about the coup in Equatorial Guinea. Her feature, Screamers, was theatrically released in the U.S. in December 2006 and early 2007, and was on Newsweek's pick of non-fiction films for 2006/7. The Independent called it "powerful" and Larry King for CNN described it as "a brilliant film. Everyone should see it." The New York Times deemed it "invigorating and articulate," while the Los Angeles Times called it "eye-opening." "Carla Garapedian is a screamer, too," said the Washington Post.
Lauren Kessler is an American author, and immersion journalist who specializes in narrative nonfiction. She teaches storytelling for social change at the University of Washington and for the Forum of Journalism and Media in Vienna.
Seven different versions of Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner have been shown, either to test audiences or theatrically. The best known versions are the Workprint, the US Theatrical Cut, the International Cut, the Director's Cut, and the Final Cut. These five versions are included in both the 2007 five-disc Ultimate Collectors Edition and 2012 30th-Anniversary Collector's Edition releases.
Bruno de Almeida is an independent filmmaker whose body of work navigates between fiction and documentaries. He is also a composer. He is New York City and Lisbon-based.
Director Stephen Walker'sYoung@Heart is a 2007 British documentary film set in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is about Young@Heart, a New England chorus of senior citizens that sings various rock and pop songs, and their rehearsals for their performances.
kids + money, a 2008 cinéma vérité documentary film, was directed by photographer/filmmaker Lauren Greenfield and produced by Evergreen Pictures. The 32 minute film includes interviews with Los Angeles teenagers on the subject of money and how it affects their lives. HBO licensed North American broadcast rights to kids + money, and the film has been distributed to major broadcasters and cable networks internationally. An educational DVD is being distributed by Bullfrog Films.
Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement is a 2009 American documentary film directed and produced by Susan Muska and Gréta Ólafsdóttir for their company Bless Bless Productions, in association with Sundance Channel. The film tells the story of the long-term lesbian relationship between Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer, including their respective childhoods, their meeting in 1963, their lives and careers in New York City, Thea's diagnosis with multiple sclerosis and Edie's care for her partner, and their wedding in Toronto, Canada, in May 2007, because gay marriage was not then legal in their home state of New York.
The Women's Air Derby was the first official women-only air race in the United States, taking place during the 1929 National Air Races. Humorist Will Rogers referred to it as the Powder Puff Derby, the name by which the race is most commonly known. Nineteen pilots took off from Clover Field, Santa Monica, California, on August 18, 1929. Marvel Crosson died in a crash apparently caused by carbon monoxide poisoning, but fifteen completed the race in Cleveland, Ohio, nine days later.
Pancho Barnes is a 1988 American made-for-television biographical film about the pioneering female aviator, starring Valerie Bertinelli, Ted Wass, James Stephens and Cynthia Harris. The film was directed by Richard T. Heffron and premiered on CBS on October 25, 1988.
Clayton "Clay" Westervelt is a film director, producer, and cinematographer based in Los Angeles, California. He is the founder of Martini Crew Booking and Imaginaut Entertainment.
Roberta Grossman is an American filmmaker. Her documentaries range from social justice inquiries to historical subjects with a focus on Jewish history.
Dydia DeLyser is a cultural-historical geographer, writer and researcher based in Los Angeles, California. An expert on the cultural impact of Helen Hunt Jackson's novel Ramona and the history of neon signage, DeLyser is an associate professor at California State University, Fullerton in the Department of Geography & the Environment.
