Born and brought up in Iran, Katayoun Afrooz undertook her formal education and training in Cinema in the United State. She has been working as a professional filmmaker and artist. She holds a Degree both in Cinema and TV production.<br>Abyaneh, red village is Katayoun’s first short documentary. <i>Abyaneh, red village</i> premiered in 2007 at the Los Angeles international shorts film festival.<br>Katayoun’s next documentary short film <i>”Bistoon & its secrets”</i> was shot entirely in Iran. Katayoun is an U.S. citizen living in Los Angeles, CAAbyaneh is an ancient village in Iran, situated 40 kilometers from the Iranian Nuclear Power Plants in…
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Vera Mijojlic is the founder and director of the South East European Film Festival in Los Angeles. Formerly a film critic in ex-Yugoslavia, she also works as a marketing consultant for art house films in the U.S.12:08 East of Bucharest: 16 years after the Revolution and just days before Christmas, a local television station in Bucharest has invited several guests to share their moments of glory, as they allegedly stormed city hall, chanting “down with Ceasescu!,” before Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and his wife fled the presidential palace by helicopter so many years ago. An alcoholic history teacher and a…
One of the most electrifying and multifaceted actresses working today, actress Wanda De Jesús galvanizes audiences with her complex and beautifully crafted performances. She brings her talent and experience in film, theatre and television to her latest project, “Illegal Tender,” a film produced by John Singleton and written and directed by Franc Reyes, opening in August, 2007. De Jesús next re-teams with writer-director Reyes to co-star opposite Harvey Keitel and John Leguizamo in the upcoming New York-based drama The Ministers.De Jesús was last seen in “Blood Work” opposite Clint Eastwood. De Jesús turned in a strong dramatic performance in the…
Born in Kabul, Horace Shansab lived in Afghanistan before fleeing the country for Europe and then immigrating to the US with his family in 1980. He worked in the documentary field for many years at National Geographic Television, and then filmed and produced several documentaries. Zolykha’s Secret is his debut feature narrative film set in Afghanistan.Zolykha’s Secret is the story of a rural Afghan family living at the base of a mountain. The family struggles to survive during the last year of the Taliban and the beginning of a new war that still rages. Living under harsh and oppressive conditions,…
Writer/director Danielle Lurie graduated from Stanford University in 2000 with a BA in Philosophy. In it’s Summer 2005 issue, FILMMAKER MAGAZINE listed Danielle as being one of the 25 new faces of independent film.Danielle’s debut short film, IN THE MORNING, premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, and has won nine film festivals to date, including ‘Best Narrative Short’ at the Oscar qualifying Nashville Film Festival. On November 9, 2005, IN THE MORNING screened before members of the U.S. Congress during the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on Honor Killings, and would later screen before members of UNIFEM (United Nations Development…
Nasir Khamier, writer, filmmaker, poet, painter, sculptor, calligrapher is born in Korba, Tunisia in 1948. Since his childhood he lived in the culture of narrations and he never stopped to collect ad write them. In 1982 he was invited by Antoine Vitez to tell the story of One Thousand One Nights in the Theatre Nationale in Chaillot. The short-time character of the oral story doesn’t keep him from changing the story to another life by his graphical and plastic experiences. From 1975 he is publishing a lot of titles, among them ‘Le Soleil emmuré’, ‘Le conte des conteurs’, ‘Le nuage…
Born in Damascus in 1977, raised in Syria and Iraq, Diana El-Jeiroudi graduated from the University of Damascus with a degree in English literature. With a group of dynamic filmmakers, actors and producers, she started Proaction Films, the only independent film production outfit in Syria operating today, where she works in production. “Dolls” is her debut feature documentary, which is going to have its first public release later this year.“Dolls” explores the phenomenon of the Fulla Doll that has become the dream of every Arab girl kid in the Middle East at the moment. Fulla is the veiled version of…
David Lee Strasberg serves as Creative Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Lee Strasberg Institute in Los Angeles and New York. The world famous Institute was founded by Lee and Anna Strasberg in 1969 and serves as an international center for training method actors. The Institute also features the new Lee Strasberg Digital Film School that nurtures the personal visions and skills of new directors.Strasberg has produced short films and dozens of plays with The Group at Strasberg, an in-house production company based at the not-for-profit Lee Strasberg Creative Center in Los Angeles. Before taking the reigns of the…
Lauded as one of America’s most gifted filmmakers, Charles Burnett has just completed his largest film ever, Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation. While earning his MFA in filmmaking at UCLA, Burnett made the now classic Killer of Sheep, and on that basis he was awarded the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship (also known as the “genius grant”) with others to follow from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the J. P. Getty Foundation. He is also the winner of the American Film Institute’s Maya Deren Award and Howard University’s Paul…
Cinema Without Borders: Your performance playing Pope in The Pope, The Man is magical, how did you achieve such a difficult task?Piotr Adamczyk: It is so difficult to explain how. I was asking for a miracle, and I have been given many miracles I was 35 years old when I got this offer to depict his whole life his youth, and the last moments of the life of the holy father. I didn’t think it was possible, I remember the, and who knew him personally. He has the great gift that even in a moment I met the Holy Father,…