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HOSTS

 

  • STEPHEN WHITTY

Stephen Whitty graduated from New York University’s School of the Arts with a BFA in Film, the school’s fiction prize, and, obviously, few prospects. He has, nonetheless, written screenplays, published short stories, reviewed movies, and done profiles, essays and other articles for more than 30 years, appearing in magazines from Entertainment Weekly to Cosmopolitan (and picking up a few prizes and a nice collection of outraged letters along the way). Whitty lives in New Jersey with his wife, two children, two dogs, one turtle and far too many DVDs, always sits in the front row, and prefers extra salt, no butter.

Click here for an Interview of Stephen Whitty (TapInto)

 

 

  • GERARD AMSELLEM

Gerard Amsellem is a French and American citizen. He spent the first 25 years of his life in Paris, France where he studied painting at the University of Paris and earned his Masters Degree in French Literature and Art History. In 1982 Gerard moved to the U.S. and continued to paint and develop his interest in film.  As a painter, his work has been exhibited in Paris and locally at GAS Gallery and Studio and 1978 Maplewood Arts Center in Maplewood, NJ and other galleries. Gerard has been studying film throughout his life. He teaches World Film at Livingston High School. Gerard's special interests lie in foreign and independent films from all over the world. He has been speaking on films in different venues like the West Orange classic film festival, the South Orange public library and of course his very successful film club “la Cinémathèque” at the Baird Center in South Orange.

 

 

  • TONY PEMBERTON

Daily Variety cited Tony Pemberton as One of Ten Directors to Watch when his first feature film Beyond the Ocean premiered in the Dramatic Competition in the Sundance Film Festival. It was nominated for a Grand Jury award, and received the Princess Grace Foundation Statue Award. “Beyond” weaves together a character’s life that is split in time by her own immigration and memory and was made independently in Russia, Austria, and America by Go East Film, Intrinsic Value, & Ursula Wolschlager. Pemberton has previously shown films at The Anthology Film Archives, the Kino Museum in Moscow, The Whitney American Museum, as well as major festivals in America and Europe. His projects have been awarded funding from The Princess Grace Foundation Monaco, the Jerome Foundation, Arts Matters New Jersey State Council of the Arts, and Arts Link. He is a graduate from the State University of New York at Purchase with a BFA in film in 1990, as well as the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts: Bard College with an MFA in film in 1993. He is also the Director of the Filmmaking Program at Montclair State University. 

 

 

  • IRA DEUTCHMAN

Ira Deutchman has been making, marketing and distributing films since 1975, having worked on over 150 films including some of the most successful independent films of all time. He was one of the founders of Cinecom and later created Fine Line Features—two companies that were created from scratch and in their respective times, helped define the independent film business. Currently Deutchman is Managing Partner of Emerging Pictures, a New York-based digital exhibition company. He is also a Professor of Professional Practice in the Graduate Film Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, where he is the Chair of the Film Program. Among the over 60 films he acquired and released at Fine Line were Jane Campion’s “An Angel at My Table,” Gus van Sant’s “My Own Private Idaho,” Jim Jarmusch’s “Night on Earth,” Robert Altman’s “The Player” and “Short Cuts,” Roman Polanski’s “Bitter Moon” and “Death and the Maiden,” Alan Rudolph’s “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle,” Mike Leigh’s “Naked,” and the award-winning “Hoop Dreams,” until recently the highest grossing non-music documentary in history. Prior to Fine Line, as President of The Deutchman Company, he provided marketing consulting services for such films as Steven Soderbergh’s “sex, lies, and videotape” for Miramax, Charles Burnett’s “To Sleep With Anger” for The Samuel Goldwyn Company and Whit Stillman’s “Metropolitan” for New Line Cinema. Previously, Deutchman was one of the founding partners and President of Marketing and Distribution for Cinecom Entertainment Group, the film distribution company known for such diverse releases as Merchant/Ivory’s “A Room with a View,” Jonathan Demme’s “Stop Making Sense,” Gregory Nava’s “El Norte” and John Sayles’ “The Brother From Another Planet.”

 

 

  • JACK LECHNER

Jack Lechner’s credits as executive producer or producer include the Oscar-winning documentary The Fog Of War; the Oscar-nominated film Blue Valentine; the Emmy-nominated Left Of The Dial for HBO; Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys for Sundance; the PBS documentaries The New Public and Playwright: From Page to Stage; and the pilot of the Emmy-winning AMC series Mad Men. A recovering studio executive, he has been involved in the production and development of dozens of movies, including The Crying Game, Good Will Hunting, Four Weddings And A Funeral, The Cider House Rules, and The Full Monty.  His book Can’t Take My Eyes Off You:  One Man, Seven Days, Twelve Televisions was published in 2000, and his picture book Mary Had A Little Lamp in 2008.  He wrote the lyrics for the musical The Kid, which premiered off-Broadway in May 2010.  Jack is an adjunct professor at Coumbia and NYU.

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