Directors with different approach to story telling
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Described by film producer Michael Deeley as "the very best eye in the business", director Ridley Scott was born on November 30, 1937 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear. His father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and the family followed him as his career posted him throughout the United Kingdom and Europe before they eventually returned to Teesside. Scott wanted to join the British Army (his elder brother Frank had already joined the Merchant Navy) but his father encouraged him to develop his artistic talents instead and so he went to West Hartlepool College of Art and then London's Royal College of Art where he helped found the film department.
In 1962, he joined the BBC as a trainee set designer working on several high profile series. He attended a trainee director's course while he was there and his first directing job was on an episode of the popular BBC police series Z Cars (1962), Error of Judgement (1965). More TV work followed until, frustrated by the poor financial rewards at the BBC, he went into advertising. With his younger brother, Tony Scott, he formed the advertising production company RSA (Ridley Scott Associates) in 1967 and spent the next 10 years making some of the best known and best loved TV adverts ever shown on British television, including a series of ads for Hovis bread set to the music of Dvorak's New World Symphony which are still talked about today ("'e were a great baker were our dad.")
He began working with producer David Puttnam in the 1970s developing ideas for feature films. Their first joint endeavor, The Duellists (1977) won the Jury Prize for Best First Work at Cannes in 1977 and was nominated for the Palm d'Or, more than successfully launching Scott's feature film career. The success of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) inspired Scott's interest in making science fiction and he accepted the offer to direct Dan O'Bannon's low budget science fiction horror movie Alien (1979), a critical and commercial success that firmly established his worldwide reputation as a movie director.
Blade Runner (1982) followed in 1982 to, at best, a lukewarm reception from public and critics but in the years that followed, its reputation grew - and Scott's with it - as one of the most important sci-fi movies ever made. Scott's next major project was back in the advertising world where he created another of the most talked-about advertising spots in broadcast history when his "1984"-inspired ad for the new Apple Macintosh computer was aired during the Super Bowl on January 22, 1984. Scott's movie career has seen a few flops (notably Legend (1985) and 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)), but with successes like Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000) and Black Hawk Down (2001) to offset them, his reputation remains solidly intact.
Ridley Scott was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire at the 2003 Queen's New Year Honours for his "substantial contribution to the British film industry". On July 3, 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Art in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship in 2018. BAFTA described him as "a visionary director, one of the great British film-makers whose work has made an indelible mark on the history of cinema. Forty years since his directorial debut, his films continue to cross the boundaries of style and genre, engaging audiences and inspiring the next generation of film talent."- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Alan Taylor is an American film and television director from San Francisco known for directing episodes of HBO shows such as The Sopranos, Deadwood, Game of Thrones, and Sex in the City. He directed the feature films Thor: The Dark World, Palookaville, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Many Saints of Newark, and Terminator Genisys.- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ron Howard is one of this generation's most popular directors. From the critically acclaimed dramas A Beautiful Mind (2001) and Apollo 13 (1995) to the hit comedies Parenthood (1989) and Splash (1983), he has created some of Hollywood's most memorable films.
Howard made his directorial debut in 1978 with the comedy Grand Theft Auto (1977). He began his career in film as an actor. He first appeared in The Journey (1959) and The Music Man (1962), then as Opie on the long-running television series The Andy Griffith Show (1960). Howard later starred in the popular series Happy Days (1974) and drew favorable reviews for his performances in American Graffiti (1973) and The Shootist (1976).
Howard and long-time producing partner Brian Grazer first collaborated on the hit comedies "Night Shift" and "Splash." The pair co-founded Imagine Entertainment in 1986 to create independently produced feature films.
Howard's portfolio includes some of the most popular films of the past 20 years. In 1991, Howard created the acclaimed drama "Backdraft", starring Robert De Niro, Kurt Russell and William Baldwin. He followed it with the historical epic Far and Away (1992), starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Howard directed Mel Gibson, Rene Russo, Gary Sinise and Delroy Lindo in the 1996 suspense thriller Ransom (1996). Howard worked with Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Ed Harris, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise and Kathleen Quinlan on "Apollo 13," which was re-released recently in the IMAX format.
Howard's skill as a director has long been recognized. In 1995, he received his first Best Director of the Year award from the DGA for "Apollo 13." The true-life drama also garnered nine Academy Award nominations, winning Oscars for Best Film Editing and Best Sound. It also received Best Ensemble Cast and Best Supporting Actor awards from the Screen Actor's Guild. Many of Howard's past films have received nods from the Academy, including the popular hits Backdraft (1991), "Parenthood" and Cocoon (1985), the last of which took home two Oscars.
Howard directed and produced Cinderella Man (2005) starring Oscar winner Russell Crowe, with whom he previously collaborated on "A Beautiful Mind," for which Howard earned an Oscar for Best Director and which also won awards for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress. The film garnered four Golden Globes as well, including the award for Best Motion Picture Drama. Additionally, Howard won Best Director of the Year from the Directors Guild of America. Howard and producer Brian Grazer received the first annual Awareness Award from the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign for their work on the film.
Howard was honored by the Museum of Moving Images in December 2005, and by the American Cinema Editors in February 2006. Howard and his creative partner Brian Grazer, were honored by the Producers Guild of America with the Milestone Award in January 2009, NYU's Tisch School of Cinematic Arts with the Big Apple Award in November 2009 and by the Simon Wiesenthal Center with their Humanitarian Award in May 2010. In June 2010, Howard was honored by the Chicago Film Festival with their Gold Hugo - Career Achievement Award. In March 2013, Howard was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. In December 2015, Howard was honored with a star in the Motion Pictures category, making him one of the very few to have been recognized with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Howard also produced and directed the film adaptation of Peter Morgan's critically acclaimed play Frost/Nixon (2008). The film was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, and was also nominated for The Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures by the PGA.
Howard has also served as an executive producer on a number of award-winning films and television shows, such as the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon (1998), Fox's Emmy Award winner for Best Comedy, Arrested Development (2003), a series which he also narrated, Netflix's release of new episodes of "Arrested Development," and NBC's "Parenthood."
Howard's recent films include the critically acclaimed drama Rush (2013), staring Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl, written by Peter Morgan; and Made in America (2013), a music documentary he directed staring Jay-Z for Showtime.
Howard's other films include In the Heart of the Sea (2015), based on the true story that inspired Moby Dick; his adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling novels Angels & Demons (2009), and The Da Vinci Code (2006) staring Oscar winner Tom Hanks; the blockbuster holiday favorite "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)" starring Jim Carrey; "Parenthood" starring Steve Martin; the fantasy epic Willow (1988); Night Shift (1982) starring Henry Winkler, Michael Keaton and Shelley Long; and the suspenseful western, The Missing (2003), staring Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones.
Recently, Howard directed Inferno (2016), the third installment of Dan Brown 's Robert Langdon franchise and The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years (2016), a documentary about the rock legends The Beatles. He also produced the second season of Breakthrough (2015), Mars (2016), and directed the first episode of Genius (2017), based on the life of Albert Einstein, all for NatGeo.- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Sir Peter Jackson made history with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, becoming the first person to direct three major feature films simultaneously. The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King were nominated for and collected a slew of awards from around the globe, with The Return of the King receiving his most impressive collection of awards. This included three Academy Awards® (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture), two Golden Globes (Best Director and Best Motion Picture-Drama), three BAFTAs (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film and Viewers' Choice), a Directors Guild Award, a Producers Guild Award and a New York Film Critics Circle Award.
As a follow up to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in 2005, Jackson directed, wrote, and produced King Kong, for Universal Pictures. The film grossed over $500 million and won three Oscars®.
Jackson previously received widespread acclaim for his 1994 feature Heavenly Creatures, which received an Academy Award® nomination for Best Screenplay. Other film credits include The Frighteners, starring Michael J. Fox; the adult puppet feature Meet the Feebles; and Braindead, which won 16 international science fiction awards, including the Saturn. Jackson also co-directed the television documentary Forgotten Silver, which also hit the film festival circuit.
Jackson directed the Academy Award®-nominated The Lovely Bones, an adaptation of the acclaimed best-selling novel by Alice Sebold and produced the worldwide sci-fi hit District 9. He was a producer on Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in 2011, with two more films set to come out in the future.
His most recent films include producer of 2018's action film Mortal Engines, based on a post-apocalyptic world where cities ride on wheels and consume each other to survive. Following Mortal Engines, he produced They Shall Not Grow Old, a documentary on World War I with never-before-seen footage. BAFTA nominated the film for Best Documentary, and it won the award for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing from the Motion Picture Sound Editors.
Jackson's next project is the music documentary The Beatles: Get Back, which he directed and produced, due to be released August, 2021.
Jackson works closely with partner Dame Fran Walsh, with whom he shares his writing and producing credits, as well as a family. Jackson has a special interest in WWI memorabilia and is the proud owner of several aircraft from that era.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear, storytelling, acclaimed Academy Award winner writer/director/producer Sir Christopher Nolan CBE was born in London, England. Over the course of more than 25 years of filmmaking, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the biggest blockbusters ever made and became one of the most celebrated filmmakers of modern cinema.
At 7 years old, Nolan began making short films with his father's Super-8 camera. While studying English Literature at University College London, he shot 16-millimeter films at U.C.L.'s film society, where he learned the guerrilla techniques he would later use to make his first feature, Following (1998), on a budget of around $6,000. The noir thriller was recognized at a number of international film festivals prior to its theatrical release and gained Nolan enough credibility that he was able to gather substantial financing for his next film.
Nolan's second film was Memento (2000), which he directed from his own screenplay based on a short story by his brother Jonathan Nolan. Starring Guy Pearce, the film brought Nolan numerous honors, including Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay. Nolan went on to direct the critically acclaimed psychological thriller, Insomnia (2002), starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank.
The turning point in Nolan's career occurred when he was awarded the chance to revive the Batman franchise in 2005. In Batman Begins (2005), Nolan brought a level of gravitas back to the iconic hero, and his gritty, modern interpretation was greeted with praise from fans and critics alike. Before moving on to a Batman sequel, Nolan directed, co-wrote, and produced the mystery thriller The Prestige (2006), starring Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as magicians whose obsessive rivalry leads to tragedy and murder.
In 2008, Nolan directed, co-wrote, and produced The Dark Knight (2008). Co-written with by his brother Jonathan, the film went on to gross more than a billion dollars at the worldwide box office. Nolan was nominated for a Directors Guild of America (D.G.A.) Award, Writers Guild of America (W.G.A.) Award and Producers Guild of America (P.G.A.) Award, and the film also received eight Academy Award nominations. The film is widely considered one of the best comic book adaptations of all times, with Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker receiving an extremely high acclaim. Ledger posthumously became the first Academy Award winning performance in a Nolan film.
In 2010, Nolan captivated audiences with the Sci-Fi thriller Inception (2010), starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, which he directed and produced from his own original screenplay that he worked on for almost a decade. The thought-provoking drama was a worldwide blockbuster, earning more than $800,000,000 and becoming one of the most discussed and debated films of the year, and of all times. Among its many honors, Inception received four Academy Awards and eight nominations, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay. Nolan was recognized by his peers with a W.G.A. Award accolade, as well as D.G.A. and P.G.A. Awards nominations for his work on the film.
As one of the best-reviewed and highest-grossing movies of 2012, The Dark Knight Rises (2012) concluded Nolan's Batman trilogy. Due to his success rebooting the Batman character, Warner Bros. enlisted Nolan to produce their revamped Superman movie Man of Steel (2013), which opened in the summer of 2013. In 2014, Nolan directed, wrote, and produced the Science-Fiction epic Interstellar (2014), starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. released the film on November 5, 2014, to positive reviews and strong box-office results, grossing over $670 million dollars worldwide.
In July 2017, Nolan released his acclaimed War epic Dunkirk (2017), that earned him his first Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards, as well as winning an additional 3 Oscars. In 2020 he released his mind-bending Sci-Fi espionage thriller Tenet (2020) starring John David Washington in the lead role. Released during the COVID-19 pandemic, the movie grossed relatively less than Nolan's previous blockbusters, though it did do good numbers compared to other movies in that period of time. Hailed as Nolan's most complex film yet, the film was one of Nolan's less-acclaimed films at the time, yet slowly built a fan-base following in later years.
In July 2023, Nolan released his highly acclaimed biographic drama Oppenheimer (2023) starring Nolan's frequent collaborator Cillian Murphy- in the lead role for the first time in a Nolan film. The movie was a cultural phenomenon that on top of grossing almost 1 billion dollars at the Worldwide Box office, also swept the 2023/2024 award-season and gave Nolan his first Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, D.G.A. and P.G.A. Awards, as well as a handful of regional critics-circles awards and a W.G.A. nomination. Cillian's performance as quantum physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was highly acclaimed as well, and became the first lead performance in a Nolan film to win the Academy Award.
During 2023, Nolan also received a fellowship from the British Film Institute (BFI). In March 2024, it was announced that Nolan is to be knighted by King Charles III and from now on will go by the title 'Sir Christopher Nolan'.
Nolan resides in Los Angeles, California with his wife, Academy Award winner producer Dame Emma Thomas, and their children. Sir Nolan and Dame Thomas also have their own production company, Syncopy.- Director
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- Actor
Terry Gilliam was born near Medicine Lake, Minnesota. When he was 12 his family moved to Los Angeles where he became a fan of MAD magazine. In his early twenties he was often stopped by the police who suspected him of being a drug addict and Gilliam had to explain that he worked in advertising. In the political turmoil in the 60's, Gilliam feared he would become a terrorist and decided to leave the USA. He moved to England and landed a job on the children's television show Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967) as an animator. There he met meet his future collaborators in Monty Python: Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Michael Palin. In 2006 he renounced his American citizenship.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Luc Besson spent the first years of his life following his parents, scuba diving instructors, around the world. His early life was entirely aquatic. He already showed amazing creativity as a youth, writing early drafts of The Big Blue (1988) and The Fifth Element (1997), as an adolescent bored in school. He planned on becoming a marine biologist specializing in dolphins until a diving accident at age 17 which rendered him unable to dive any longer. He moved back to Paris, where he was born, and only at age 18 did he first have an urban life or television. He realized that film was a medium which he could combine all his interests in various arts together, so he began taking odd jobs on various films. He moved to America for three years, then returned to France and formed Les Films de Loups - his own production company, which later changed its name to Les Films de Dauphins. He is now able to dive again.- Animation Department
- Writer
- Art Department
Hayao Miyazaki is one of Japan's greatest animation directors. The entertaining plots, compelling characters, and breathtaking visuals in his films have earned him international renown from critics as well as public recognition within Japan.
Miyazaki started his career in 1963 as an animator at the studio Toei Douga studio, and was subsequently involved in many early classics of Japanese animation. From the beginning, he commanded attention with his incredible drawing ability and the seemingly endless stream of movie ideas he proposed.
In 1971, he moved to the A Pro studio with Isao Takahata. In 1973, he moved to Nippon Animation, where he was heavily involved in the World Masterpiece Theater TV animation series for the next 5 years. In 1978, he directed his first TV series, Future Boy Conan (1978). Then, he moved to Tokyo Movie Shinsha in 1979 to direct his first movie, the classic Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979). In 1984, he released Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), which was based on the manga of the same title he had started 2 years before. The success of the film led to the establishment of a new animation studio, Studio Ghibli. Since then, he has since directed, written, and produced many other films with Takahata. More recently, he has produced with Toshio Suzuki. All enjoyed critical and box office success, in particular Princess Mononoke (1997). It received the Japanese equivalent of the Academy Award for Best Film and was the highest-grossing (about USD $150 million) domestic film in Japan's history at the time of its release.
In addition to animation, he also draws manga. His major work was Nausicaä, an epic tale he worked on intermittently from 1982 to 1984 while he was busy making animated films. Another manga Hikotei Jidai, later evolved into Porco Rosso (1992).- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Tony Tarantino, is an Italian-American actor and musician from New York, and his mother, Connie (McHugh), is a nurse from Tennessee. Quentin moved with his mother to Torrance, California, when he was four years old.
In January of 1992, first-time writer-director Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) appeared at the Sundance Film Festival. The film garnered critical acclaim and the director became a legend immediately. Two years later, he followed up Dogs success with Pulp Fiction (1994) which premiered at the Cannes film festival, winning the coveted Palme D'Or Award. At the 1995 Academy Awards, it was nominated for the best picture, best director and best original screenplay. Tarantino and writing partner Roger Avary came away with the award only for best original screenplay. In 1995, Tarantino directed one fourth of the anthology Four Rooms (1995) with friends and fellow auteurs Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Allison Anders. The film opened December 25 in the United States to very weak reviews. Tarantino's next film was From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), a vampire/crime story which he wrote and co-starred with George Clooney. The film did fairly well theatrically.
Since then, Tarantino has helmed several critically and financially successful films, including Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012) and The Hateful Eight (2015).- Writer
- Director
- Composer
Is the son of a Spanish mother and a Chilean father. His family moved back to Spain when he was 1 year old, and he grew up and studied in Madrid. He wrote, produced and directed his first short film La cabeza at the age of 19, and he was 23 when he directed his feature debut Thesis (1996). His film Open Your Eyes (1997) was a huge success in Spain and was distributed worldwide. It was remade in Hollywood by Cameron Crowe as Vanilla Sky (2001), starring Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz (also the star of the original version) and Cameron Diaz. The Others (2001) is Amenábar's first English language film.- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Gus Green Van Sant Jr. is an American filmmaker, painter, screenwriter, photographer and musician from Louisville, Kentucky who is known for directing films such as Good Will Hunting, the 1998 remake of Psycho, Gerry, Elephant, My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, Milk, Last Days, Finding Forrester, Promised Land, Drugstore Cowboy and Mala Noche.- Producer
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- Writer
David Fincher was born in 1962 in Denver, Colorado, and was raised in Marin County, California. When he was 18 years old he went to work for John Korty at Korty Films in Mill Valley. He subsequently worked at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) from 1981-1983. Fincher left ILM to direct TV commercials and music videos after signing with N. Lee Lacy in Hollywood. He went on to found Propaganda in 1987 with fellow directors Dominic Sena, Greg Gold and Nigel Dick. Fincher has directed TV commercials for clients that include Nike, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Heineken, Pepsi, Levi's, Converse, AT&T and Chanel. He has directed music videos for Madonna, Sting, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, George Michael, Iggy Pop, The Wallflowers, Billy Idol, Steve Winwood, The Motels and, most recently, A Perfect Circle.
As a film director, he has achieved huge success with Se7en (1995), Fight Club (1999) and, Panic Room (2002).- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Joel Daniel Coen is an American filmmaker who regularly collaborates with his younger brother Ethan. They made Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and other projects. Joel married actress Frances McDormand in 1984 and had an adopted son.- Producer
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- Director
The younger brother of Joel, Ethan Coen is an Academy Award and Golden Globe winning writer, producer and director coming from small independent films to big profile Hollywood films. He was born on September 21, 1957 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In some films of the brothers- Ethan & Joel wrote, Joel directed and Ethan produced - with both editing under the name of Roderick Jaynes; but in 2004 they started to share the three main duties plus editing. Each film bring its own quality, creativity, art and with one project more daring the other.
His film debut was in 1984 dark humored thriller Blood Simple (1984) starring Frances McDormand (Joel's wife) and M. Emmet Walsh in a deep story revolving a couple of romantic lovers followed by an insisting private eye. The film received critical acclaim, some award nominations to Ethan (best writing at the Film Independent Spirit Awards) and became a cult following over the years. Their second work was the comedy Raising Arizona (1987) starring Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter as a unusual couple trying to create their family by kidnapping babies from a rich family.
Miller's Crossing (1990) was the third film of the brothers, a mob drama with heavy influences from several criminal dramas and with a stellar cast that included Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, Albert Finney, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro and Jon Polito (the latter three would become regular actors in the Coen's films).
Their views on the Hollywood era of the 1930's was the central theme is the great Barton Fink (1991), created from a writers block both brothers suffered during the making of their previous film. John Turturro stars as a writer who suffers from a breakdown when he's commissioned to a big budget Hollywood project. The film was a breakthrough for the Coens marking their first win at the Cannes Film Festival (Joel got the Palme d'Or) and the first time a film of their received Oscar nominations. The underrated comedy The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) was what followed; but no one could predict their next big and boldest move that would definitely put Ethan and Joel on the spotlight once and for all.
The comedy of errors Fargo (1996) was a huge critical and commercial success. With its crazed story of a man who hires two loonies to kidnap his own wife and a pregnant policewoman tracking the leads to the crime, Ethan and Joel came at their greatest moment that couldn't be missed. The film received several awards during award season and the Coen's got their first Oscar in the Best Original Screenplay category. What came next was the underrated yet hilariously good The Big Lebowski (1998) starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, John Turturro and Steve Buscemi. Those masterpieces made their career in the late 1990's cementing the duo as one of the greatest writers and directors of their generation, if not, from all time.
The Odyssey retold for the 1930's in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000); the intelligent noir The Man Who Wasn't There (2001); the comedy Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and a remake The Ladykillers (2004) marked their way into the early 2000's. Certaintly of period of minor hits and some downer moments.
The big return was with the highly acclaimed No Country for Old Men (2007), where the brothers swooped at the Oscars with three wins: Best Picture, Screenplay and Writing, an adaptation from the Cormac McCarthy's novel.
A Serious Man (2009), Burn After Reading (2008), True Grit (2010), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Hail, Caesar! (2016) and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) were the subsequent films, all well received by audiences or got awards recognition, mostly nominations.
A shift from tone and career move was writing with other writers and for another directors: for Angelina Jolie's Unbroken (2014), for Spielberg in Bridge of Spies (2015) and George Clooney in Suburbicon (2017).
As for personal life, Ethan has been married to Tricia Cooke since 1990. Tricia works as an assistant editor in several of the Coen brothers films.- Actor
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- Director
Paul Mazursky was born on 25 April 1930 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for An Unmarried Woman (1978), Harry and Tonto (1974) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). He was married to Betsy Mazursky. He died on 30 June 2014 in Beverly Grove, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
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- Producer
Peter Weir was born on 21 August 1944 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He is a director and writer, known for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), The Way Back (2010) and Witness (1985). He has been married to Wendy Stites since 1966. They have two children.- Producer
- Cinematographer
- Editor
Michael Barnard is known for The Medallion (2003), Secrets of the Sun - Journey Into the Fire (2018) and 90404 Changing (2007).- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Todd Solondz was born in Newark, New Jersey. One of his earliest jobs in the film industry was when, as a young man, he worked as a messenger for the Writers' Guild of America. During this time, he wrote several screenplays.
Solondz's first color film with sync sound was the short "Schatt's Last Shot" (1985). Solondz played a high schooler who wants to get into Stanford, but cannot because his sadistic gym teacher fails him. He also has no luck seducing the girl he desires. It was a student film, and is still screened at NYU, where Solondz made it.
Solondz's first feature was Fear, Anxiety & Depression (1989), a piece about a writer (Solondz) writing a play and sending it to Samuel Beckett.
Solondz found great critical acclaim with his second feature, Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), a film about the cruelty of junior high school, parents, adult figures, and suburban life. The film won awards at Sundance, Berlin, and countless other festivals for its cruel realism, bitter humor, and unflinching portrayal of adolescence.
His third feature effort, Happiness (1998), was a wildly edgy and provocative film. The film revolves around a group of people who are miserable in their conventional lifestyles and pursue happiness in various forms of perverse sexuality. It featured a murderer, a rapist, a pedophile, and a man who harasses others with sexually obscene phone calls The film incited major controversy and was dropped by its original distributor, only to be picked up by another company. One of the particularly controversial aspects of the film was the element of the child psychologist as a repressed pedophile. In the film, he molests his son's friend at a sleep-over; but the character was sympathetic and deftly presented. Once again, the film was lauded with numerous awards and strong critical praise.
Solondz made it clear he was not softening up with his next effort, Storytelling (2001), which was about the artistic process. The film is divided into two halves, "Fiction" and "Non-Fiction." "Fiction" centers on a character in a creative-writing class, and "Non- Fiction" on a desperate filmmaker making a documentary about a depressed, listless, unmotivated teenager. "Fiction" concerns how fictional stories can be used to distort rather than illuminate reality, which is displayed via the exploits of the protagonist, a college student in a creative writing class. The film was in danger of being rated NC-17due to a racially charged sex scene. Solondz's response to the threat of the NC-17 was quite clever (and a bit tongue-in-cheek). Instead of trimming the scene, he simply blocked the image of the copulation with a large orange box. The film got an R rating. "Nonfiction" was loaded with social commentary. Topics covered in this part included a listless teenager and his overbearing family, homosexuality's current parallels to the scarlet letter, drug use, gun control in the home, and one's capability to murder.
Solondz's next film was Palindromes (2004), which was also controversial, due to the fact that the protagonist was played by eight people of differing size, race, and gender.
Solondz has established himself as a consistently engaging and unique filmmaker, as opposed to just one more cookie-cutter conformist director making his movies on the Hollywood assembly line. He is a real writer and filmmaker, agent provocateur, and a force with which to be reckoned.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Dominic Sena was born on 26 April 1949 in Niles, Ohio, USA. He is a director and cinematographer, known for Kalifornia (1993), Whiteout (2009) and Swordfish (2001).- Producer
- Director
- Editorial Department
Stephen Herek was born on 10 November 1958 in San Antonio, Texas, USA. He is a producer and director, known for Critters (1986), Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) and Mr. Holland's Opus (1995).- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Tom Hooper was educated at one of England's most prestigious schools, Westminster. His first film, Runaway Dog, was made when he was 13 years old and shot on a Clockwork 16mm Bolex camera, using 100 feet of film. At age 18, he wrote, directed and produced the short film Painted Faces (1992), which premiered at the London Film Festival; it was released theatrically and later shown on Channel 4. He studied English at England's top university, Oxford. At Oxford University, he directed theatre productions starring his contemporaries Kate Beckinsale and Emily Mortimer, and directed his first television commercials. His father was a non-executive director at United News and Media, which owned an ITV franchise.
Hooper's father introduced him to one of British television's top directors and producers, Matthew Robinson, who gave him breaks by employing him to direct episodes of Byker Grove (1989) and EastEnders (1985), both series produced by Robinson. Further success came when he was approved by Helen Mirren to direct her in Prime Suspect: The Last Witness (2003). He then worked with her again on Elizabeth I (2005). Hooper made the difficult transition from television to film with apparent ease, directing Michael Sheen in the Brian Clough biopic The Damned United (2009) and Colin Firth in The King's Speech (2010). Both films were critical and commercial successes, quickly establishing Hooper as one of the most in demand directors of his generation.
Hooper has garnered numerous awards in his career. He won an Academy Award for directing The King's Speech. The 2010 film was nominated for 12 Oscars, more than any other film of that year, and also won the Best Picture, Best Actor (Colin Firth), and Best Original Screenplay Oscars. The King's Speech received seven BAFTA Awards, including Best Film and Outstanding British Film. Hooper also won a Directors Guild of America Award for his direction. Among other accolades worldwide, The King's Speech additionally was honored with the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival; the Best British Film prize at the British Independent Film Awards; the Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film; the Producers Guild of America Awards' top prize; and the European Film Award for Best Film. The King's Speech earned $414 million at the worldwide box office.
Hooper was recently again a Directors Guild of America Award nominee for directing Working Title Films' Les Misérables. The 2012 film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won the Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway), Best Sound, and Best Make-up and Hair Styling Academy Awards. Les Misérables received those same accolades at the BAFTA Awards, as well as the BAFTA for Best Production Design. Among other accolades worldwide, Les Misérables was named one of the year's 10 Best Films by the American Film Institute with an AFI Award; won three Golden Globe Awards including Best Picture [Musical/Comedy]; was voted the Best Acting by an Ensemble award by the National Board of Review; and was nominated for four Screen Actors Guild Awards. Les Misérables earned $442 million at the worldwide box office.
The Damned United received a South Bank Show Award nomination for Best British Film; and he gained acclaim for the BAFTA Award-nominated Red Dust, starring Hilary Swank and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Hooper had an unprecedented run of success at the Golden Globe Awards with his works for HBO, which won the Golden Globe for Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television three years in a row. The actors and actresses starring in these productions - respectively, Elizabeth I, Longford, and John Adams - also won Golden Globes for their performances three years running.
Hooper won an Emmy Award for directing Elizabeth I. The HBO Films/Channel 4 miniseries won three Golden Globes and nine Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Miniseries.
Longford, written by Peter Morgan, starred Jim Broadbent and Samantha Morton. The HBO Films/Channel 4 Telefilm won three Golden Globe Awards and was nominated for five Emmy Awards.
John Adams (2008), starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, won four Golden Globes and 13 Emmy Awards - the most Emmys ever awarded to a program in one year. Hooper, receiving his first Directors Guild of America Award nomination, directed all nine hours of the HBO Films miniseries.
Hooper was nominated for an Emmy Award for helming ITV's miniseries Prime Suspect 6. His television work also includes Daniel Deronda (2002), which won the award for Best Miniseries at the 2003 Banff Television Festival; the miniseries Love in a Cold Climate (2001), for which star Alan Bates received a BAFTA Award nomination; episodes of the multi-award-winning ITV comedy/drama Cold Feet (1997); and EastEnders (1985) one-hour specials that garnered BAFTA Awards two years in a row.- Writer
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Three-time Oscar nominee Frank Darabont was born in a refugee camp in 1959 in Montbeliard, France, the son of Hungarian parents who had fled Budapest during the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution. Brought to America as an infant, he settled with his family in Los Angeles and attended Hollywood High School. His first job in movies was as a production assistant on the 1981 low-budget film, Hell Night (1981), starring Linda Blair. He spent the next six years working in the art department as a set dresser and in set construction while struggling to establish himself as a writer. His first produced writing credit (shared) was on the 1987 film, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), directed by Chuck Russell. Darabont is one of only six filmmakers in history with the unique distinction of having his first two feature films receive nominations for the Best Picture Academy Award: 1994's The Shawshank Redemption (1994) (with a total of seven nominations) and 1999's The Green Mile (1999) (four nominations). Darabont himself collected Oscar nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for each film (both based on works by Stephen King), as well as nominations for both films from the Director's Guild of America, and a nomination from the Writers Guild of America for The Shawshank Redemption (1994). He won the Humanitas Prize, the PEN Center USA West Award, and the Scriptor Award for his screenplay of "The Shawshank Redemption". For "The Green Mile", he won the Broadcast Film Critics prize for his screenplay adaptation, and two People's Choice Awards in the Best Dramatic Film and Best Picture categories. The Majestic (2001), starring Jim Carrey, was released in December 2001. He executive-produced the thriller, Collateral (2004), for DreamWorks, with Michael Mann directing and Tom Cruise starring. Future produced-by projects include "Way of the Rat" at DreamWorks with Chuck Russell adapting and directing the CrossGen comic book series and "Back Roads", a Tawni O'Dell novel, also at DreamWorks, with Todd Field attached to direct. Darabont and his production company, "Darkwoods Productions", have an overall deal with Paramount Pictures.- Writer
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Krzysztof Kieslowski graduated from Lódz Film School in 1969, and became a documentary, TV and feature film director and scriptwriter. Before making his first film for TV, Przejscie podziemne (1974) (The Underground Passage), he made a number of short documentaries. His next TV title, Personnel (1975) (The Staff), took the Grand Prix at Mannheim Film Festival. His first full-length feature was The Scar (1976) (The Scar). In 1978 he made the famous documentary From a Night Porter's Point of View (1979) (Night Porter's Point of View), and in 1979 - a feature Camera Buff (1979) (Camera Buff), which was acclaimed in Poland and abroad. Everything he did from that point was of highest artistic quality.- Director
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Anderson was born in 1970. He was one of the first of the "video store" generation of film-makers. His father was the first man on his block to own a V.C.R., and from a very early age Anderson had an infinite number of titles available to him. While film-makers like Spielberg cut their teeth making 8 mm films, Anderson cut his teeth shooting films on video and editing them from V.C.R. to V.C.R.
Part of Anderson's artistic D.N.A. comes from his father, who hosted a late night horror show in Cleveland. His father knew a number of oddball celebrities such as Robert Ridgely, an actor who often appeared in Mel Brooks' films and would later play "The Colonel" in Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997). Anderson was also very much shaped by growing up in "The Valley", specifically the suburban San Fernando Valley of greater Los Angeles. The Valley may have been immortalized in the 1980s for its mall-hopping "Valley Girls", but for Anderson it was a slightly seedy part of suburban America. You were close to Hollywood, yet you weren't there. Would-bes and burn-outs populated the area. Anderson's experiences growing up in "The Valley" have no doubt shaped his artistic self, especially since three of his four theatrical features are set in the Valley.
Anderson got into film-making at a young age. His most significant amateur film was The Dirk Diggler Story (1988), a sort of mock-documentary a la This Is Spinal Tap (1984), about a once-great pornography star named Dirk Diggler. After enrolling in N.Y.U.'s film program for two days, Anderson got his tuition back and made his own short film, Cigarettes & Coffee (1993). He also worked as a production assistant on numerous commercials and music videos before he got the chance to make his first feature, something he liked to call Sydney, but would later become known to the public as Hard Eight (1996). The film was developed and financed through The Sundance Lab, not unlike Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992). Anderson cast three actors whom he would continue working with in the future: Altman veteran Philip Baker Hall, the husky and lovable John C. Reilly and, in a small part, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who so far has been featured in all four of Anderson's films. The film deals with a guardian angel type (played by Hall) who takes down-on-his-luck Reilly under his wing. The deliberately paced film featured a number of Anderson trademarks: wonderful use of source light, long takes and top-notch acting. Yet the film was reedited (and retitled) by Rysher Entertainment against Anderson's wishes. It was admired by critics, but didn't catch on at the box office. Still, it was enough for Anderson to eventually get his next movie financed. "Boogie Nights" was, in a sense, a remake of "The Dirk Diggler Story", but Anderson threw away the satirical approach and instead painted a broad canvas about a makeshift family of pornographers. The film was often joyous in its look at the 1970s and the days when pornography was still shot on film, still shown in theatres, and its actors could at least delude themselves into believing that they were movie stars. Yet "Boogie Nights" did not flinch at the dark side, showing a murder and suicide, literally in one (almost) uninterrupted shot, and also showing the lives of these people deteriorate, while also showing how their lives recovered.
Anderson not only worked with Hall, Reilly and Hoffman again, he also worked with Julianne Moore, Melora Walters, William H. Macy and Luis Guzmán. Collectively, Anderson had something that was rare in U.S. cinema: a stock company of top-notch actors. Aside from the above mentioned, Anderson also drew terrific performances from Burt Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg, two actors whose careers were not exactly going full-blast at the time of "Boogie Nights", but who found themselves to be that much more employable afterwards.
The success of "Boogie Nights" gave Anderson the chance to really go for broke in Magnolia (1999), a massive mosaic that could dwarf Altman's Nashville (1975) in its number of characters.
Anderson was awarded a "Best Director" award at Cannes for Punch-Drunk Love (2002).- Director
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Unlike virtually all his contemporaries, Ken Loach has never succumbed to the siren call of Hollywood, and it's virtually impossible to imagine his particular brand of British socialist realism translating well to that context.
After studying law at St. Peter's College, Oxford, he branched out into the theater, performing with a touring repertory company. This led to television, where in alliance with producer Tony Garnett he produced a series of docudramas, most notably the devastating "Cathy Come Home" episode of The Wednesday Play (1964), whose impact was so massive that it led directly to a change in the homeless laws.
He made his feature debut Poor Cow (1967) the following year, and with Kes (1969), he produced what is now acclaimed as one of the finest films ever made in Britain. However, the following two decades saw his career in the doldrums with his films poorly distributed (despite the obvious quality of work such as The Gamekeeper (1968) and Looks and Smiles (1981)) and his TV work in some cases never broadcast (most notoriously, his documentaries on the 1984 miners' strike).
He made a spectacular comeback in the 1990s, with a series of award-winning films firmly establishing him in the pantheon of great European directors - his films have always been more popular in mainland Europe than in his native country or the US (where Riff-Raff (1991) was shown with subtitles because of the wide range of dialects). Hidden Agenda (1990) won the Special Jury Prize at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival; Riff-Raff (1991) won the Felix award for Best European Film of 1992; Raining Stones (1993) won the Cannes Special Jury Prize for 1993, and Land and Freedom (1995) won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival - and was a substantial box-office hit in Spain where it sparked intense debate about its subject matter. This needless to say, was one of the reasons that Loach made the film!- Director
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The main part of his few movies were filmed in the quarter of a century in which he worked closely together with the Indian producer Ismail Merchant and the German writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. His first films are all set in India and are very much influenced by the style of Satyajit Ray and Jean Renoir. After this period, he filmed three stories in New York and then dedicated his work to the great works of the English literature which made him internationally famous. Examples of this period are The Europeans (1979) and The Bostonians (1984) by Henry James, Jane Austen in Manhattan (1980) by Jane Austen, Quartet (1981) by Jean Rhys or A Room with a View (1985) and Maurice (1987) by E.M. Forster.- Producer
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Canadian producer and director Ivan Reitman created many of American cinema's most successful and best loved feature film comedies and worked with Hollywood's acting elite. Reitman produced such hits as the ground-breaking sensation National Lampoon's National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), which introduced John Belushi to American filmgoers, and the family features Beethoven (1992) and Beethoven's 2nd (1993). His directing credits include Meatballs (1979), Stripes (1981) and Ghostbusters (1984), films starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis; Dave (1993), which starred Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver, Junior (1994) which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito and Emma Thompson. Reitman also produced the HBO telefilm The Late Shift (1996), based on Bill Carter's non-fiction book about the late-night television wars which received seven Emmy nominations. Other producing endeavors include Commandments (1997), starring Aidan Quinn and Courteney Cox, Private Parts (1997), starring Howard Stern, as well as the animation/live action film Space Jam (1996), starring Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes characters. With Twins (1988), Reitman created an entirely new comedic persona for action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger -- and forged a personal and professional relationship that continued with Kindergarten Cop (1990) and Junior (1994). Acclaimed dramatic actors such as Robert Redford, Debra Winger, Sigourney Weaver, and Emma Thompson also revealed untapped comic talents under Reitman's direction. In 1984, Reitman was honored as Director of the Year by the National Association of Theater Owners and the next year received a Special Achievement Award at the Canadian Genie awards. In 1979 and again in 1989, for the films National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) and Twins (1988), Reitman was honored with the People's Choice Award. In November of 1994, Reitman became the third director honored by Variety magazine in a special Billion Dollar Director issue.
Reitman was born in Czechoslovakia, to Jewish Holocaust survivors, and left with his family for Canada at the age of four. He attended Canada's McMaster University, where he produced and directed several television shorts. He followed with a live television show, Greed: The Series (1999), with Dan Aykroyd as its announcer. "Spellbound," which Reitman produced for the live stage, evolved into the Broadway hit "The Magic Show," starring Doug Henning. He continued producing for the stage with the Off-Broadway hit "The National Lampoon Show," and returned to Broadway to produce and direct the musical "Merlin," earning a Tony nomination for directing. Reitman headed The Montecito Picture Company, a film and television production company, with partner Tom Pollock. His television credits included the Emmy-nominated children's show The Real Ghostbusters (1986) and the Saturday morning animated series Beethoven (1994) for CBS. His last directing credited was Draft Day (2014), before his death in February 2022 in Montecito, California.remembering my childhood...- Writer
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Director, writer, producer and composer Tom Tykwer was born in 1965 in Wuppertal, Germany. He showed an interest in film-making from childhood, making super 8 films from the age of 11. Among his first jobs was working at a local art-house cinema. Tykwer eventually relocated to Berlin, first working as a film projectionist and then becoming head of programming at the Moviemento Theater.
Tykwer's friend, the director Rosa von Praunheim, encouraged him to experiment with film-making and the result was the short Because (2001). Other short films followed, and in 1993 Tykwer made his first full length feature Deadly Maria (1993). Tykwer's international breakthrough came in 1998 with Run Lola Run (1998), which was a hit with both audiences and critics alike. The film garnered many awards and was the most successful German film of the year.
Subsequent projects include Heaven (2002), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), The International (2009) and the ambitious epic Cloud Atlas (2012).could be onto something here...- Actor
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David Cronenberg, also known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood, was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1943. His father, Milton Cronenberg, was a journalist and editor, and his mother, Esther (Sumberg), was a piano player. After showing an inclination for literature at an early age (he wrote and published eerie short stories, thus following his father's path) and for music (playing classical guitar until he was 12), Cronenberg graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in Literature after switching from the science department. He reached the cult status of horror-meister with the gore-filled, modern-vampire variations of Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1977), following an experimental apprenticeship in independent film-making and in Canadian television programs.
Cronenberg gained popularity with the head-exploding, telepathy-based Scanners (1981) after the release of the much underrated, controversial, and autobiographical The Brood (1979). Cronenberg become a sort of a mass media guru with Videodrome (1983), a shocking investigation of the hazards of reality-morphing television and a prophetic critique of contemporary aesthetics. The issues of tech-induced mutation of the human body and topics of the prominent dichotomy between body and mind were back again in The Dead Zone (1983) and The Fly (1986), both bright examples of a personal film-making identity, even if both films are based on mass-entertainment materials: the first being a rendition of a Stephen King best-seller, the latter a remake of a famous American horror movie.
With Dead Ringers (1988) and Naked Lunch (1991), the Canadian director, no more a mere genre movie-maker but a fully realized auteur, got the acclaim of international critics. Such profound statements on modern humanity and ever-changing society are prominent in the provocative Crash (1996) and in the virtual reality essay of eXistenZ (1999), both of which well fared at the Cannes and Berlin Film Festivals. In the last two film projects Spider (2002) and A History of Violence (2005), Cronenberg avoids expressing his teratologic and oneiric expressionism in favor of a more psychological exploration of human contradictions and idiosyncrasies.- Producer
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Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later provided the inspiration for several of his films. Scorsese earned a B.S. degree in film communications in 1964, followed by an M.A. in the same field in 1966 at New York University's School of Film. During this time, he made numerous prize-winning short films including The Big Shave (1967), and directed his first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967).
He served as assistant director and an editor of the documentary Woodstock (1970) and won critical and popular acclaim for Mean Streets (1973), which first paired him with actor and frequent collaborator Robert De Niro. In 1976, Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), also starring De Niro, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and he followed that film with New York, New York (1977) and The Last Waltz (1978). Scorsese directed De Niro to an Oscar-winning performance as boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), which received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and is hailed as one of the masterpieces of modern cinema. Scorsese went on to direct The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995) and Kundun (1997), among other films. Commissioned by the British Film Institute to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of cinema, Scorsese completed the four-hour documentary, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995), co-directed by Michael Henry Wilson.
His long-cherished project, Gangs of New York (2002), earned numerous critical honors, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Director; the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator (2004) won five Academy Awards, in addition to the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for Best Picture. Scorsese won his first Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), which was also honored with the Director's Guild of America, Golden Globe, New York Film Critics, National Board of Review and Critic's Choice awards for Best Director, in addition to four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Scorsese's documentary of the Rolling Stones in concert, Shine a Light (2008), followed, with the successful thriller Shutter Island (2010) two years later. Scorsese received his seventh Academy Award nomination for Best Director, as well as a Golden Globe Award, for Hugo (2011), which went on to win five Academy Awards.
Scorsese also serves as executive producer on the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (2010) for which he directed the pilot episode. Scorsese's additional awards and honors include the Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival (1995), the AFI Life Achievement Award (1997), the Honoree at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's 25th Gala Tribute (1998), the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award (2003), The Kennedy Center Honors (2007) and the HFPA Cecil B. DeMille Award (2010). Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio have worked together on five separate occasions: Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).- Producer
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Steven Andrew Soderbergh was born on January 14, 1963 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, the second of six children of Mary Ann (Bernard) and Peter Soderbergh. His father was of Swedish and Irish descent, and his mother was of Italian ancestry. While he was still at a very young age, his family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father was a professor and the dean of the College of Education at Louisiana State University. While still in high school, around the age of 15, Soderbergh enrolled in the university's film animation class and began making short 16-millimeter films with second-hand equipment, one of which was the short film "Janitor". After graduating high school, he went to Hollywood, where he worked as a freelance editor. His time there was brief and, shortly after, he returned home and continued making short films and writing scripts.
His first major break was in 1986 when the rock group Yes assigned him to shoot a full-length concert film for the band, which eventually earned him a Grammy nomination for the video, Yes: 9012 Live (1985). Following this achievement, Soderbergh filmed Winston (1987), the short-subject film that he would later expand into Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), a film that earned him the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or Award, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Over the next six years, he was married to actress Betsy Brantley and had a daughter named Sarah Soderbergh, who was born in 1990.
Also during this time, he made such films as Kafka (1991), King of the Hill (1993), The Underneath (1995) and Gray's Anatomy (1996), which many believed to be disappointments. In 1998, Soderbergh made Out of Sight (1998), his most critically and commercially successful film since Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). Then, in 2000, Soderbergh directed two major motion pictures that are now his most successful films to date: Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000). These films were both nominated for Best Picture Oscars at the 2001 Academy Awards and gave him the first twin director Oscar nomination in almost 60 years and the first ever win. He won the Oscar for Best Director for Traffic (2000) at the 2001 Oscars.- Actor
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Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in music and mechanics, but was an otherwise bored student; this resulted in being held back a grade. In 1949, the year he is said to have graduated from high school, his parents and younger sister Jeanne moved to Seattle. Clint spent a couple years in the Pacific Northwest himself, operating log broncs in Springfield, Oregon, with summer gigs life-guarding in Renton, Washington. Returning to California in 1951, he did a two-year stint at Fort Ord Military Reservation and later enrolled at L.A. City College, but dropped out to pursue acting.
During the mid-1950s he landed uncredited bit parts in such B-films as Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Tarantula (1955) while digging swimming pools and driving a garbage truck to supplement his income. In 1958, he landed his first consequential acting role in the long-running TV show Rawhide (1959) with Eric Fleming. Although only a secondary player the first seven seasons, he was promoted to series star when Fleming departed--both literally and figuratively--in its final year, along the way becoming a recognizable face to television viewers around the country.
Eastwood's big-screen breakthrough came as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's trilogy of excellent spaghetti westerns: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). The movies were shown exclusively in Italy during their respective copyright years with Enrico Maria Salerno providing the voice of Eastwood's character, finally getting American distribution in 1967-68. As the last film racked up respectable grosses, Eastwood, 37, rose from a barely registering actor to sought-after commodity in just a matter of months. Again a success was the late-blooming star's first U.S.-made western, Hang 'Em High (1968). He followed that up with the lead role in Coogan's Bluff (1968) (the loose inspiration for the TV series McCloud (1970)), before playing second fiddle to Richard Burton in the World War II epic Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Lee Marvin in the bizarre musical Paint Your Wagon (1969). In Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) and Kelly's Heroes (1970), Eastwood leaned in an experimental direction by combining tough-guy action with offbeat humor.
1971 proved to be his busiest year in film. He starred as a sleazy Union soldier in The Beguiled (1971) to critical acclaim, and made his directorial debut with the classic erotic thriller Play Misty for Me (1971). His role as the hard edge police inspector in Dirty Harry (1971), meanwhile, boosted him to cultural icon status and helped popularize the loose-cannon cop genre. Eastwood put out a steady stream of entertaining movies thereafter: the westerns Joe Kidd (1972), High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) (his first of six onscreen collaborations with then live-in love Sondra Locke), the Dirty Harry sequels Magnum Force (1973) and The Enforcer (1976), the action-packed road adventures Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and The Gauntlet (1977), and the prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979). He branched out into the comedy genre in 1978 with Every Which Way But Loose (1978), which became the biggest hit of his career up to that time; taking inflation into account, it still is. In short, The Eiger Sanction (1975) notwithstanding, the 1970s were nonstop success for Eastwood.
Eastwood kicked off the 1980s with Any Which Way You Can (1980), the blockbuster sequel to Every Which Way but Loose. The fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact (1983), was the highest-grossing film of the franchise and spawned his trademark catchphrase: "Make my day." He also starred in Bronco Billy (1980), Firefox (1982), Tightrope (1984), City Heat (1984), Pale Rider (1985) and Heartbreak Ridge (1986), all of which were solid hits, with Honkytonk Man (1982) being his only commercial failure of the period. In 1988, he did his fifth and final Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool (1988). Although it was a success overall, it did not have the box office punch the previous films had. About this time, with outright bombs like Pink Cadillac (1989) and The Rookie (1990), it seemed Eastwood's star was declining as it never had before. He then started taking on low-key projects, directing Bird (1988), a biopic of Charlie Parker that earned him a Golden Globe, and starring in and directing White Hunter Black Heart (1990), an uneven, loose biopic of John Huston (both films had a limited release).
Eastwood bounced back big time with his dark western Unforgiven (1992), which garnered the then 62-year-old his first ever Academy Award nomination (Best Actor), and an Oscar win for Best Director. Churning out a quick follow-up hit, he took on the secret service in In the Line of Fire (1993), then accepted second billing for the first time since 1970 in the interesting but poorly received A Perfect World (1993) with Kevin Costner. Next was a love story, The Bridges of Madison County (1995), where Eastwood surprised audiences with a sensitive performance alongside none other than Meryl Streep. But it soon became apparent he was going backwards after his brief revival. Subsequent films were credible, but nothing really stuck out. Absolute Power (1997) and Space Cowboys (2000) did well enough, while True Crime (1999) and Blood Work (2002) were received badly, as was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), which he directed but didn't appear in.
Eastwood surprised again in the mid-2000s, returning to the top of the A-list with Million Dollar Baby (2004). Also starring Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, the hugely successful drama won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. He scored his second Best Actor nomination, too. His next starring vehicle, Gran Torino (2008), earned almost $30 million in its opening weekend and was his highest grosser unadjusted for inflation. 2012 saw him in a rare lighthearted movie, Trouble with the Curve (2012), as well as a reality show, Mrs. Eastwood & Company (2012).
Between acting jobs, he chalked up an impressive list of credits behind the camera. He directed Mystic River (2003) (in which Sean Penn and Tim Robbins gave Oscar-winning performances), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) (nominated for the Best Picture Oscar), Changeling (2008) (a vehicle for Angelina Jolie), Invictus (2009) (again with Freeman), Hereafter (2010), J. Edgar (2011), Jersey Boys (2014), American Sniper (2014) (2014's top box office champ), Sully (2016) (starring Tom Hanks as hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger) and The 15:17 to Paris (2018). Back on screens after a considerable absence, he played an unlikely drug courier in The Mule (2018), which reached the top of the box office with a nine-figure gross, then directed Richard Jewell (2019). At age 91, Eastwood made history as the oldest actor to star above the title in a movie with the release of Cry Macho (2021).
Away from the limelight, Eastwood has led an aberrant existence and is described by biographer Patrick McGilligan as a cunning manipulator of the media. His convoluted slew of partners and children are now somewhat factually acknowledged, but for the first three decades of his celebrity, his personal life was kept top secret, and several of his families were left out of the official narrative. The actor refuses to disclose his exact number of offspring even to this day. He had a longtime relationship with similarly abstruse co-star Locke (who died aged 74 in 2018, though for her entire public life she masqueraded about being younger), and has fathered at least eight children by at least six different women in an unending string of liaisons, many of which overlapped. He has been married only twice, however, with a mere three of his progeny coming from those unions.
His known children are: Laurie Murray (b. 1954), whose mother is unidentified; Kimber Eastwood (b. 1964) with stuntwoman Roxanne Tunis; Kyle Eastwood (b. 1968) and Alison Eastwood (b. 1972) with his first ex-wife, Margaret Neville Johnson; Scott Eastwood (b. 1986) and Kathryn Eastwood (b. 1988) with stewardess Jacelyn Reeves; Francesca Eastwood (b. 1993) with actress Frances Fisher; and Morgan Eastwood (b. 1996) with his second ex-wife, Dina Eastwood. The entire time that he lived with Locke she was legally married to sculptor Gordon Anderson.
Eastwood has real estate holdings in Bel-Air, La Quinta, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Cassel (in remote northern California), Idaho's Sun Valley and Kihei, Hawaii.- Writer
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A true master of his craft, Michael Haneke is one of the greatest film artists working today and one who challenges his viewers each year and work goes by, with films that reflect real portions of life in realistic, disturbing and unforgettable ways. One of the most genuine filmmakers of the world cinema, Haneke wrote and directed films in several languages: French, German and English, working with a great variety of actors, such as Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Toby Jones, Ülrich Muhe, Arno Frisch and the list goes on.
This grand figure from Austrian cinema was born in Germany on 23 March 1942, from a German father and an Austrian mother, with both parents being from the artistic world working as actors, a career that Michael also tried but without much success. At the University of Vienna he studied drama, philosophy and psychology, and after graduation he went on to become a film critic and TV editor. His career behind camera started with After Liverpool (1974), which he wrote and directed. He went on to direct five more TV films and two episodes from the miniseries "Lemminge" (1979)_.
The years spent on television works prompted him to finally direct his first cinema feature, during his early 40's, which is somewhat unusual for film directors. But it was worth waiting. In The Seventh Continent (1989), Haneke establishes the foundation of what his future cinema would be about: a cinema that doesn't provides answers but one that dares to throw more and more questions, a cinema that reflects and analyses the human condition in its darkest and unexpected ways outside of any Hollywood formula. Films that exist to confront audiences and not comfort them. In it, Haneke deals with the duality of social values vs. internal values while exposing an apparent perfect family that runs into physical and material disintegration for reasons unknown. It was the first time a film of his was sent to the Cannes Film Festival (out of competition lineup) but he managed to cause some commotion in the audience with polemic scenes that were meant to extract all possible reactions from the crowd.
His next ventures at the decade's turn was in dealing with disturbed youth and the alienation they have in separating reality from fiction, trying to intersect both to drastic results. In Benny's Video (1992), it's the disturbing story of a teen boy who experiences killing for the first time capturing the murder on tape, impressed by the power of detachment that films and videos can cause to people; and later on the highly controversial Funny Games (1997), where two teens hold a family hostage to play sadistic games just for their own sick amusement. The film cemented Haneke's name as one of the greatest authors of his generation but sparkled a great debate with its themes of violence, sadism and the influence those things have in audiences. At the 1997's Cannes Film Festival, it was the film that had the most walk-out's by the audience. In between both films, he released 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994) and Kafka's The Castle (1997), the latter being one of the rare times when Haneke developed an adapted work.
In the 2000's, he strongly continued in producing more outstanding works prone to debate and reflection in what would become his most prolific decade with the following films: Code Unknown (2000), The Piano Teacher (2001), Time of the Wolf (2003), Caché (2005), an American remake shot-by shot of Funny Games (2007) and The White Ribbon (2009). His study about romance versus masochism in The Piano Teacher (2001) was an intense work, with powerful performances by Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Magimel, that the Cannes jury in the year were so impressed that Haneke managed to actually reverse their award rules where it was decided that film entries at the festival couldn't win more than one main award (the two lead actors won awards and Haneke got the Grand Prize of the Jury, just lost the Palme d'Or). With The White Ribbon (2009), an enigmatic black-and-white masterpiece following the inception of Nazism in this pre WWI and WWII story focusing on repressed children living in this small village where strange events happen all the time and without any possible reasoning, Haneke conquered the world and audiences with an artistic and daring work that won his first Palme d'Or a Golden Globe as Best Foreign Language Film and received an Oscar nomination for the same category plus the cinematography work of Christian Berger.
2012 was the year that marked his supremacy in the film world with the release of the bold and beautiful Amour (2012), a love story with powerful real drama and one where Haneke removed most of his usual dark characteristics to present more quiet and calm elements without losing input in creating controversy. The touching story of George and Anne provided one the greatest moments of that year and earned Haneke his second and consecutive Palme d'Or at Cannes and his first Oscar nominations for Best Direction and Best Original Screenplay - and it was one of the several nominees for Best Picture Oscar, winning as Best Foreign Language Film.
After abandoning a flash-mob film project, he returned to the screen with Happy End (2017), a film dealing with the refugee crisis in Europe and again he debuted his film at Cannes, receiving mildly positive reviews.
Besides his film work, Haneke also directs theatre productions, from drama to opera, from Così fan tutte to Don Giovanni.- Actor
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Takeshi Kitano originally studied to become an engineer, but was thrown out of school for rebellious behavior. He learned comedy, singing and dancing from famed comedian Senzaburô Fukami. Working as a lift boy on a nightclub with such features as comic sketches and striptease dancing, Kitano saw his chance when a comedian suddenly fell ill, and he went on stage in the man's place. With a friend he formed the comic duo "The Two Beat" (his artist's name, "Beat Takeshi", comes from this period), which became very popular on Japanese television.
Kitano soon embarked on an acting career, and when the director of Violent Cop (1989) (aka "Violent Cop") fell ill, he took over that function as well. Immediately after that film was finished he set out to make a second gangster movie, Boiling Point (1990). Just after finishing Getting Any? (1994), Kitano was involved in a serious motorcycle accident that almost killed him. It changed his way of life, and he became an active painter. This change can be seen in his later films, which are characterized by his giving more importance to the aesthetics of the film, such as in Fireworks (1997) and Kikujiro (1999).- Director
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André Øvredal was born on 6 May 1973. He is a director and writer, known for Troll Hunter (2010), The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) and Tunnelen (2016).- Director
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Takashi Miike was born in the small town of Yao on the outskirts of Osaka, Japan. His main interest growing up was motorbikes, and for a while he harbored ambitions to race professionally. At the age of 18 he went to study at the film school in Yokohama founded by renowned director Shôhei Imamura, primarily because there were no entrance exams. By his own account Miike was an undisciplined student and attended few classes, but when a local TV company came scouting for unpaid production assistants, the school nominated the one pupil who never showed up: Miike. He spent almost a decade working in television, in many different roles, before becoming an assistant director in film to, amongst others, his old mentor Imamura. The "V-Cinema" (Direct to Video) boom of the early 1990s was to be Miike's break into directing his own films, as newly formed companies hired eager young filmmakers willing to work cheap and crank out low-budget action movies. Miike's first theatrically distributed film was Shinjuku Triad Society (1995) (Shinjuku Triad Society), and from then on he alternated V-Cinema films with higher-budgeted pictures. His international breakthrough came with Audition (1999) (Audition), and since then he has an ever expanding cult following in the west. A prolific director, Miike has directed (at the time of this writing) 60+ films in his 13 years as director, his films being known for their explicit and taboo representations of violence and sex, as seen in such works as Bijitâ Q (2001) (Visitor Q), Ichi the Killer (2001) (Ichi The Killer) and the Dead or Alive Trilogy: Dead or Alive (1999), Dead or Alive 2: Birds (2000) and Dead or Alive: Final (2002).- Director
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Born in Takaoka, Toyama, Yojiro Takita came to international audiences' attention with the release of Okuribito ('Departures'), which won the Best foreign Language film awards at the Oscars in 2009. He had begun his directorial career in the 1980s with the 'chikan' ('molester') series depicting gropers in settings like trains. Still in the 'ping eiga' adult sub-genre he also completed the Serial Rape thriller in 1983. He diversified to comedy and TV serial work and, at the turn of the century, directed the mainstream Onmyoji. More recently he has been less prolific.- Director
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Tetsuya Nakashima was born on 2 September 1959 in Fukuoka, Japan. He is a director and writer, known for Confessions (2010), Kiraware Matsuko no isshô (2006) and Kamikaze Girls (2004).- Producer
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Mike Marvin is native of Tahoe City and fourth generation Californian. His family first visited Lake Tahoe in the early 1920's and by the late 1930's, the Lake was the family summer destination. Mike's grandmother built one of the first lakeside homes in Tahoma (1946) and eventually built three more Tahoe homes. Mike attended Tahoe Lake School, Tahoe-Truckee High School, Academy of Art San Francisco, and the University of Nevada.
In 1972 Mike produced his first 90 minute ski movie entitled "Earth Rider" and it featured the legendary ski-parachute jump off Yosemite's El Capitan. This was the birth of extreme skiing in America. Mike's next three ski movies were "Children of the Morning," "Wingless Angels," and "Spirit" the latter of which won the Virgin Island Film Festival's best sports documentary in 1976. That same year Mike moved to Los Angeles to begin his Hollywood career. His first studio movie was "Six Pack" starring Kenny Rogers in his theatrical movie debut. Mike then discovered a novella entitled "Legends of the Fall" and brought it to the attention of the Hollywood studios. He wrote several drafts of "Legends" and during this period was commissioned by Edward S. Feldman ("Witness") to write "Hot Dog the Movie." The script was completed in 1982 and by 1983 the movie was in production in Squaw Valley. The story is loosely based on Mike's true life adventures making ski movies all over the world. The fictionalized version follows a young freestyler named Harkin Banks to the championships at Squaw. "Hot Dog" opened number two in the country behind "Terms of Endearment" and grossed $20,307,325 at the US Box office. It is #9 in box office for extreme movies in the entire history of the motion picture business.
Mike has remained in Hollywood. He has written, directed, and produced almost three dozen movies, TV movies, and episodic TV. For the past five years he has been Head of Production for A-Mark Entertainment and returned to independent producing last October. He is also an author, artist and musician with roots dating back to he Kingston Trio of which his cousin, Nick Reynolds, was a founding member. Mike still performs the music of the Kingston Trio with Joshua Reynolds, Nick's son and Tim Gorelangton a close family friend. Mike's paintings hang in some of the most beautiful homes in the country.- Director
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Brett Leonard is a film director.
Mr. Leonard has recently been named by The Producers Guild of America, in association with Variety Magazine, as one of its "Digital 25", recognizing the twenty five leading visionaries, innovators and producers who have made significant contributions to the advancement of storytelling through digital media. The Guild's 4,500 members, including producers of film, television and new media, along with a distinguished Digital 25 Advisory Board, voted Mr. Leonard for this honor. Other recipients include directors James Cameron and Ridley Scott.
Mr. Leonard became a globally-recognized pioneer of digital filmmaking when he directed and co-wrote the hit motion picture Lawnmower Man, starring Pierce Brosnan and Jeff Fahey. The film is considered a cult classic, way ahead of its time in the use of groundbreaking computer graphics, and the portrayal of a networked data culture. Lawnmower Man is one of the true progenitors of the "cyber genre" and was the number one commercially successful independent film of 1992, costing under $6 million and earning over $200 million worldwide.
Mr. Leonard was a key participant of the Sony 2000 think tank, a small group of media visionaries assembled to discuss the future of media by the top brass of the Sony corporation.
He directed Peter Gabriel's Kiss That Frog, the first HD all computer graphic music video/ride film. Kiss That Frog toured the world as a wildly popular theme park attraction, and won Mr. Leonard a 1994 MTV Music Video Award.
In the ensuing years, Mr. Leonard has continued to push the envelope in his feature film work, establishing himself as a pioneer of digital visual effects and cutting-edge independent film, and 3D production.
He first stepped into the third dimension with his IMAX 3D work, and directed T-Rex in IMAX 3D, which was the No.#1 hit 3D movie in history for over ten years, having grossed over $100 million worldwide on IMAX screens alone. It was also the first 3D film to use photo-realistic computer graphics and stereoscopic compositing; techniques that led to the innovations of current 3D film spectaculars such as James Cameron's Avatar. He then went on to direct Anthony Hopkins in the IMAX 3D spectacular The Magic Box.
Mr. Leonard is also known for having a keen eye for new talent, both in front of and behind the camera. He was instrumental in bringing Russell Crowe to American film audiences, giving Russell his first lead in a Hollywood film, Virtuosity, starring Denzel Washington and directed by Mr. Leonard. He did the same for Alicia Silverstone in his film for Tri-Star, Hideaway, and started Rachel Taylor's career (Transformers, American Horror Story) in his film for Marvel Studios, Man-Thing.
Television star, Alex O'Loughlin (lead in the smash-hit series Hawaii Five-O), was given his first break by Brett, and first appeared in Mr. Leonard's films, Man-Thing and Feed.
Mr. Leonard has also been instrumental in dozens of careers behind the camera - Some of the most notable are production designer, Alex McDowell (Minority Report, The Terminal, Watchmen) who's first feature was Lawnmower Man, and director of photography Russell Carpenter, who went on to win the Academy Award for Titanic. Literally hundreds of computer graphic animators and 3D innovators who are now in the top ranks of the business, all got their start on Mr. Leonard's groundbreaking films.
Most recently, Mr. Leonard is again pioneering new media forms with a musically driven feature film concept for the Internet called PopFictionLife - Believing that new content distribution platforms need their own creative "genres", Mr. Leonard and his team have focused on creating projects in a style designed specifically for "personal screens" (iPhone, iPad, etc.). PopFictionLife is an Internet movie concept where a music-driven story is told in 5min "Frags" that connect together to form a full-length feature film. A FragFilm is not a typical web series - it delivers the "movie" experience in a form parsed for the short attention spans of the YouTube generation, designed for easy viewing and downloading on the Internet and mobile platforms. FragFilms of the PopFictionLife genre revolve around the actual lives of developing or established music artists, fictionalized in fun and creative ways to have the dramatic impact of a Hollywood movie. This presents the artist and their music in an entertaining and compelling context beyond "reality", with the style and high production values audiences expect from feature films and television.
Mr. Leonard has produced and directed the first two FragFilms of the PopFictionLife concept, entitled Feel (for Hollywood Records/Disney), and The Other Country (for PFL Transmedia), both of which have been distributed world-wide through the Internet.
Mr. Leonard, in partnership with producer Wilbert Smith Ph.D., has also recently completed a feature-length documentary entitled, Hole in the Head: A Life Revealed, narrated by renowned actor Dennis Haysbert. The film had its world premiere at the International Black Film Festival of Nashville, where it won the "Director's Choice" award for socially-relevant documentary, and has been endorsed by many spiritual leaders, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who says this "story lives on and inspires us all!"
Mr. Leonard and Mr. Smith are now developing Hole in the Head: A Life Revealed into a dramatic feature film based on the incredible true story.
While continually directing feature films over the last twenty five years, Mr. Leonard also produced numerous interactive projects that were well ahead of their time - many at the forefront of defining what is now called "user-created interactive entertainment".
He created a sensation when he took his Swarm Cam-Fusion Station onto the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Billy Idol, and implemented one of the first live web-casts ever, from the House of Blues in Los Angeles.
Consequently, Mr. Leonard was approached by the Creative Artists Agency and Intel Corporation to direct a state-of-the-art "interactive show" for the CAA/Intel Media Lab, with his team at L-Squared Entertainment doing the technical implementation. The "show," IS?TV®: The Virtual Studio Tour, was to introduce the Hollywood community to the "future of entertainment." As producer and director of this ambitious and pioneering project, Mr. Leonard digitized his star Danny DeVito, creating an interactive animated character named "Mr. Head", who guided the audience/participants through the interactive experience. Looking at this presentation now, over ten years later, the volcanically changing media landscape we inhabit today is incredibly similar to what this presentation predicted back then - Mr. Leonard was one of the first to envision the "YouTube", "Facebook" cyber-world of our new millennium.
Mr. Leonard continues to develop ground-breaking projects for enabling truly interactive user-created media experiences, for both the Internet and location-based immersive media venues. Brett's philosophy, born out in all of his interactive work, is to empower people to create story, character, and emotion in any new media experience, no matter what the technology being used to create it.- Director
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Martin Campbell knows how to entertain an audience when he steps behind the camera. When he directed The Mask of Zorro (1998), the movie earned Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations and launched the international careers of Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Next, when he helmed Vertical Limit (2000), the film was well received by the critics and earned over $200 million in worldwide box-office sales. In addition, Campbell is credited with rejuvenating the James Bond franchise when he directed GoldenEye (1995), Pierce Brosnan's first outing as the famed British spy, which went on to gross more than $350 million. He also directed Daniel Craig's debut Bond feature as well, Casino Royale (2006).
Born in New Zealand, Campbell moved to London where he began his career as a cameraman. He went on to produce the controversial British feature Scum (1979), as well as Black Joy (1977), which was selected for competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Campbell made his directorial debut on the British police action series The Professionals (1977) and continued with the popular BBC series Shoestring (1979) and Thames TV's Minder (1979)
Considered one of the U.K.'s top directors by the mid-'80s, he directed the highly praised British telefilm, Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983). For his work on Edge of Darkness (1985), a five-hour BBC miniseries about nuclear contamination in England that depicted murder and high-ranking corruption, he won six BAFTA awards.
Campbell's first Hollywood movie was Criminal Law (1998) and he went on to direct Defenseless (1991) and No Escape (1994). Some of his American credits include directing HBO's Cast a Deadly Spell (1991) and two episodes of NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street (1993), among others. He also directed the epic romance Beyond Borders (2003) starring Angelina Jolie and Clive Owen.- Producer
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Samuel Alexander Mendes was born on August 1, 1965 in Reading, England, UK to parents James Peter Mendes, a retired university lecturer, and Valerie Helene Mendes, an author who writes children's books. Their marriage didn't last long, James divorced Sam's mother in 1970 when Sam was just 5-years-old. Sam was educated at Cambridge University and joined the Chichester Festival Theatre following his graduation in 1987. Afterwards, he directed Judi Dench in "The Cherry Orchard", for which he won a Critics Circle Award for Best Newcomer. He then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he directed such productions as "Troilus and Cressida" with Ralph Fiennes and "Richard III". In 1992, he became artistic director of the reopened Donmar Warehouse in London, where he directed such productions as "The Glass Menagerie" and the revival of the musical "Cabaret", which earned four Tony Awards including one for Best Revival of a Musical. He also directed "The Blue Room" starring Nicole Kidman. In 1999, he got the chance to direct his first feature film, American Beauty (1999). The movie earned 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director for Mendes, which is a rare feat for a first-time film director.- Producer
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Marc Forster is a German-born filmmaker and screenwriter. He is best known for directing the films Monster's Ball (2001), Finding Neverland (2004), Stay (2005), Stranger than Fiction (2006), The Kite Runner (2007), Quantum of Solace (2008), and World War Z (2013).
His breakthrough film was Monster's Ball (2001), in which he directed Halle Berry in her Academy Award-winning performance, the film also starred Billy Bob Thornton, Heath Ledger, and Peter Boyle. His next film, Finding Neverland (2004), was based on the life of author J.M. Barrie. The film was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Johnny Depp.
Forster also directed the twenty-second James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. In 2013 he directed the film adaptation of the novel World War Z, starring Brad Pitt.- Director
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Extremely efficient and underrated director Lewis Teague was born on March 8th, 1938, in Brooklyn, NY. He apprenticed with director Sydney Pollack at Universal Television, and was a production manager on the landmark rock concert documentary Woodstock (1970).
Teague found gainful employment working for legendary producer Roger Corman throughout the 1970s: he handled second-unit director chores on Death Race 2000 (1975), Thunder and Lightning (1977) and Avalanche (1978) and served as an editor for Monte Hellman's outstanding Cockfighter (1974) and Jonathan Demme's delightful Crazy Mama (1975). Teague also tackled second-unit director responsibilities on Samuel Fuller's classic World War II epic The Big Red One (1980).
Teague made his feature debut as the co-director of the entertainingly trashy Dirty O'Neil (1974). He followed this with the lively Depression-era crime exploitation winner The Lady in Red (1979), which he also edited. The witty horror-creature feature Alligator (1980) and the gritty urban vigilante opus Fighting Back: The Story of Rocky Bleier (1980) were likewise solid and satisfying movies. Teague directed two superior Stephen King adaptations in the 1980s, the terrifying Cujo (1983) and the immensely enjoyable anthology outing Cat's Eye (1985). His other films include the fun Romancing the Stone (1984) sequel The Jewel of the Nile (1985), the exciting action romp Navy Seals (1990), the cool futuristic sci-fi offering Wedlock (1991) and the nifty made-for-TV supernatural shocker The Triangle (2001). In addition to his film work, Teague has directed episodes of such TV shows as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962), Barnaby Jones (1973), Shannon's Deal (1990), Profiler (1996) and Nash Bridges (1996). After a regrettable five-year absence from directing, Lewis Teague made a welcome comeback with the dramatic short Cante Jondo (2007).- Producer
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A graduate of Wesleyan University, Michael Bay spent his 20s working on advertisements and music videos. His first projects after film school were in the music video business. He created music videos for Tina Turner, Meat Loaf, Lionel Richie, Wilson Phillips, Donny Osmond and Divinyls. His work won him recognition and a number of MTV award nominations. He also filmed advertisements for Nike, Reebok, Coca-Cola, Budweiser and Miller Lite. He won the Grand Prix Clio for Commercial of the Year for his "Got Milk/Aaron Burr" commercial. At Cannes, he has won the Gold Lion for The Best Beer campaign for Miller Lite, as well as the Silver for "Got Milk". In 1995, Bay was honored by the Directors Guild of America as Commercial Director of the Year. That same year, he also directed his first feature film, Bad Boys (1995), starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, which grossed more than $160 million, worldwide. His follow-up film, The Rock (1996), starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage, was also hugely successful, making Bay the director du jour.- Writer
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George Walton Lucas, Jr. was raised on a walnut ranch in Modesto, California. His father was a stationery store owner and he had three siblings. During his late teen years, he went to Thomas Downey High School and was very much interested in drag racing. He planned to become a professional racecar driver. However, a terrible car accident just after his high school graduation ended that dream permanently. The accident changed his views on life.
He decided to attend Modesto Junior College before enrolling in the University of Southern California film school. As a film student, he made several short films including Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB (1967) which won first prize at the 1967-68 National Student Film Festival. In 1967, he was awarded a scholarship by Warner Brothers to observe the making of Finian's Rainbow (1968) which was being directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas and Coppola became good friends and formed American Zoetrope in 1969. The company's first project was Lucas' full-length version of THX 1138 (1971). In 1971, Coppola went into production for The Godfather (1972), and Lucas formed his own company, Lucasfilm Ltd.
In 1973, he wrote and directed the semiautobiographical American Graffiti (1973) which won the Golden Globe and garnered five Academy Award nominations. This gave him the clout he needed for his next daring venture. From 1973 to 1974, he began writing the screenplay which became Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). He was inspired to make this movie from Flash Gordon and the Planet of the Apes films. In 1975, he established ILM. (Industrial Light & Magic) to produce the visual effects needed for the movie. Another company called Sprocket Systems was established to edit and mix Star Wars and later becomes known as Skywalker Sound. His movie was turned down by several studios until 20th Century Fox gave him a chance. Lucas agreed to forego his directing salary in exchange for 40% of the film's box-office take and all merchandising rights. The movie went on to break all box office records and earned seven Academy Awards. It redefined the term "blockbuster" and the rest is history.
Lucas made the other Star Wars films and along with Steven Spielberg created the Indiana Jones series which made box office records of their own. From 1980 to 1985, Lucas was busy with the construction of Skywalker Ranch, built to accommodate the creative, technical, and administrative needs of Lucasfilm. Lucas also revolutionized movie theaters with the THX system which was created to maintain the highest quality standards in motion picture viewing.
He went on to produce several more movies that have introduced major innovations in filmmaking technology. He is chairman of the board of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. In 1992, George Lucas was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his lifetime achievement.
He reentered the directing chair with the production of the highly-anticipated Star Wars prequel trilogy beginning with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) . The films have been polarizing for fans and critics alike, but were commercially successful and have become a part of culture. The animated spin-off series Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) was supervised by Lucas. He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, making co-chair Kathleen Kennedy president. He has attended the premieres of new Star Wars films and been generally supportive of them.- Producer
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One of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. He has an extraordinary number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed credits to his name, either as a director, producer or writer since launching the summer blockbuster with Jaws (1975), and he has done more to define popular film-making since the mid-1970s than anyone else.
Steven Allan Spielberg was born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Leah Frances (Posner), a concert pianist and restaurateur, and Arnold Spielberg, an electrical engineer who worked in computer development. His parents were both born to Russian Jewish immigrant families. Steven spent his younger years in Haddon Township, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona, and later Saratoga, California. He went to California State University Long Beach, but dropped out to pursue his entertainment career. Among his early directing efforts were Battle Squad (1961), which combined World War II footage with footage of an airplane on the ground that he makes you believe is moving. He also directed Escape to Nowhere (1961), which featured children as World War Two soldiers, including his sister Anne Spielberg, and The Last Gun (1959), a western. All of these were short films. The next couple of years, Spielberg directed a couple of movies that would portend his future career in movies. In 1964, he directed Firelight (1964), a movie about aliens invading a small town. In 1967, he directed Slipstream (1967), which was unfinished. However, in 1968, he directed Amblin' (1968), which featured the desert prominently, and not the first of his movies in which the desert would feature. Amblin' also became the name of his production company, which turned out such classics as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg had a unique and classic early directing project, Duel (1971), with Dennis Weaver. In the early 1970s, Spielberg was working on TV, directing among others such series as Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969), Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969) and Murder by the Book (1971). All of his work in television and short films, as well as his directing projects, were just a hint of the wellspring of talent that would dazzle audiences all over the world.
Spielberg's first major directorial effort was The Sugarland Express (1974), with Goldie Hawn, a film that marked him as a rising star. It was his next effort, however, that made him an international superstar among directors: Jaws (1975). This classic shark attack tale started the tradition of the summer blockbuster or, at least, he was credited with starting the tradition. His next film was the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a unique and original UFO story that remains a classic. In 1978, Spielberg produced his first film, the forgettable I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), and followed that effort with Used Cars (1980), a critically acclaimed, but mostly forgotten, Kurt Russell/Jack Warden comedy about devious used-car dealers. Spielberg hit gold yet one more time with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with Harrison Ford taking the part of Indiana Jones. Spielberg produced and directed two films in 1982. The first was Poltergeist (1982), but the highest-grossing movie of all time up to that point was the alien story E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg also helped pioneer the practice of product placement. The concept, while not uncommon, was still relatively low-key when Spielberg raised the practice to almost an art form with his famous (or infamous) placement of Reese's Pieces in "E.T." Spielberg was also one of the pioneers of the big-grossing special-effects movies, like "E.T." and "Close Encounters", where a very strong emphasis on special effects was placed for the first time on such a huge scale. In 1984, Spielberg followed up "Raiders" with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), which was a commercial success but did not receive the critical acclaim of its predecessor. As a producer, Spielberg took on many projects in the 1980s, such as The Goonies (1985), and was the brains behind the little monsters in Gremlins (1984). He also produced the cartoon An American Tail (1986), a quaint little animated classic. His biggest effort as producer in 1985, however, was the blockbuster Back to the Future (1985), which made Michael J. Fox an instant superstar. As director, Spielberg took on the book The Color Purple (1985), with Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, with great success. In the latter half of the 1980s, he also directed Empire of the Sun (1987), a mixed success for the occasionally erratic Spielberg. Success would not escape him for long, though.
The late 1980s found Spielberg's projects at the center of pop-culture yet again. In 1988, he produced the landmark animation/live-action film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). The next year proved to be another big one for Spielberg, as he produced and directed Always (1989) as well as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Back to the Future Part II (1989). All three of the films were box-office and critical successes. Also, in 1989, he produced the little known comedy-drama Dad (1989), with Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson, which got mostly mixed results. Spielberg has also had an affinity for animation and has been a strong voice in animation in the 1990s. Aside from producing the landmark "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", he produced the animated series Tiny Toon Adventures (1990), Animaniacs (1993), Pinky and the Brain (1995), Freakazoid! (1995), Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain (1998), Family Dog (1993) and Toonsylvania (1998). Spielberg also produced other cartoons such as The Land Before Time (1988), We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), Casper (1995) (the live action version) as well as the live-action version of The Flintstones (1994), where he was credited as "Steven Spielrock". Spielberg also produced many Roger Rabbit short cartoons, and many Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs and Tiny Toons specials. Spielberg was very active in the early 1990s, as he directed Hook (1991) and produced such films as the cute fantasy Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991). He also produced the unusual comedy thriller Arachnophobia (1990), Back to the Future Part III (1990) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). While these movies were big successes in their own right, they did not quite bring in the kind of box office or critical acclaim as previous efforts. In 1993, Spielberg directed Jurassic Park (1993), which for a short time held the record as the highest grossing movie of all time, but did not have the universal appeal of his previous efforts. Big box-office spectacles were not his only concern, though. He produced and directed Schindler's List (1993), a stirring film about the Holocaust. He won best director at the Oscars, and also got Best Picture. In the mid-90s, he helped found the production company DreamWorks, which was responsible for many box-office successes.
As a producer, he was very active in the late 90s, responsible for such films as The Mask of Zorro (1998), Men in Black (1997) and Deep Impact (1998). However, it was on the directing front that Spielberg was in top form. He directed and produced the epic Amistad (1997), a spectacular film that was shorted at the Oscars and in release due to the fact that its release date was moved around so much in late 1997. The next year, however, produced what many believe was one of the best films of his career: Saving Private Ryan (1998), a film about World War Two that is spectacular in almost every respect. It was stiffed at the Oscars, losing best picture to Shakespeare in Love (1998).
Spielberg produced a series of films, including Evolution (2001), The Haunting (1999) and Shrek (2001). he also produced two sequels to Jurassic Park (1993), which were financially but not particularly critical successes. In 2001, he produced a mini-series about World War Two that definitely *was* a financial and critical success: Band of Brothers (2001), a tale of an infantry company from its parachuting into France during the invasion to the Battle of the Bulge. Also in that year, Spielberg was back in the director's chair for A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), a movie with a message and a huge budget. It did reasonably at the box office and garnered varied reviews from critics.
Spielberg has been extremely active in films there are many other things he has done as well. He produced the short-lived TV series SeaQuest 2032 (1993), an anthology series entitled Amazing Stories (1985), created the video-game series "Medal of Honor" set during World War Two, and was a starting producer of ER (1994). Spielberg, if you haven't noticed, has a great interest in World War Two. He and Tom Hanks collaborated on Shooting War: World War II Combat Cameramen (2000), a documentary about World War II combat photographers, and he produced a documentary about the Holocaust called Eyes of the Holocaust (2000). With all of this to Spielberg's credit, it's no wonder that he's looked at as one of the greatest ever figures in entertainment.- Writer
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James Francis Cameron was born on August 16, 1954 in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada. He moved to the United States in 1971. The son of an engineer, he majored in physics at California State University before switching to English, and eventually dropping out. He then drove a truck to support his screenwriting ambition. He landed his first professional film job as art director, miniature-set builder, and process-projection supervisor on Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) and had his first experience as a director with a two week stint on Piranha II: The Spawning (1982) before being fired.
He then wrote and directed The Terminator (1984), a futuristic action-thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton. It was a low budget independent film, but Cameron's superb, dynamic direction made it a surprise mainstream success and it is now regarded as one of the most iconic pictures of the 1980s. After this came a string of successful, bigger budget science-fiction action films such as Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). In 1990, Cameron formed his own production company, Lightstorm Entertainment. In 1997, he wrote and directed Titanic (1997), a romance epic about two young lovers from different social classes who meet on board the famous ship. The movie went on to break all box office records and earned eleven Academy Awards. It became the highest grossing movie of all time until 12 years later, Avatar (2009), which invented and pioneered 3D film technology, and it went on to beat "Titanic", and became the first film to cost two billion dollars until 2019 when Marvel took the record.
James Cameron is now one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood. He was formerly married to producer Gale Anne Hurd, who produced several of his films. In 2000, he married actress Suzy Amis, who appeared in Titanic, and they have three children.- Producer
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A whiz-kid with special effects, Robert is from the Spielberg camp of film-making (Steven Spielberg produced many of his films). Usually working with writing partner Bob Gale, Robert's earlier films show he has a talent for zany comedy (Romancing the Stone (1984), 1941 (1979)) and special effect vehicles (Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Back to the Future (1985)). His later films have become more serious, with the hugely successful Tom Hanks vehicle Forrest Gump (1994) and the Jodie Foster film Contact (1997), both critically acclaimed movies. Again, these films incorporate stunning effects. Robert has proved he can work a serious story around great effects.- Writer
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Susannah Grant was born on 4 January 1963 in New York City, New York, USA. She is a writer and producer, known for Erin Brockovich (2000), Unbelievable (2019) and The 5th Wave (2016). She has been married to Christopher Henrikson since 1995. They have two children.- Actress
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Helen Hunt began studying acting at the age of eight with her father, respected director and acting coach Gordon Hunt. A year later she made her professional debut and afterwards worked steadily in films, theatre and television.- Writer
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Sarah Kernochan was born in New York City. Educated at Rosemary Hall and Sarah Lawrence, she achieved early success by winning the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, at age 27, for her film "Marjoe." Her next move was to record two RCA albums as a singer-songwriter. Two years later her novel "Dry Hustle" was published. An original musical titled "Sleeparound Town" followed, with workshop productions at the New York Public Theater, and then Playwrights Horizons, where she met her future husband James Lapine. Their daughter Phoebe Lapine was born 1985, by which time Kernochan had settled into a career as a screenwriter and filmmaker. In 2002 she won a second Academy Award, this time for the 40-minute short "Thoth". She continues to compose songs for her website. She has taught advanced screenwriting as a Terry and Jane Semel Fellow at Emerson College in Boston. Her most recent accomplishments have been the publication of "Jane Was Here"(2011), a well-reviewed reincarnation mystery, and the release of her third album "Decades of Demos" for digital download in online stores. Her biog "At Home With a Ghost" is an ongoing chronicle of her lifelong encounters with ghosts and spirits.- Producer
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Alexandre Aja was born on 7 August 1978 in Paris, France. He is a producer and director, known for High Tension (2003), The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and Piranha 3D (2010). He is married to Laïla Marrakchi.- Director
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Eli Raphael Roth was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Cora (Bialis), a painter, and Sheldon H. Roth, a psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and clinical professor. His family is Jewish (from Austria, Hungary, Russia, and Poland). He began shooting Super 8 films at the age of eight; after watching Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) and vomiting, and deciding he wanted to be a producer/director. With his brothers and friends, ketchup for blood, and his father's power tools, he made over 50 short films before attending film school at NYU, where he won a student Academy Award and graduated summa cum laude in 1994.
Eli worked in film and theater production in New York City for many years, doing every job from production assistant to assistant editor to assistant to the director. At the age of 20, Roth was development head for producer Fred Zollo, a position he soon left to write full time. To earn a living, Roth did budgets and schedules for the films A Price Above Rubies (1998) and Illuminata (1998), and often worked as a stand-in, where he could watch directors work with the actors. In 1995, Roth co-wrote the script that would eventually become Cabin Fever (2002) with friend Randy Pearlstein, and the two spent many years unsuccessfully trying to get the film financed. Roth left New York in 1999 to live in Los Angeles, and within four months got funding for his animation series Chowdaheads (1999). Roth and friend Noah Belson (Cabin Fever (2002)'s Guitar Man) wrote and voiced the episodes, which Roth produced, directed, and designed. The episodes were due to run on WCW's #1 rated series WCW Monday Nitro (1995) but the CEO was fired a day before they were scheduled to air, and the episodes never ran. Roth used the episodes to set up a stop motion series called The Rotten Fruit (2003) which he produced, directed, and animated, as well as co-wrote and voiced with friend Belson. Between the two animated series, Roth worked closely with director David Lynch, producing content for the website davidlynch.com.
In 2001, Roth filmed Cabin Fever (2002) on a shoestring budget of $1.5 million, with private equity he and his producers raised from friends and their family. The film was the subject of a bidding war at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival, eventually won by Lion's Gate, instantly doubling their investors' money. It went on to not only be the highest-grossing film for Lion's Gate in 2003, but the most profitable horror film released that year, garnering critical acclaim from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Empire Magazine, and such filmmakers as Peter Jackson, Quentin Tarantino, and Tobe Hooper. Roth used the film's success to launch a slew of projects, including The Box (2009), a horror thriller he co-wrote with Richard Kelly. In May 2003, Roth joined forces with filmmakers Boaz Yakin, Scott Spiegel, and Greenestreet Films in New York to form Raw Nerve, LLC, a horror film production company.
In 2014, Eli married Chilean model and actress Lorenza Izzo.- Producer
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Raised in Texas and Kentucky by her doctor father and mother. Went to Purdue University to study landscape architecture but switched to drama. Moved to Nashville after college to be with her family before heading to Los Angeles in 1982 to study at the Strasburg Institute. Worked for a commercials production company as a receptionist before taking a position with them as a music video production assistant. While working at the office, she began work on what would eventually become Thelma & Louise (1991), writing the script in longhand at home and then retyping it on the job.- Actress
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Julie Delpy was born in Paris, France, in 1969 to Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet, both actors.
She was first featured in Jean-Luc Godard's Detective (1985) at the age of fourteen. She has starred in many American and European productions since then, including Disney's The Three Musketeers (1993), Killing Zoe (1993), Three Colors: White (1994), and the "Before" series, alongside Ethan Hawke: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013).
She graduated from NYU's film school, and wrote and directed the short film Blah Blah Blah (1995), which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. She is a resident of Los Angeles.- Director
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Dusan Makavejev is the premier figure in Yugoslavian film history; his films are deeply rooted in his nation's painful postwar experiences and draw on important Yugoslavian cinematic and cultural models. Makavejev's work has violated many political and sexual taboos and invited censorship in dozens of nations. In the 1950s, after studying psychology at Belgrade University, Makavejev became involved in the activities of various film societies and festivals and studied direction at the Academy for Radio, Television and Film. As early as 1953, he began making short films and documentaries and would work in various capacities at both the Zagreb and Avala studios during the late 50s and early 60s. The documentary impulse remains powerful in Makavejev's work, as does the tendency to intercut undigested segments from other films into longer works.
Makavejev enjoyed great critical success with his first three features, Man Is Not a Bird (1965), "Love Affair" (1967) and Innocence Unprotected (1968). Highly allegorical and relying on techniques derived from Brecht and influenced by Godard, these films were sardonic and anarchistic views of Eastern European state socialist milieus.
Much of Makavejev's work has been uncompromisingly experimental as well as politically outrageous. WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) is the best example of this combination and is the director's most influential work to date. Much of the film is composed of a documentary Makavejev researched in the late 1960s while in the US on a Ford Foundation grant and which was eventually financed by German TV. A witty, passionate, and often rambling account of pioneering psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich and his American disciples, the material is intercut with a fictitious political-sexual allegory set in contemporary Belgrade. The film was instantly banned in Yugoslavia and made Makavejev persona non grata in his native country until the late 1980s.
Sweet Movie (1974) was made in Canadian exile, with some production resources furnished by the National Film Board of Canada. Also a disjointed, two-part narrative, it again focuses on radical techniques in sexual psychotherapy, here played out rather than verbalized. Intertwined is yet another acidic, allegorical fable of the decay of Yugoslavia's socialist legacy. Extremely violent and sexually explicit, "Sweet Movie" was dismissed (and censored) as pornography in many countries, and added to Makavejev's reputation as a "filmmaker maudit."
Montenegro (1981) has been Makavejev's greatest financial success to date. Political commentary and formal experimentation are subordinated to narrative drive in this story of a housewife (Susan Anspach) who grapples with sexual liberation and fails.
The Coca-Cola Kid (1985), Makavejev's second major international co-production, was marred by on-set squabbles between actors, and the rejection of Makavejev's intriguing plan to use a long reel of multilingual Coca-Cola commercials as a narrative structuring device. What emerged was a genuinely erotic film which takes a quirky, satiric view both of its Australian setting and the international business world.
Makavejev's long exile from his homeland ended in 1988 with the release of Manifesto (1988), a Ruritanian political farce mostly shot in Yugoslavia. Although the film marks the most disciplined, traditional storytelling of Makavejev's career, it has seen only limited bookings in the US. Also little seen was his follow-up Gorilla Bathes at Noon (1993), a political comedy based on the adventures of a Russian soldier as he wanders around Berlin.
Profession(s): director, screenwriter, professor, essayist Sometimes Credited As: Sam Rotterdam
Family wife: Bojana Marijan (married in 1964; has worked with Makavejev)
Education Academy of Theater, Radio, Film and Television Belgrade, Yugoslavia Belgrade University Belgrade, Yugoslavia psychology 1955.- Writer
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Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future director Jennifer Lynch shortly after he turned 21. That experience, plus attending art school in a particularly violent and run-down area of Philadelphia, inspired Eraserhead (1977), a film that he began in the early 1970s (after a couple of shorts) and which he would work on obsessively for five years. The final film was initially judged to be almost unreleasable weird, but thanks to the efforts of distributor Ben Barenholtz, it secured a cult following and enabled Lynch to make his first mainstream film (in an unlikely alliance with Mel Brooks), though The Elephant Man (1980) was shot through with his unique sensibility. Its enormous critical and commercial success led to Dune (1984), a hugely expensive commercial disaster, but Lynch redeemed himself with the now classic Blue Velvet (1986), his most personal and original work since his debut. He subsequently won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival with the dark, violent road movie Wild at Heart (1990), and achieved a huge cult following with his surreal TV series Twin Peaks (1990), which he adapted for the big screen, though his comedy series On the Air (1992) was less successful. He also draws comic strips and has devised multimedia stage events with regular composer Angelo Badalamenti. He had a much-publicized affair with Isabella Rossellini in the late 1980s.- Director
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The old Etonian, after National Service in the British Army, wanted to get into films but found the doors were closed to him, so he worked on commercials for about 20 years. David Putnam gave him a chance to direct Chariots of Fire which was a hit, and he never looked back.
He met his second wife, actress Maryam d'Abo, when she came to see him about wanting to play the leading role of Jane in his film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984). They reconnected 15 years later at a dinner party. They wed four years later in 2003.- Producer
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Highly inventive U.S. film director/producer/writer/actor Sam Raimi first came to the attention of film fans with the savage, yet darkly humorous, low-budget horror film, The Evil Dead (1981). From his childhood, Raimi was a fan of the cinema and, before he was ten-years-old, he was out making movies with an 8mm camera. He was a devoted fan of The Three Stooges, so much of Raimi's film work in his teens, with good friends Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert, was slapstick comedy based around what they had observed from "Stooges" movies.
Among the three of them, they wrote, directed, produced and edited a short horror movie titled Within the Woods (1978), which was then shown to prospective investors to raise the money necessary to film The Evil Dead (1981). It met with lukewarm interest in the U.S. with local distributors, so Raimi took the film to Europe, where it was much more warmly received. After it started gaining positive reviews and, more importantly, ticket sales upon its release in Europe, U.S. distributors showed renewed interest, and "Evil Dead" was eventually released stateside to strong box office returns. His next directorial effort was Crimewave (1985), a quirky, cartoon-like effort that failed to catch fire with audiences. However, he bounced back with Evil Dead II (1987), a racier and more humorous remake/sequel to the original "Dead" that did even better at the box office. Raimi was then given his biggest budget to date to shoot Darkman (1990), a comic book-style fantasy about a scarred avenger. The film did moderate business, but Raimi's strong visual style was evident throughout the film via inventive and startling camera work that caught the attention of numerous critics.
The third chapter in the Evil Dead story beckoned, and Raimi once again directed buddy Campbell as the gritty hero "Ash", in the Gothic horror Army of Darkness (1992). Raimi surprised fans when he took a turn away from the fantasy genre and directed Gene Hackman and Sharon Stone in the sexy western, The Quick and the Dead (1995); four years later, he took the directorial reins on A Simple Plan (1998), a crime thriller about stolen money, starring Bill Paxton and Bridget Fonda. In early 1999, he directed the baseball film, For Love of the Game (1999), and, in 2000, returned to the fantasy genre with a top-flight cast in The Gift (2000). In 2002, Raimi was given a real opportunity to demonstrate his dynamic visual style with the big-budget film adaptation of the Stan Lee comic book superhero, Spider-Man (2002), and fans were not disappointed. The movie was strong in both script and effects, and was a runaway success at the box office. Of course, Raimi returned for the sequel, Spider-Man 2 (2004), which surpassed the original in box-office takings.- Writer
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Fede Alvarez was born on 9 February 1978 in Montevideo, Uruguay. He is a writer and producer, known for Don't Breathe (2016), Evil Dead (2013) and The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018).- Director
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Alejandro González Iñárritu (ih-nyar-ee-too), born August 15th, 1963, is a Mexican film director.
González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and by the Directors Guild of America for Best Director. He is also the first Mexican-born director to have won the Prix de la mise en scene or best director award at Cannes (2006), the second one being Carlos Reygadas in 2012. His six feature films, 'Amores Perros' (2000), '21 Grams' (2003), 'Babel' (2006), 'Biutiful' (2010), 'Birdman' (2014) and 'The Revenant' (2015), have gained critical acclaim world-wide including two Academy Award nominations.
Alejandro González Iñárritu was born in Mexico City.
Crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a cargo ship at the ages of seventeen and nineteen years, González Iñárritu worked his way across Europe and Africa. He himself has noted that these early travels as a young man have had a great influence on him as a film-maker. The setting of his films have often been in the places he visited during this period.
After his travels, González Iñárritu returned to Mexico City and majored in communications at Universidad Iberoamericana. In 1984, he started his career as a radio host at the Mexican radio station WFM, a rock and eclectic music station. In 1988, he became the director of the station. Over the next five years, González Iñárritu spent his time interviewing rock stars, transmitting live concerts, and making WFM the number one radio station in Mexico. From 1987 to 1989, he composed music for six Mexican feature films. He has stated that he believes music has had a bigger influence on him as an artist than film itself.
In the nineties, González Iñárritu created Z films with Raul Olvera in Mexico. Under Z Films, he started writing, producing and directing short films and advertisements. Making the final transition into T.V Film directing, he studied under well-known Polish theatre director Ludwik Margules, as well as Judith Weston in Los Angeles.
In 1995, González Iñárritu wrote and directed his first T.V pilot for Z Films, called Detras del dinero, -"Behind the Money", starring Miguel Bosé. Z Films went on to be one of the biggest and strongest film production companies in Mexico, launching seven young directors in the feature film arena. In 1999, González Iñárritu directed his first feature film Amores perros, written by Guillermo Arriaga. Amores perros explored Mexican society in Mexico City told via three intertwining stories. In 2000, Amores perros premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Critics Weeks Grand Prize. It also introduced audiences for the first time to Gael García Bernal. Amores perros went on to be nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards.
After the success of Amores Perros, González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga revisited the intersecting story structure of Amores perros in González Iñárritu's second film, 21 Grams. The film starred Benicio del Toro, Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, and was presented at the Venice Film Festival, winning the Volpi Cup for actor Sean Penn. At the 2004 Academy Awards, Del Toro and Watts received nominations for their performances.
In 2005 González Iñárritu embarked on his third film, Babel, set in 4 countries on 3 continents, and in 4 different languages. Babel consists of four stories set in Morocco, Mexico, the United States, and Japan. The film stars Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Adriana Barraza. The majority of the rest of the cast, however, was made up of non-professional actors and some new actors, such as Rinko Kikuchi. It was presented at Cannes 2006, where González Iñárritu earned the Best Director Prize (Prix de la mise en scène). Babel was released in November 2006 and received seven nominations at the 79th Annual Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director nominated for a DGA award and for an Academy Award. Babel went on to win Best Motion Picture in the drama category at the Golden Globe Awards on January 15, 2007. Gustavo Santaolalla won the Academy Award that year for Best Original Score. After Babel, Alejandro and his writing partner Guillermo Arriaga professionally parted ways, following González Iñárritu barring Arriaga from the set during filming (Arriaga told the LA Times in 2009 "It had to come to an end, but I still respect González Iñárritu").
In 2008 and 2009, González Iñárritu directed and produced Biutiful, starring Javier Bardem, written by González Iñárritu, Armando Bo, and Nicolas Giacobone. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festial on May 17, 2010. Bardem went on to win Best Actor (shared with Elio Germano for La nostra vita) at Cannes. Biutiful is González Iñárritu's first film in his native Spanish since his debut feature Amores perros. For the second time in his career his film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards. It was also nominated for the 2011 Golden Globes in the category of Best Foreign Film, for the 2011 BAFTA awards in the category of Best Film Not in the English Language and Best Actor. Javier Bardem's performance was also nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor.
In 2014, González Iñárritu directed Birdman, starring Michael Keaton, Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, and Andrea Riseborough. The film is Iñárritu's first comedy. Birdman is about an actor who played an iconic superhero, and who tries to revive his career by doing a play based on the Raymond Carver short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The film was released on October 17, 2014.
In April 2014, it was announced that González Iñárritu's next film as a director will be The Revenant, which he co-wrote with Mark L. Smith. It is based on the novel of same name by Michael Punke. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy and Will Poulter with shooting began in September 2014, for a December 25, 2015 release.The Revenant is being filmed in Alberta and B.C. with production scheduled to wrap in February 2015. The film will be a 19th Century period piece, and is described as a "gritty thriller" about a fur trapper who seeks revenge against a group of men who robbed and abandoned him after he was mauled by a grizzly bear.
From 2001 to 2011, González Iñárritu directed several short films.
In 2001, he directed an 11 minute film segment for 11.09.01- which is composed of several short films that explore the effects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks from different points of view around the world.
In 2007, he made ANNA which screened at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival inside Chacun son cinéma. It was part of the 60th anniversary of the film festival and it was a series of shorts by 33 world-renown film directors.
In 2012, he made the experimental short film Naran Ja: One Act Orange Dance - inspired by L.A Dance Project's premiere performance. The short features excerpts of the new choreography Benjamin Millepied crafted for Moving Parts. The story takes place in a secluded, dusty space and centers around LADP dancer Julia Eichten.
In 2001/2002, González Iñárritu directed "Powder Keg", an episode for the BMW film series The Hire, starring Clive Owen as the driver.
In 2010, González Iñárritu directed Write the Future, a football-themed commercial for Nike ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which went on to win Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions advertising festival.
In 2012, he directed Procter and Gamble's "Best Job" commercial spot for the 2012 Olympic Ceremonies. It went on to win the Best Primetime Commercial Emmy at Creative Arts Emmy Awards.- Director
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Joe Dante is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art. After a stint as a film reviewer, he began his filmmaking apprenticeship in 1974 as trailer editor for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. He made his directorial debut in 1976 with Hollywood Boulevard (1976) (co-directed with Allan Arkush), a thinly disguised spoof of New World exploitation pictures, shot in ten days for $60,000.
In 1977 Dante made his solo debut as a film director with Piranha (1978), which went on to become one of the company's biggest hits and was distributed throughout the rest of the world by United Artists. During his tenure at New World, Dante edited Ron Howard's directorial debut Grand Theft Auto (1977) and co-wrote the original story for Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979).
For Avco-Embassy Dante next directed the highly praised werewolf thriller The Howling (1981), followed by the It's a Good Life segment of the episodic Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).
Having worked with Steven Spielberg on Twilight Zone, Dante was chosen to helm one of the first Amblin Productions for Warner Bros. Gremlins (1984) became a runaway hit and grossed more than $200 million worldwide.
Dante followed up with Explorers (1985) for Paramount, a sci-fi fantasy about three kids who build their own spaceship, and then Innerspace (1987) for Guber/Peters, Amblin and Warner Bros., an action comedy in which miniaturized test pilot Dennis Quaid is injected into the body of supermarket clerk Martin Short.
Tom Hanks starred in Dante's next film for Imagine/Universal, The 'Burbs (1989), which was followed by Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) for Warner Bros. in 1990. Matinee (1993) featuring John Goodman as a huckster showman premiering his new horror film during the Cuban Missile Crisis, was a production of Dante and partner Michael Finnell's Renfield Productions for Universal in 1993.
Dreamworks/Universal's Small Soldiers was released in 1998, followed in 2003 by Warner Bros. Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) featuring one of Dante's favorite actors, Bugs Bunny.
Dante's Homecoming (2005), debuted in December 2005 to rave reviews from critics and audiences alike and was named to numerous "Top 10" critics lists. The Sitges and Brussels International Film Festivals both honored Homecoming with Special Jury Recognition Awards, and the New Yorker called it the best political film of 2005. More recent work includes The Screwfly Solution (2006), and Boo (2007). His new 3D thriller, The Hole (2009), for Bold Films recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it garnered the first-ever award for Best 3D Feature.
Dante also produces the critically-acclaimed webisode/mobile phone series, Trailers from Hell.
Along the way Dante contributed several comedy segments to the multi-part Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) spoof produced by John Landis, and directed various episodes of the tv series Amazing Stories (1985), The Twilight Zone (1985), Police Squad! (1982), Night Visions (2001) and Picture Windows (1994). He also directed the network pilots for The Osiris Chronicles (1998) and the NBC series Eerie, Indiana (1991), on which he was creative consultant throughout its run.
Dante received Cable Ace nominations for his direction of Showtime's Runaway Daughters (1994) and HBO's The Second Civil War (1997).- Producer
- Director
- Actor
John Landis began his career in the mail room of 20th Century-Fox. A high-school dropout, 18-year-old Landis made his way to Yugoslavia to work as a production assistant on Kelly's Heroes (1970). Remaining in Europe, Landis found work as an actor, extra and stuntman in many of the Spanish/Italian "spaghetti" westerns. Returning to the US, he made his feature debut as a writer-director at age 21 with Schlock (1973), an affectionate tribute to monster movies. Clad in a Rick Baker-designed gorilla suit, Landis starred as "Schlockthropus", the missing link. After working as a writer, actor and production assistant, Landis made his second film, The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), in collaboration with the Zucker brothers and Jim Abrahams. Landis rose to international recognition as director of the wildly successful National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). With blockbusters such as The Blues Brothers (1980), Trading Places (1983), Spies Like Us (1985), Three Amigos! (1986) and Coming to America (1988), Landis has directed some of the most popular film comedies of all time. Other feature credits include Into the Night (1985), Innocent Blood (1992) and the comedy/horror genre classic An American Werewolf in London (1981), which he also wrote. In 1986, Landis and four others were acquitted of responsibility for the tragic accident that occurred in Landis' segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) in which actor Vic Morrow and two child actors were killed. The film also included segments directed by Joe Dante, George Miller and Steven Spielberg. In 1983 Landis wrote and directed the groundbreaking music video of Michael Jackson's Michael Jackson: Thriller (1983), created originally to play as a theatrical short. "Thriller" forever changed MTV and the concept of music videos, garnering multiple accolades including the MTV Video Music Awards for Best Overall Video, Viewer's Choice, and the Video Vanguard Award - The Greatest Video in the History of the World. In 1991 "Thriller" was inducted into the MVPA's Hall of Fame. In 1991, Landis collaborated again with Jackson (I) on Michael Jackson: Black or White (1991), which premiered simultaneously in 27 countries with an estimated audience of 500 million. Although it was not the first motion picture or music video to do so, "Black or White" popularized the use of "digital morphing", where one object appears to seamlessly metamorphoses into another; the project raised the standard for state-of-the-art special effects in music videos. Landis has also been active in television as the executive producer (and often director) of the Ace- and Emmy Award-winning HBO series Dream On (1990). Other TV shows produced by his company, St. Clare Entertainment (St. Clare is the patron saint of television), include Weird Science (1994), Sliders (1995), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show (1997), Campus Cops (1995) and The Lost World (1998). In 2004 the Independent Film Channel broadcast his feature-length documentary about a used-car salesman, Slasher (2004). Deer Woman, an original one-hour episode written by Landis and his son Max Landis, inaugurated the Masters of Horror (2005) series in the fall of 2005 on Showtime. "Masters of Horror" also features one-hour episodes by John Carpenter, Roger Corman, Tobe Hooper, Don Coscarelli, Mick Garris, Dario Argento and Larry Cohen.
A sought-after commercial director, Landis has worked for a variety of companies including Direct TV, Taco Bell, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Kellogg's and Disney. He was made a Chevalier dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1985, awarded the Federico Fellini Prize by Rimini Cinema Festival in Italy and was named a George Eastman Scholar by The Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Both the Edinburgh Film Festival and the Torino Film Festival have held career retrospectives of his films. In 2004 Landis received the Time Machine Career Achievement Award at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain. Sent as a filmmaker/scholar by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, Landis has lectured at many film schools and universities including Yale, Harvard, NYU, UCLA, UCSB, USC, Texas A&M, The North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Miami and Indiana University. He has also acted as a teacher and advisor to aspiring filmmakers at the Sundance Institute in Utah. Additionally, he edited Best American Movie Writing 2001 (Thunder's Mouth Press, NY, 2001). Born in Chicago, Illinois, Landis moved to Los Angeles soon after his birth. He is married to Deborah Nadoolman, an Oscar-nominated costume designer, and President of the Costume Designers Guild, with whom he has two children.- Director
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- Writer
Born in 1954 in Pingtung, Taiwan, Ang Lee has become one of today's greatest contemporary filmmakers. Ang graduated from the National Taiwan College of Arts in 1975 and then came to the U.S. to receive a B.F.A. Degree in Theatre/Theater Direction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Masters Degree in Film Production at New York University. At NYU, he served as Assistant Director on Spike Lee's student film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983). After Lee wrote a couple of screenplays, he eventually appeared on the film scene with Pushing Hands (1991), a dramatic-comedy reflecting on generational conflicts and cultural adaptation, centering on the metaphor of the grandfather's Tai-Chi technique of "Pushing Hands". The Wedding Banquet (1993) (aka The Wedding Banquet) was Lee's next film, an exploration of cultural and generational conflicts through a homosexual Taiwanese man who feigns a marriage in order to satisfy the traditional demands of his Taiwanese parents. It garnered Golden Globe and Oscar nominations, and won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. The third movie in his trilogy of Taiwanese-Culture/Generation films, all of them featuring his patriarch figure Sihung Lung, was Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) (aka Eat Drink Man Woman), which received a Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination. Lee followed this with Sense and Sensibility (1995), his first Hollywood-mainstream movie. It acquired a Best Picture Oscar nomination, and won Best Adapted Screenplay, for the film's screenwriter and lead actress, Emma Thompson. Lee was also voted the year's Best Director by the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. Lee and frequent collaborator James Schamus next filmed The Ice Storm (1997), an adaptation of Rick Moody's novel involving 1970s New England suburbia. The movie acquired the 1997 Best Screenplay at Cannes for screenwriter James Schamus, among other accolades. The Civil War drama Ride with the Devil (1999) soon followed and received critical praise, but it was Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) (aka Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) that is considered one of his greatest works, a sprawling period film and martial-arts epic that dealt with love, loyalty and loss. It swept the Oscar nominations, eventually winning Best Foreign Language Film, as well as Best Director at the Golden Globes, and became the highest grossing foreign-language film ever released in America. Lee then filmed the comic-book adaptation, Hulk (2003) - an elegantly and skillfully made film with nice action scenes. Lee has also shot a short film - Chosen (2001) (aka Hire, The Chosen) - and most recently won the 2005 Best Director Academy Award for Brokeback Mountain (2005), a film based on a short story by Annie Proulx. In 2012 Lee directed Life of Pi which earned 11 Academy Award nominations and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Director. In 2013 Ang Lee was selected as a member of the main competition jury at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Peter Greenaway trained as a painter and began working as a film editor for the Central Office of Information in 1965. Shortly afterwards he started to make his own films. He has produced a wealth of short and feature-length films, but also paintings, novels and other books. He has held several one-man shows and curated exhibitions at museums world-wide.- Actor
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Alfonso Arau has had a long and fruitful career both in front of and behind the camera and is one of the most prominent Latino film-makers in Hollywood. He was a drama disciple of Seki Sano--a Japanese teacher, classmate of Lee Strasberg with Konstantin Stanislavski in Russia--and traveled the world from 1964 to 1968 with his one-man show, "Pantomime Happy Madness", after studying with Etienne Decroux and Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
A renowned writer-producer-director-actor in theater and film for more than twenty years, in 1969 he directed his first feature film, El águila descalza (1971), in which he also starred. He has directed many films in Mexico, among them Inspector Calzonzin (1974) and Mojado Power (1981). He has received six Arieles--the Mexican equivalent of the Oscar--and numerous international film awards.
Arau has acted in a number of Mexican and Hollywood films, including The Wild Bunch (1969), El Topo (1970), Mojado Power (1981), Used Cars (1980), Romancing the Stone (1984), Three Amigos! (1986) and Committed (2000). In addition to Like Water for Chocolate (1992), his directing credits include A Walk in the Clouds (1995) with Keanu Reeves and Picking Up the Pieces (2000) with Woody Allen. For television he has done The Magnificent Ambersons (2002), based on the script of Orson Welles' film version (The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)) and the novel by Booth Tarkington.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Fiona Mackenzie is a former television journalist and Hollywood studio executive with extensive experience in the development, writing, casting, financing and production of studio and independent films, and series television.
She founded Ascent Media Group (AMG), an IP development company, to produce high quality entertainment with an international perspective. Launched in 2018, AMG now has a robust slate of features and scripted series in development with producers, production companies and financiers. She has spoken on panels, and has also been a guest at many major film and TV markets, including the Dubai Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, AFM, MIP TV, Real Screen and others.
Prior to launching AMG, Fiona held senior level creative and executive positions at Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox, developing projects from 8M to 100M USD. At Sony Fiona was the Vice President of Features and Television at Turman Morrison (American History X, Oscar Nominee) and then held an in-house producing deal with Davis Entertainment at 20th Century Fox.
She is the original producer of "Warrior Queen", set up at Paramount Pictures, and in partnership with Robert De Niro's Tribeca Films, and she also worked on the first season of the hit series, "The Highlander" in Paris, for Gaumont/Lionsgate.
In Paris, she started her first production company, producing and writing for CNN, Canal Plus and ABC. Before starting a career in journalism, Fiona earned her BA from U.C. Berkeley, and then her Masters from Georgetown University's Graduate School of Foreign Service in Washington D.C. Fiona is a dual US/ UK citizen and lives between Los Angeles and London.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Nick Cassavetes was born in New York City, the son of actress Gena Rowlands and Greek-American actor and film director John Cassavetes. As a child, he appeared in two of his father's films: Husbands (1970) and A Woman Under the Influence (1974). After spending so much of his youth surrounded by the film industry, Cassavetes initially decided he did not want to go into the field. He instead attended Syracuse University on a basketball scholarship. His athletic career was effectively ended by an injury, and he decided to rethink his aspirations, ultimately deciding to attend his parents' alma mater, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. He has appeared in the films, Face/Off (1997), The Wraith (1986), Life (1999), Class of 1999 II: The Substitute (1994), Backstreet Dreams (1990) and The Astronaut's Wife (1999), among others. He has directed several films, including John Q (2002), Alpha Dog (2006), She's So Lovely (1997), Unhook the Stars (1996), The Notebook (2004), and My Sister's Keeper (2009). He also adapted the screenplay for Blow (2001) and wrote the dialogue for the Justin Timberlake music video, "What Goes Around... Comes Around". In 1985, Cassavetes married Isabelle Rafalovich. They had two daughters together, Virginia Cassavetes (Virginia Sara Cassavetes) (born in 1986) and Sasha Cassavetes (born in 1988), before divorcing. He then married Heather Wahlquist (Heather "Queenie" Wahlquist), who has appeared in several of his films, including a small role in The Notebook (2004) as Sara, a secondary character and best friend to the female lead Allie Hamilton, portrayed by Rachel McAdams. The movie is effectively a family project, as Cassavetes's own mother, Gena Rowlands, appears as the older, married Allie Calhoun.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Jonathan Demme was born on 22 February 1944 in Baldwin, Long Island, New York, USA. He was a director and producer, known for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Rachel Getting Married (2008) and Philadelphia (1993). He was married to Joanne Howard and Evelyn Purcell. He died on 26 April 2017 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.- Producer
- Director
- Actor
Jonathan Kaplan was born in Paris, France, to film composer Sol Kaplan and actress Frances Heflin (the sister of actor Van Heflin and a regular on ABC's soap opera All My Children (1970). He started his career as a child actor in the Broadway production of "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs," directed by Elia Kazan. He also performed as a child in Elaine May's improvisational theatre, and worked with Martin Ritt in "The Molly Maguires" and 'Arthur Hiller (I)' in "Plaza Suite." Kaplan earned his B.A. at the University of Chicago and attended New York University's Film School, where he made a short film entitled Stanley, Stanley (1965), which won the grand prize in the National Student Film Festival. While at NYU Kaplan cut a film for PBS and worked at the Fillmore East. He then received a call from Roger Corman, who offered him a chance to direct his first Hollywood film, Night Call Nurses (1972). Kaplan displayed sufficient resourcefulness on a severely restricted budget to be given another Corman feature to direct, The Student Teachers (1973). He also directed The Slams (1973) for Roger's producer brother, Gene Corman. His next film, Truck Turner (1974) starring Isaac Hayes, was one of the early black exploitation films. Kaplan then directed White Line Fever (1975) starring Jan-Michael Vincent and Kay Lenz, which went on to become one of Columbia Pictures' successful films in 1975, and followed it with Mr. Billion (1977) starring Terence Hill. Kaplan's next film, Over the Edge (1979) for which he discovered Matt Dillon, encountered distribution problems, and it was not until two years later, when the film was shown in revival houses, that it received the critical attention it deserved. Kaplan has also directed the television films 11th Victim (1979) starring Bess Armstrong, The Hustler of Muscle Beach (1980), The Gentleman Bandit (1981) and Girls of the White Orchid (1983). Heart Like a Wheel (1983), starring Bonnie Bedelia and Beau Bridges, opened to a warm reception at the New York Film Festival. Since "Heart Like a Wheel," Kaplan has turned his talents toward directing music videos, including Barbra Streisand's "Left in the Dark," Rod Stewart's "Infatuation" and John Mellencamp's "Rain on the Scarecrow," "Lonely Ole Night," "Smalltown" and "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A."- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
Daniel Edward Aykroyd was born on July 1, 1952 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, to Lorraine Hélène (Gougeon), a secretary from a French-Canadian family, and Samuel Cuthbert Peter Hugh Aykroyd, a civil engineer who advised prime minister Pierre Trudeau. Aykroyd attended Carleton University in 1969, where he majored in Criminology and Sociology, but he dropped out before completing his degree. He worked as a comedian in various Canadian nightclubs and managed an after-hours speakeasy, Club 505, in Toronto for several years. He worked with Second City Stage Troupe in Toronto and started his acting career at Carleton University with Sock'n'Buskin, the campus theater/drama club. Married to Donna Dixon since 1983, they have three daughters. His parents are named Peter and Lorraine and his brother Peter Aykroyd is a psychic researcher. Dan received an honorary Doctorate from Carleton University in 1994 and was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1998.- Producer
- Director
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Jay Roach was born on 14 June 1957 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. He is a producer and director, known for Trumbo (2015), Bombshell (2019) and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). He has been married to Susanna Hoffs since 17 April 1993. They have two children.- Producer
- Actor
- Director
Benjamin Edward Meara Stiller was born on November 30, 1965, in New York City, New York, to legendary comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. His father was of Austrian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent, and his mother was of Irish Catholic descent (she converted to Judaism).
His parents made no real effort to keep their son away from the Hollywood lifestyle and he grew up among the stars, wondering just why his parents were so popular. At a young age, he and his sister Amy Stiller would perform plays at home, wearing Amy's tights to perform Shakespeare. Ben also picked up an interest in being on the other side of the camera and, at age 10, began shooting films on his Super 8 camera. The plots were always simple: someone would pick on the shy, awkward Stiller ... and then he would always get his revenge. This desire for revenge on the popular, good-looking people may have motivated his teen-angst opus Reality Bites (1994) later in his career. He both directed and performed in the film, which co-starred Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke.
Before he got to Hollywood, he put in several consistently solid years in the theater. After dropping out of UCLA, he performed in the Tony Award winner, "The House of Blue Leaves". While working on the play, Stiller shot a short spoof of The Color of Money (1986) starring him (in the Tom Cruise role) and his The House of Blue Leaves (1987) costar John Mahoney (in the Paul Newman role). The short film was so funny that Lorne Michaels purchased it and aired it on Saturday Night Live (1975). This led to his spending a year on the show in 1989.
Stiller made his big screen debut in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (1987) in 1987. Demonstrating early on the multifaceted tone his career would take, he soon stepped behind the camera to direct Back to Brooklyn for MTV. The network was impressed and gave Stiller his own show, The Ben Stiller Show (1992). He recruited fellow offbeat comedians Janeane Garofalo and Andy Dick and created a bitingly satirical show. MTV ended up passing on it, but it was picked up by Fox. Unfortunately, the show was a ratings miss. Stiller was soon out of work, although he did have the satisfaction of picking up an Emmy for the show after its cancellation.
For a while, Stiller had to settle for guest appearance work. While doing this, he saved up his cash and in the end was able to scrape enough together to make Reality Bites (1994), now a cult classic which is looked upon favorably by the generation it depicted. Ben continued to work steadily for a time, particularly in independent productions where he was more at ease. However, he never quite managed to catch a big break. His first big budget directing job was Jim Carrey's The Cable Guy (1996). Although many critics were impressed, Jim Carrey's fans were not. In 1998, There's Something About Mary (1998) had propelled Stiller into the mainstream spotlight. He also starred in such hit movies as Keeping the Faith (2000) and Meet the Parents (2000).- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
A native of Utica, New York, Steven Brill studied film, theater and acting at Boston University. It was there that he became a student of acclaimed, Nobel Prize winning poet and playwright, Derek Walcott. Brill became a part of Mr. Walcott's first theater group in Boston, Playwright's Theater, where he wrote and directed original plays.
Brill continued to write plays and moved to Los Angeles where he began auditioning as an actor and writing screenplays as well. In his spare time, Brill would go skating at public ice rinks - which proved a fortuitous hobby. One day while watching a Pee Wee hockey practice, he was struck by the idea for The Mighty Ducks.
Brill scripted the film, recalling his own youth hockey experience, and sold it to Walt Disney Pictures. Emilio Estevez was cast as Coach Gordon Bombay in the 1992 release. One year later, "The Mighty Ducks" of Anaheim entered their first NHL season. Brill next wrote and executive produced the 1995 sequel "D2-The Mighty Ducks Are Back" and in 1997, "D3-The Mighty Ducks".
Brills directorial debut was the Disney film "Heavyweights", a comedy about a group of kids at a weight loss summer camp starring Ben Stiller,. He co-wrote the script with Judd Apatow, who also served as the executive producer.
Next, Brill wrote and directed "Late Last Night" for Screenland Pictures. "Late Last Night" stars Emilio Estevez, Steven Weber and Catherine O'Hara. It chronicles one intense night in the life of a man in Los Angeles.
Brill wrote Ready to Rumble for Warner Brothers. He also worked as a writer on "The Wedding Singer, Big Daddy, and Doctor Dolittle" He then directed and co-wrote Little Nicky with Adam Sandler for New Line Cinema. Also starring in the picture are Harvey Keitel, Patricia Arquette and Reese Witherspoon.
Brill followed that up by directing "Mr. Deeds" with Adam Sandler.. Deed's, also starring Winona Ryder came out in June of 2002 and made over 170 million at the box office worldwide
Brill then re-wrote and directed "Without a Paddle," starring Burt Reynolds, Seth Green and Matthew Lillard, for Paramount Pictures. He directed "Drillbit Taylor" produced by Judd Apatow and starring Owen Wilson for Paramount Pictures.
His most recent film was "Walk of Shame," an original screenplay that directed, starring Elizabeth Banks, for Lakeshore Entertainment.
Aside from writing and directing, Brill has kept busy as an actor on such diverse films as "Sex, Lies, and Videotape", "Postcards from the Edge", "Edward Scissorhands", "Batman Returns", "When a Man Loves a Woman", "The Wedding Singer" and "Big Daddy", and "Knocked Up".- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Brian Robbins is President of Kids & Family Entertainment for ViacomCBS Domestic Media Networks, with oversight of all strategy, creative and business operations for the company's kids and young-adult focused brands including Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Nick Jr., TeenNick, Nicktoons, Nickelodeon Studios and Awesomeness. He also has purview over The Nick Experience, Nickelodeon's experiential division which includes live shows, as well as Nick's domestic consumer products business.
Robbins most recently served as President of Nickelodeon, responsible for evolving the global brand leader in kids and family entertainment for a new generation of young audiences by enhancing its robust content offerings and expanding its cultural footprint on next-generation platforms and in film.
Prior to that, Robbins was President of Paramount Players, a production division of Paramount Pictures that develops, produces and markets feature films from original source material and in collaboration with Viacom flagship brands Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central and BET.
Projects led by Robbins under the Paramount Players division include: Nobody's Fool, directed by Tyler Perry and starring Tiffany Haddish; What Men Want directed by Adam Shankman and starring Taraji P. Henson; the adaptation of Trevor Noah's autobiography Born a Crime; and film versions of classic Nickelodeon shows Rugrats and Dora the Explorer, among others.
Prior to establishing Paramount Players, Robbins founded multi-platform media company Awesomeness, which Viacom purchased in July 2018. As Founder & CEO, he drove all Awesomeness creative, producing hit web series and films Expelled, Guidance, Foursome, t@gged, and Freakish, as well as theatrical release Before I Fall.
A prolific producer of television, film and digital media, Robbins is best known for executive producing numerous popular and critical television hits aimed at teens and young audiences, including the long-running CW series Smallville and One Tree Hill; Nickelodeon's All That and Kenan and Kel; Disney Channel's Sonny With a Chance and So Random; and Spike TV's Blue Mountain State. He also produced the popular WB series What I Like About You and HBO's Arli$$.
In feature film, his director and producer credits include Paramount Pictures' Coach Carter, Hardball, Varsity Blues and Good Burger; Disney's Wild Hogs and Shaggy Dog; DreamWorks' A Thousand Words; and Sony's Radio, along with many other works.
Robbins is the recipient of a Directors Guild Award, a Peabody Award, and the Pioneer Prize by the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He is based in Los Angeles, CA.- Director
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Born in the Bronx, Ferrara started making amateur films on Super 8 in his teens before making his debut with violent exploitation films such as 'Driller Killer' and 'Ms.45'. Good reviews for the latter helped create his cult reputation, leading to larger budgets, studio funding and 'name' actors (Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel), but he still likes taking his camera out onto the meanest streets of New York, as the ultra-cheap, highly controversial 'Bad Lieutenant' demonstrates.- Art Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
Jennifer Roberts is known for Distilled Love (2011), The Curiosity of Penny Parker (2009) and The Stats of Life (2017).- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Producer, DGA Director and 1st Assistant Director working in New York. After just over 2 years as a production assistant, Jim moved his way up the ranks of assistant director, eventually directing his first episode of television on the NBC show "The Mysteries of Laura" with Debra Messing and Josh Lucas. He also served as Co-Producer for the comedy "Flatbush Misdemeanors" on Showtime.- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
- Director
Jude Gorjanc is known for The Penguin (2024), Boardwalk Empire (2010) and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999).- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Michele 'Shelley' Ziegler is known for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020), A Star Is Born (2018) and American Hustle (2013).- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
- Camera and Electrical Department
Jason Fesel is known for Shutter Island (2010), Premium Rush (2012) and The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009).- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
- Transportation Department
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Richard Goodwin is known for Mank (2020), The Killer (2023) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016).- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Producer
Martin Harrison is known for The King's Speech (2010), The Crown (2016) and Notes on a Scandal (2006).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Fernando Meirelles was born in a middle class family in São Paulo City, Brazil.
He studied architecture at the university of São Paulo. At the same time he developed an interest in filmmaking. With a group of friends he started producing experimental videos and video art. They won a huge number of awards in Brazilian video festivals. After that, the group formed a small independent company called Olhar Eletrônico.
After working in independent television during nine years, in the eighties, Meirelles gravitated towards publicity and commercials. He also became the director of a very popular 180 episodes of a children's television show called Ra Tim Bum.
In the early 90s, together with Paulo Morelli and Andrea Barata Ribeiro, he opened the O2 Filmes production company which became the biggest production company in Brasil working from development until distribution, including complete post-production facilities.
His first feature,in 1998, was the family film "Menino Maluquinho 2: A Aventura". His next feature, "Domésticas" (2001), exposed the invisible world of five Brazilian maids in São Paulo and their secret dreams and desires.
In 1997 he read the Brazilian best-seller "Cidade de Deus/City of God", written by Paulo Lins, and decided to turn it into a movie despite an the intimidating story that involves more than 350 characters. Once the the screenplay, written by Bráulio Mantovani, was ready, Meirelles gathered a crew mixed with professional technicians and inexperienced actors chosen between the youngsters living in the favelas surrounding Rio de Janeiro.
The film was a huge success in Brazil and began to attract attention around the world, after it screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002. "Cidade de Deus/City of God" (2003) has won nore than 50 awards from film festivals and societies all over the world, as well as four 2004 Oscar nominations, including a Best Director for Fernando Meirelles.
Since 2002 , Meirelles has split his time between international feature and TV series in Brazil. The Constant Gardner (2005,) had four Academy nominations plus four Golden Globes. Blindness (2008) opened Cannes. 360 (2011) opened the LFF. In the same period he directed several series for TV Globo and HBO in Brazil.
In addition to cinema, Meirelles directed Bizet's opera , Pearl Fishers, and was one of the directors of the 2016 Olympic opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro.
In 2019 Meirelles finished The Two Popes, for Netflix, and start filming a scientific documentary on the soil.
Apart from cinema, Meirelles is also a farmer. He plants sugar cane, coffee, palm heart, avocado, and mahogany. He is developing ways to produce organically n large scale. Agroforest is his bet.
In the next few years, his plan is to be involved in projects related to the environmental crisis and climate emergency. Meirelles is not optimistic about the future of our species and, in a shorter period, neither in the future of his grandchildren, which is very sad. --"City of God" is a great film- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
- Producer
Barry W. Blaustein was born in 1955. He is known for Beyond the Mat (1999), Boomerang (1992) and The Nutty Professor (1996).Peep World- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Following a distinguished career in the theatre between the 1960s and the 1980s, Jim Sheridan wrote and directed his first critically acclaimed feature My Left Foot in 1989. The film was nominated for two European Film Awards. He followed this in 1990 with The Field which he also wrote and directed. In the same year he wrote the screenplay Into the West which was directed in 1992 by Mike Newell. In 1993 he wrote, produced and directed In the Name Of The Father, which again was nominated for a European Film Award, and in 1995 he wrote and produced Some Mother's Son, which was directed by Terry George. In 1997 he wrote, produced and directed The Boxer and in 1999 he produced Agnes Browne, directed by and starring Anjelica Huston. He was also executive producer of Borstal Boy, On The Edge and Bloody Sunday. In America, which he produced, directed and wrote, was released in 2003. In 2005 he directed and produced Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. Brothers was released in 2009 and Dream House in 2011. His most recent feature film is The Secret Scripture. He directed the short film 11th Hour at the end of 2016 and produced the documentary Shelter Me. Jim Sheridan's films have achieved popular and critical acclaim throughout the world. His films have garnered sixteen Oscar nominations and have won two Academy Awards as well as numerous prestigious international awards. Jim Sheridan is the father of Irish Actress Clodagh Amira Sheridan with his partner Filmmaker Zahara Moufid.Dream House- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Rakesh Roshan was born on 6 September 1949 in Bombay, State of Bombay, India. He is an actor and producer, known for Koi... Mil Gaya (2003), Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai (2000) and Krrish (2006). He is married to Pinky.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Anurag Basu, a Bollywood director and writer explores relationships and adversity on reel. He had his share of tough times when he was diagnosed with leukemia.
Basu directed television serials among which is Tara (1993), which became one of the first soap operas on Indian television. He also directed Balaji Telefilms' Koshish Ek Aasha (1997) and Miit (2002), which was based on Rabindranath Tagore's Noukadubi.
He made his debut in movies with Kucch Toh Hai (2003). It starred Tusshar Kapoor and Esha Deol. The movie wasn't anywhere near a major success. He made movies under the Vishesh Films banner. Saaya (2003) belonged to the supernatural genre about a doctor who communicates with his dead wife through his patients. It starred John Abraham and Tara Sharma.
Murder (2004) was based on Hollywood's hit Unfaithful. It starred Emraan Hashmi and Mallika Sherawat. The movie along with it's soundtrack became a big success. During the filming of his next movie Tumsa Nahin Dekhan (2004), Basu was diagnosed with blood cancer. The movie was later completed by Mohit Suri and Mahesh Bhatt.
In 2006, Anurag Basu came back to make Gangster with Emraan Hashmi, Kangana Ranaut and Shiney Ahuja. It was supposed to be based on Abu Salem's real life affair with actress Monica Bedi. The movie did well.
It was followed by the critically acclaimed Life in a Metro.
He wrote the screenplays for Gangster, Life in a Metro and Kites and won the Filmfare Best Screenplay Award for Life in a Metro.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Director
Prabhu Deva, born in Mysuru, Karnataka, India, is a multi-talented Indian actor, choreographer, and film director who has left an indelible mark on the Indian entertainment industry. Often referred to as the "Indian Michael Jackson" for his exceptional dance skills, Prabhu Deva is known for his contributions to both Bollywood and South Indian cinema.
Prabhu Deva initially rose to fame as a choreographer in the Indian film industry. His unique dance style and innovative choreography quickly garnered attention and earned him widespread acclaim. He worked on numerous hit songs and became one of the most sought-after choreographers in the 1990s.
In addition to his choreography career, Prabhu Deva ventured into acting. He made his debut as a lead actor in the Tamil film "Indhu" (1994) and went on to establish himself as a successful actor in the South Indian film industry. His performances in films like "Kadhalan" (1994) and "Minsara Kanavu" (1997) showcased not only his acting prowess but also his exceptional dance skills.
Prabhu Deva's popularity transcended regional boundaries, and he made his mark in Bollywood as well. He gained widespread recognition for his performance in the film "Wanted" (2009), which marked his Hindi film debut as a lead actor. The film's success paved the way for his subsequent Bollywood ventures, including "Rowdy Rathore" (2012) and "R... Rajkumar" (2013).
Apart from acting and choreography, Prabhu Deva has made significant contributions as a film director. He has directed successful films in multiple languages, including the critically acclaimed Tamil film "Kaadhalan" (1994) and the Hindi film "Singh is Bling" (2015).
Prabhu Deva's influence on the Indian film industry extends beyond his individual achievements. His dance school, Prabhu Deva's Dance Academy, has contributed to nurturing talent in the field of dance.
Prabhu Deva remains an influential figure in Indian cinema, continuing his successful career in acting, choreography, and filmmaking.- Director
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Vijay Krishna Acharya was born on 1 January 1968 in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. He is a director and writer, known for Dhoom 3 (2013), Dhoom 2 (2006) and Dhoom (2004). He is married to Anusheh Khan.- Producer
- Writer
- Art Director
An accomplished and award-winning producer-director-writer-actor-singer, Farhan Akhtar is the ultimate Bollywood multi-hyphenate. Born in 1974 to prolific Indian film writer and poet, Javed Akhtar and writer-director, Honey Irani , Farhan was raised in an environment where creativity and originality of thought were encouraged. This has made him a maverick whose films reflect refreshingly new content that easily strikes a chord with filmgoers.
In 1999, Farhan collaborated with Ritesh Sidhwani, a friend who shared his passion for good cinema, to form Excel Entertainment, a production banner that has become synonymous with excellence in film-making.
Debuting at the age of 26, as a writer, director, and producer with Dil Chahta Hai (2001) a coming-of-age film that has gained cult status, Farhan came to be lauded for his honest, path-breaking writing and his ability to extract mature performances from his cast. The film won Farhan his first National Award for 'Best Hindi Feature Film' along with Filmfare awards for 'Best Feature Film - Critics Choice' and 'Best Screenplay'.
Almost two decades later, this film continues to influence a generation of filmmakers.
Seven years after his dream debut as a writer-director, Farhan debuted as an actor-singer in Rock On!! (2008) Yet another runaway success, the film secured him a second National Award for 'Best Hindi Feature Film' and a Filmfare award for 'Best Debut Performance'.
The dream run continued with Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) which released in 2011 to much popular and critical acclaim, winning him three Filmfare awards for 'Best Film', 'Best Actor in a supporting role' and 'Best Dialogue'.
His next, a biopic on Indian athlete Milkha Singh, popularly known as 'the Flying Sikh', was entitled Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013).
He essayed the role with such integrity that it set the standard for other actors considering to play titular protagonists in biopics. Deservingly, Farhan swept all awards that year for 'Best Actor' as did the film for 'Best Film'. It also claimed the National award for 'Best Popular Film providing Wholesome Entertainment.'
His most recent release The Sky Is Pink (2019) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and received a 15-minute standing ovation from the audience at the Roy Thomson Hall.
In addition to his contribution to Indian cinema, Farhan has initiated and supported a plethora of social causes. In 2012, he founded MARD (Men against Rape & Discrimination), an initiative that raises awareness about gender-related issues amongst the youth of India. Recognizing his sustained efforts, Farhan was made the first male UNwomen goodwill ambassador (South Asia) in 2014.
Additionally, Farhan feeds his passion for music by writing, composing and performing live with his band FarhanLive.
His English language debut album 'Echoes' released in March 2019 to critical acclaim.
He has 2 daughters and lives in Mumbai, India.- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Abbas Alibhai Burmawalla is an Indian filmmaker. He co-directs films with his brother Mastan Alibhai Burmawalla. Together they are known as the Abbas-Mustan duo, recognised for directing action, suspense, and thriller films.
Burmawalla started his career with Gujarati films. He and his brother Mastan Alibhai Burmawalla worked as assistant directors before getting their first break to direct a film.
Burmawalla's directorial debut in Hindi was Agneekaal (1990), which he co-directed with his brother. Since then, he has co-directed 14 Hindi films.
His repertoire of films includes superhit movies like Khiladi (1992), Baazigar (1993), Baadshah (1999), Ajnabee (2001), Aitraaz (2004), and Race (2008), among others.
Burmawalla is the recipient of the Life Membership of the International Film and Television Club, conferred by the Asian Academy of Film & Television.- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Director
- Writer
Karan Malhotra was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. He is known for Agneepath (2012), Main Hoon Na (2004) and Shamshera (2022). He is married to Ekta Pathak Malhotra.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Reema Kagti is considered to be one of the best working talents in Indian cinema, with a singular voice as an artist, screenwriter, and filmmaker.
Reema's directorial debut, Honeymoon Travels Private Limited (2006), was an immediate commercial success. Following that, she wrote and directed the neo-noir Talaash (2012), and the historic sports drama, Gold (2018), both of which were highly acclaimed by audiences and critics alike. In addition to directing, Reema has co-written the screenplays for huge commercial successes such as Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011), Dil Dhadakne Do (2015), and Gully Boy (2019), as well as the highly acclaimed series, Made in Heaven (2019), for Amazon Prime Video.
Reema's most recent project, 'Dahaad' received widespread love and appreciation, after making global waves at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2023. With her latest venture, Tiger Baby, Reema has extended her role to that of Producer - with Made in Heaven (2019), Eternally Confused and Eager for Love (2022), Dahaad (2023), The Archies (2023) and Kho Gaye Hum Kahan (2023) already under her belt, and many more exciting projects to come!- Director
- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Indian filmmaker Rohit Shetty is well-known for his high-octane films with breath-takin action scenes and exciting storylines. Rohit is the son of Ratna, a young Hindi cinema artist, and late Hindi film stunt coordinator M.B. Shetty. He was raised alongside his four siblings, Kiran Shetty, Chaya Shetty, Uday Shetty as well as Hriday Shetty.
When he was 17, he began his career in film as an assistant director on Kuku Kohli's Phool Aur Kaante (1991). He went on to assist him for several years after that and assisted him in films like Haqeeqat (1995) and Zulmi (1999).
Following that, he went on to work with Ajay Devgn in the romantic comedy Pyaar To Hona Hi Tha (1998), the military movie Hindustan Ki Kasam (1999), and the comic film Raju Chacha (2000) in order to hone his craft.
At the age of 30, Shetty directed his first movie, Zameen (2003)- the Ajay Devgn-starring action thriller was a financial success in Bollywood. His subsequent motion picture, Golmaal: Fun Unlimited (2006), was an immediate success with audiences- it garnered him a cult of devoted fans. One of the film's leading actors, Tusshar Kapoor, won his first IIFA Award for his performance as the mute child Lucky Gill.
In 2008, he directed the comedy-drama Sunday (2008), which featured renowned stars like [;ink=nm1779702] and Ajay Devgn. Golmaal Returns (2008)' is the sequel of Golmaal: Fun Unlimited (2006), which was released in the same year, 2008. Shreyas Talpade and Kareena Kapoor were added to the cast for the movie's second part- it received both laudatory and scathing reviews but did rather well at the box office, grossing over Rs 720 million worldwide in its first week.
2010 saw the filming of both Golmaal 3 and the critically acclaimed action-film Singham (2011), in which Ajay Devgn starred as a police officer fighting injustice. There was universal acclaim for Singham (2011), a film that pays homage to action movies of the 1970s, and it was a huge financial success. Prakash Raj's portrayal of the villain Jaikant Shikre stood out, and the IIFA awarded him Best Performance in a Negative Performance. After the movie came out, it was praised for its great action scenes and acting.
Up next for Shetty was the comedy-drama Bol Bachchan (2012), which starred Abhishek Bachchan and Ajay Devgn- the film was warmly received in India, and it fared well at the box office. He then went on to helm the film Chennai Express (2013), starring Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone, the following year. At its release, the film had become the highest-grossing Bollywood film in India and the third-highest-grossing Bollywood film worldwide.
Shetty started his own production company, Rohit Shetty Productions, around 2014. Their filmography included the sequel Singham Returns (2014) and the blockbuster Dilwale (2015), the latter marked the much-anticipated reunion of Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol.
Other renowned films that Shetty directed include the supernatural comedy Golmaal Again (2017) and the action comedy Simmba (2018)- Ranveer Singh, and Sara Ali Khan played the male and female leads in the second movie, respectively. Two more films followed this blockbuster, Sooryavanshi (2021) and Cirkus (2022). From 2009 to 2010, Shetty was a panelist on the TV show Comedy Circus (2018). He also hosted several seasons of the Indian version of Fear Factor (2017).