A big welcome to all our festival guests!
Joel Anderson
Aditya Assarat
Arta Dobroshi
Alan Finney
Bodo Fründt
Ben Gilmour
Antony Ginnane
Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Mark Hartley
Cathy Henkel
Jon Hewitt
Anna Kannava
Dimitri Karakatsanis
Ying Liang
Adrian Martin
Spencer Martin
Jackie McKimmie
Jenny McMillan
Woo Ming-Jin
Matthew Newton
Nina Paley
Andrew Pike
Halim Rane
Hayat Khan Shinwari
Niaz Khan Shinwari
Jung Soo-Wan
Morgan Spurlock
David Stratton
Nancy Tait
Jeni Thornley
Brian Trenchard-Smith
Andrew Urban
Deb Verhoeven
Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Joel Anderson
Melbourne-based writer-director Joel Anderson studied filmmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts. He was the recipient of Film Victoria's Independent Filmmakers Fund in 2002 and his project The Rotting Woman premièred at London and won the 2003 Australian Writers Guild Award for Best Screenplay in a Short Film. The screenplay for Lake Mungo, his first feature film, won a 2007 Queensland Premier's Literary Award.
Aditya Assarat
Aditya Assarat studied at the University of Southern California before he began directing shorts and documentaries, which have screened at more than 70 international festivals. In 2002, Assarat made Pru Raw Velvet, a documentary on Thai rock band Pru, which screened on MTV Thailand. His début feature, 3 Friends (2005), premièred at Toronto.
Arta Dobroshi
Born in Prishtina, Arta Dobroshi graduated from the
Academy of
Art in
Prishtina in 2002. She has appeared in films such as Magic Eye and The Sadness of Mrs. Snajdrova. This year
Dobroshi earned worldwide acclaim for her performance in the Dardenne Brothers'
film Lorna's Silence which
screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
Alan Finney
After studying law at the
University of
Melbourne,
Alan Finney joined Roadshow Film
Distributors in advertising and promotion. He served as Executive Director of
Hexagon Productions and was associate producer on Alvin Purple. During the 1980s, Finney was
in charge of national marketing and sales for Roadshow Film Distributors. He has
been awarded the Order of Australia and has served on the board of the
Australian Centre for the Moving Image and is presently on the board of the
Australian Film Institute.
Bodo Fründt
Bodo
Fründt is a German film journalist
who has worked for print media, radio, and television since 1968 and has
published, written, and translated books on the subject of film, including Alfred Hitchcock und Seine Filme
and Leni Riefenstahl und Ihre Filme.
He currently works with the Munich Film Festival. Bodo is part of the FIPRESCI Jury this year.
Ben Gilmour
Born in Germany in 1975, Benjamin Gilmour is a trained paramedic, whose interest in film was sparked by work as a unit nurse on film productions abroad. After visiting Pakistan's tribal regions on holiday, Gilmour returned committed to making a film about this culturally rich area. Son of a Lion is his first film.
Antony Ginnane
Melbourne-born Antony Ginnane has been involved in all aspects of the film industry for nearly 40 years. He has made 56 productions, including feature films, MOWs (Movies of the Week), and mini-series. His distribution company, IFM World Releasing, has a library of more than 150 feature films and telemovies and has recently expanded into factual and documentary programming.
Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Born in Kerala, India, Adoor Gopalakrishnan studied at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune before making his directorial debut in 1972 with One's Own Choice (BIFF 2005). Since then, Gopalakrishnan has directed award-winning features, six of which have won FIPRESCI awards. His films screened at BIFF include The Servile (1993, BIFF 1995) and Shadow Kill (2002, BIFF 2003).
Mark Hartley
Melbourne-born Mark
Hartley studied at the Swinburne School of Film and Television before
entering the film industry as an editor and a music video director directing
videos for artists such as The Living End, You Am I and Powderfinger. He has
produced interviews, behind-the-scenes documentaries and featurettes for
Umbrella Entertainment's range of Australian classics on DVD and
has been instrumental in resurrecting many Ozploitation titles on DVD. Not Quite Hollywood is his feature debut
and has been selected for this year's "Midnight Madness" programme at the
Toronto Film Festival.
Cathy Henkel
Cathy Henkel is a producer, writer, and director of documentaries and educational videos. She formed Hatchling Productions with Jeff Canin in 1992. Henkel's film The Man Who Stole My Mother's Face (2004, BIFF 2004) was awarded Best Feature Documentary at Tribeca.
Jon Hewitt
Jon Hewitt began work in the Australian film industry in exhibition and distribution. For much of the 1980s and 1990s, he worked for the Premium Group in programming, acquisitions, and marketing. In 1990 he made his feature début with Bloodlust, co-directed by Richard Wolstencroft.
Anna Kannava
After migrating from Cyprus in her mid-teens, Anna Kannava grew up in Melbourne and studied drama and media at Deakin University. She directed numerous short films, including Wedding of Venus (1981) and Vanilla Essence (1989), before directing The Butler in 1997, which was nominated for an AFI Award.
Dimitri Karakatsanis
Dimitri Karakatsanis graduated from St. Lucas in Brussels with his surrealist short film Le Guide, which won the award for Best Student Film in 2001 and screened at numerous international film festivals. He has also directed a numerous commercials for clients such as SN Brussels Airlines, Belgacom, and Renault. Small Gods is his début feature.
Ying Liang
Ying
Liang studied film at Beijing Normal University and
earned a Bachelor's degree in directing from Chongqing Film Academy.
Since 1999 he has directed numerous short films including Gold Coin of Heaven and The
Missing House before making his feature début, Taking Father Home, in
2005, which was met with international acclaim and festival awards. His third
feature, Good Cats, had its recent
world première at Karlovy Vary. Ying is part of the BIFF NETPAC Jury this year.
Adrian Martin
Internationally
acclaimed film critic Adrian Martin is a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University and
is a regular contributor to Film Quarterly, De Filmkrant and Cahiers
du cinéma España. He has written books including What is Modern Cinema?,
Raúl Ruiz: Magnificent Obsessions,
and Once Upon a Time in America and is co-editor of the
online journal Rouge. Adrian is part of the FIPRESCI Jury this year.
Jackie McKimmie
Jackie
McKimmie is writer-director of the award-winning shorts Stations and No Problems and the feature films Australian Dream, Waiting, and
Gino. She is currently the director
of SP*RK, the Australian Film Commission's national script workshop, and is
also Screen Australia's
Project Manager in the Brisbane
office. She has been awarded the Centenary Medal for services to the Queensland film
industry. Jackie is part of the BIFF NETPAC Jury this year.
Jenny McMillan
Formerly
Dean of Students and Studies at Newman College, University of Melbourne, Jenny McMillan wrote her master's thesis on the deconstruction of
the cartoon text. Between 1990 and 2002, she taught at Geelong Grammar School. She is currently a film reviewer
for Catholic Communications. Jenny is part of the BIFF Interfaith Jury this year.
Woo Ming-Jin
Woo Ming-jin studied film production at San Diego State University, directing several short films and music videos. Upon returning to his native Malaysia, Woo directed television shows and commercials, and worked on numerous independent films. His début feature, Monday Morning Glory (2005), screened at major festivals, and his critically acclaimed The Elephant and the Sea was invited to more than 15 worldwide.
Matthew Newton
A NIDA graduate, Matthew Newton has performed numerous lead roles on film, television, and stage. His credits include The White Devil, Boy Gets Girl, and The History Boys (theatre); Stupid Stupid Man, All Saints, and Changi (television); and Looking for Alibrandi (2000), My Mother Frank (2000), and The Bet (2006) on film.
Nina Paley
Illinois-born Nina Paley created the comic strip ‘Nina's Adventures', published in the Los Angeles Reader and San Francisco Examiner, before making her first film, Luv Is... (1998), on a Super-8 camera. In 1999 she made the world's first completely cameraless IMAX film, Pandorama, which screened at numerous festivals worldwide. Paley is a lecturer at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan.
Andrew Pike
Andrew Pike studied Australian cinema history at Canberra's Australian National University before co-authoring Australian Film 1900 - 1977. In 1974 he established distribution company Ronin Films, which developed a special interest in Asian cinema and released many ‘Fifth Generation' classics. Pike received the AFI's Byron Kennedy Award in 1986 and was honoured in 2003 with one of France's highest arts decorations, the Knight in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Halim Rane
Dr
Halim Rane has a Bachelor's degree in sociology and Islamic studies,
a Master's in media studies, and a PhD in international relations. Halim is
currently a lecturer in the National Centre of Excellence in Islamic Studies
and is the programme convenor for the Bachelor of Arts major in Islamic studies
at Griffith University. Hailm is part of the BIFF Interfaith Jury this year.
Hayat Khan Shinwari
An
avid film-lover, Hayat Khan
Shinwari is a respected Pashtun land-owner who was instrumental in
getting Son of a Lion produced.
He worked onset as a translator, assistant director, script consultant and actor
and recently played a role in the region's elections, lobbying for political
representation of the Pashtun population.
Niaz Khan Shinwari
Contrary to his role in Son of a Lion, Niaz Khan Shinwari speaks English, Pashto
and Urdu and received a solid education. His is father Hayat Khan Shinwari who
served many duties on the film.
Jung Soo-Wan
Jung
Soo-wan received her PhD in film studies from Dongguk
University, South
Korea and Waseda
University, Japan. She
has worked with the Jeonju International Film Festival since its inception and
is currently the festival's Program Director. In addition to teaching film
studies at Dongguk University, Soo-wan
is a member of FIPRESCI and the Korean Film Critics' Association. Jung is part of the BIFF NETPAC Jury this year.
Morgan Spurlock
Morgan Spurlock is the writer, director, and producer of the Academy Award-nominated film Super Size Me. The documentary feature, Spurlock's first, was awarded the Writers Guild of America's inaugural Documentary Screenplay Award and earned best directing awards at Sundance and Edinburgh in 2004. Spurlock recently finished the third season of his highly acclaimed FX series, 30 Days.
David Stratton
David Stratton
is an internationally renowned
film critic who has written for Variety, The
Australian and The International
Film Guide among other publications. He has written two books on
Australian cinema, The Last Wave
and The Avocado
Plantation and has served on festival juries at Cannes,
Berlin and
Venice. He has
been awarded the French government's Commander of Arts and Literature, the AFI's
Raymond Longford Award and the Chauvel Award.
Jeni Thornley
Jeni Thornley lectures in issues in documentary at the University of Technology, Sydney, where she is completing a doctorate. She also works as a consultant writer, script editor, researcher, assessor, and valuer for film archives and the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Brian Trenchard-Smith
British-born Brian Trenchard-Smith has directed a broad spectrum of Australian genre films including the classics Turkey Shoot and The Man From Hong Kong. Frequently cited as a key figure in Australia's genre film history, Trenchard-Smith has worked in both cinema and television internationally. He is also a keen épée fencer.
Andrew Urban
With over thirty years experience
in journalism, Andrew Urban has
contributed to Screen
International, The Australian,
The Bulletin and Cinema
Papers. He is currently the editor of Urban Cinefile, a leading
online resource for filmic culture in Australia and
television host of the movie-subscription network, World Movies.
Deb Verhoeven
Deb Verhoeven is a writer, broadcaster, film critic, commentator, and lecturer.
She is currently Associate Professor of Screen Studies in the School of Applied Communication at RMIT University, where she also manages the AFI Research Collection. She is also
Deputy Chair of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Between 2000
and 2002, Deb was CEO of the Australian Film Institute. Deb is part of the FIPRESCI Jury this year.
Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, D. Phil.
(Oxford), is Associate Professor and Australian Research Council (ARC)
Discovery Fellow in linguistics at the School of English, Media Studies and Art
History of the University of Queensland. He has been a
Gulbenkian Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, and has taught in Israel, Singapore, England, and the US. Ghil'ad is part of the BIFF Interfaith Jury this year.
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