The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees.
The Black Stallion is a 1979 American adventure film based on the 1941 classic children's novel of the same name by Walter Farley. The film starts in 1946, five years after the book was published. It tells the story of Alec Ramsey, a boy who is shipwrecked on a deserted island with a wild Arabian stallion that he befriends. After being rescued, they are set on entering a race challenging two champion horses.
Conrad Lafcadio Hall, ASC was a French Polynesian-born American cinematographer. Named after writers Joseph Conrad and Lafcadio Hearn, he came widely prominent as a cinematographer earning numerous accolades including three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards and five American Society of Cinematographers Awards.
Janusz Zygmunt Kamiński is a Polish cinematographer and director of film and television. He has established a partnership with Steven Spielberg, working as a cinematographer on his films since 1993. He won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on Spielberg's holocaust drama Schindler's List and World War II epic Saving Private Ryan (1998). He has also received Academy Award nominations for Amistad (1997), The Diving Bell & the Butterfly (2007), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), and West Side Story (2021). He has also received nominations for five BAFTA Awards, and six American Society of Cinematographers Awards.
Walter Scott Murch is an American film editor, director, writer and sound designer. His work includes THX 1138, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather I, II, and III, American Graffiti, The Conversation, Ghost and The English Patient, with three Academy Award wins.
Zooey Claire Deschanel is an American actress and musician. She made her film debut in Mumford (1999) and had a supporting role in Cameron Crowe's film Almost Famous (2000). Deschanel is known for her deadpan roles in comedy films such as The Good Girl (2002), The New Guy (2002), Elf (2003), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Failure to Launch (2006), Yes Man (2008), The Happening (2008), 500 Days of Summer (2009) and Our Idiot Brother (2011). She has also ventured into dramatic film territory with Manic (2001), All the Real Girls (2003), Winter Passing (2005), Bridge to Terabithia (2007) and The Driftless Area (2015). From 2011 to 2018, she starred as Jess Day on the Fox sitcom New Girl, for which she received nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and three Golden Globe Awards.
Emily Erin Deschanel is an American actress. She played Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan in the Fox crime procedural series Bones (2005–2017).
The AFI Conservatory is a private not-for-profit graduate film school in the Hollywood Hills district of Los Angeles. Students learn from the masters in a collaborative, hands-on production environment with an emphasis on storytelling. The Conservatory is a program of the American Film Institute founded in 1969.
Keir O'Donnell is an Australian–American actor, best known for his roles in the films Wedding Crashers, The Break-Up, Paul Blart: Mall Cop and American Sniper as well as numerous television appearances.
Haskell Wexler was an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild. He won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography twice, in 1966 and 1976, out of five nominations. In his obituary in The New York Times, Wexler is described as being "renowned as one of the most inventive cinematographers in Hollywood."
Frederick Elmes, ASC is an American cinematographer, known for his association with the independent film movement. He is a long-time collaborator of directors David Lynch, Ang Lee, Charlie Kaufman, Jim Jarmusch, and Todd Solondz. He has won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography twice, for Wild at Heart (1990) and Night on Earth (1991), and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited Series for The Night Of (2016).
Michaela Conlin is an American actress. She played the role of Angela Montenegro on the Fox crime procedural comedy-drama Bones from 2005 to 2017. She has also had recurring roles in the Paramount series Yellowstone (2018-2019), and the Apple TV+ series For All Mankind (2021).
Mary Jo Deschanel is an American actress. She appeared in the film The Right Stuff (1983) and the television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991).
Walter C. Pfister is an American director and former cinematographer, who is best known for his work with filmmaker Christopher Nolan. Some of his collaborations with Nolan include Memento (2000), The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005–2012), and Inception (2010). For his work on Inception, Pfister won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography and received a BAFTA Award nomination.
The rare French surname Deschanel is probably for D'Eschanel, regional variant form of eschamel "stepladder", nickname of a trader. It is supposed to be from the region of Lyon, maybe in the Ain département. Notable people with the surname include:
Thomas Richmond was an American cinematographer who worked in the film industry since the mid-1980s. His first major feature film as cinematographer was Stand and Deliver (1988), and by the time he shot for A Midnight Clear (1992), he had settled into working with different directors with ease. Richmond described his experience, "All my films look different because they're not my visions; they're my reflections of the directors' visions." In 1998, he said he was most proud of his work on Little Odessa (1994), for which he was nominated an Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography. For Right at Your Door (2006), he won the Excellence in Cinematography Award (Dramatic) at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
Matthew Robbins is an American screenwriter and film director best known for his writing work within the American New Wave movement.
Masanobu "Masa" Takayanagi is a Japanese cinematographer whose works include Silver Linings Playbook (2012), Warrior (2011) and The Grey (2011).
Gill Dennis was an American director and screenwriter.
Polly Morgan is a British cinematographer who has worked on the studio feature films Lucy in the Sky (2019), A Quiet Place Part II (2020), Where the Crawdads Sing (2022), and The Woman King (2022). She was also the cinematographer for multiple episodes of the TV series Legion (2017–2019). Morgan is accredited by the British Society of Cinematographers (BSC) and the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC). To date, she is the only woman to be a member of both, and she is the youngest member of ASC.
