Yvette Biro (April 3, 1930, Budapest) [1] [2] [3] is a Hungarian-American essayist, screenwriterand Professor Emeritus at New York University Graduate Film School (NYU).
Her early books on the aesthetics of film were first published in her native Hungary, which became handbooks for film-schools in the country. Meanwhile, she worked on a dozen of prizewinning films with noted directors (Miklós Jancsó, Zoltán Fábri, Károly Makk). She was both the founder and the Editor-in-Chief of Filmkultura , the magazine of the Hungarian Film Institute and Film Archive.
In the mid-1970s, she was "offered" the chance to emigrate by the Hungarian authorities. After teaching at the Sorbonne in Paris, she moved to the US to teach at the Universities of Berkeley and Stanford, California. In 1982 she was hired as a professor then became Full Professor on the faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts (Film and TV Graduate Division) at NYU where she worked until her retirement in 2007.
She has written books on film which have been translated into several languages. Her numerous essays have been published in professional magazines internationally – Film Quarterly , Études Cinématographiques , Performing Arts Journal , Bianco & Nero, Dædalus , Millennium, and The Village Voice , as well as in online publications.
Chantal Anne Akerman was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and film professor at the City College of New York.
Karen Jane Allen is an American film and stage actress. She made her film debut in the comedy film Animal House (1978), which was soon followed by a small role in Woody Allen's romantic comedy-drama Manhattan (1979) and a co-lead role in Philip Kaufman's coming-of-age film The Wanderers (1979), before co-starring opposite Al Pacino in William Friedkin's crime thriller Cruising (1980).
Dame Elizabeth Jane Campion is a New Zealand filmmaker. She is best known for writing and directing the critically acclaimed films The Piano (1993) and The Power of the Dog (2021), for which she has received two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Campion was appointed a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (DNZM) in the 2016 New Year Honours, for services to film.
Debra Frances "Camryn" Manheim is an American actress who first came to attention with her off-Broadway one-woman show, "Wake Up, I'm Fat", in 1994. She is known for her portrayals of Ellenor Frutt on The Practice (1997–2004), Delia Banks on Ghost Whisperer (2006–2010), "Control" on Person of Interest (2013–2015), Lieutenant Cosgrove on Stumptown (2019–2020), and Gladys Presley in the 2005 miniseries Elvis. From 2022 to 2024, she played the lead role of Kate Dixon on Law & Order. Manheim's film credits include Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997), Happiness (1998), What Planet Are You From? (2000), Scary Movie 3 (2003), Twisted (2004), Dark Water (2005), An Unfinished Life (2005), and Cop Car (2015). She is the recipient of a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, in addition to three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.
The New York University Tisch School of the Arts is the performing, cinematic, and media arts school of New York University.
Valie Export is an avant-garde Austrian artist. She is best known for provocative public performances and expanded cinema work. Her artistic work also includes video installations, computer animations, photography, sculpture and publications covering contemporary art.
Ed Guerrero is an American film historian and associate professor of cinema studies and Africana studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. His writings explore black cinema, culture, and critical discourse. He has written extensively on black cinema, its movies, politics and culture for anthologies and journals such as Sight & Sound, FilmQuarterly, Cineaste, Journal of Popular Film & Television, and Discourse. Guerrero has served on editorial and professional boards including The Library of Congress' National Film Preservation Board.
Monica Calhoun is an American film and television actress. Calhoun is best known for her roles in the films Bagdad Cafe (1987), The Players Club (1998), The Salon (2005), The Best Man (1999), and its sequel The Best Man Holiday (2013). She has also appeared in the films Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993) and Love & Basketball (2000). Calhoun has been nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award and one NAACP Image Award.
Yvette Chauviré was a French prima ballerina assoluta and actress. She is often described as France's greatest ballerina, and was the coach of prima ballerinas Sylvie Guillem and Marie-Claude Pietragalla. She was awarded the Légion d'Honneur in 1964.
Chris Kraus is a writer and critic. Her work includes the novels I Love Dick, Aliens and Anorexia, and Torpor, which form a loose trilogy that navigates between autobiography, fiction, philosophy, and art criticism, and a sequence of novels dealing with American underclass experience that began with Summer of Hate. Her approach to writing has been described as ‘performance art within the medium of writing’ and ‘a bright map of presence’. Her work has drawn controversy through its equalisation of high and low culture, mixing critical theory with colloquial language and graphic representations of sex. Her books often blend intellectual, political, and sexual concerns with wit, oscillating between esoteric referencing and parody. She has written extensively in the fields of art and cultural criticism.
Ulrike Ottinger is a German filmmaker and photographer.
Wong Chun-chun is a Hong Kong film director, screenwriter, actress and producer. She is known for her female-centric films which include Women's Private Parts (2000), Truth or Dare: 6th Floor Rear Flat (2003) and The Stolen Years (2013). Wong was awarded the "Hong Kong Ten Outstanding Young Persons" by the Junior Chamber International Hong Kong in 2002, and "Young Achiever of the Year" in the Women of Influence award by United States Chamber of Commerce in 2007.
Thomas Elsaesser was a German film historian and professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He was also the writer and director of The Sun Island, a documentary essay film about his grandfather, the architect Martin Elsaesser. He was married to scholar Silvia Vega-Llona.
Diane Davis is a post-structuralist rhetorician and professor of Rhetoric and Writing, English, and Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She was the Director of the Digital Writing and Research Lab at UT from 2009 to 2017, and is now the chair of the Department of Rhetoric and Writing. She holds the Kenneth Burke Chair of Rhetoric and Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where she teaches intensive summer seminars on Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas.
Clyde Russell Taylor was an American film scholar, writer and cultural critic who made contributions to the fields of cinema studies and African American studies. He was an emeritus professor at New York University. His scholarship and commentary often focused on Black film and culture.
Mary Jean Alexandra Fulbrook, is a British academic and historian. Since 1995, she has been Professor of German History at University College London. She is a noted researcher in a wide range of fields, including religion and society in early modern Europe, the German dictatorships of the twentieth century, Europe after the Holocaust, and historiography and social theory.
Linda Dégh was a folklorist and professor of Folklore & Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, USA.
Ilona Keserü is a Hungarian painter, professor emerita, Kossuth Prize winner.
Alma Rosalie Eikerman was an American metalsmith, silversmith, and jewelry designer who was instrumental in building the metals program at Indiana University, of which she retired Distinguished Professor Emeritus. She was a founding member of the Society of North American Goldsmiths and studied under several internationally renowned metalsmiths, such as Karl Gustav Hansen. Eikerman's work has appeared in over 200 exhibitions, including Objects: USA at the Smithsonian Institution.