Julia O'Hara Stiles is an American actress. Born and raised in New York City, Stiles began acting at the age of 11 as part of New York's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. Her film debut was a small role in ILove You, I Love You Not (1996), followed by a lead role in Wicked (1998) for which she received the Karlovy Vary Film Festival Award for Best Actress. She rose to prominence with leading roles in teen films such as 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Down to You (2000), and Save the Last Dance (2001). Her accolades include an NBR Award, a CFCA Award, a Gold Derby Award, a Teen Choice Award and two MTV Movie Awards, as well as Satellite Award, Gotham Award, Golden Globe Award, and Emmy Award nominations.
Scott Leo "Taye" Diggs is an American actor. He is known for his roles in the Broadway musicals Rent and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the TV series Private Practice and All American, and the films How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Brown Sugar, The Best Man and its sequel, The Best Man Holiday. From 2014 to 2016 he starred as Inspector Terry English in Murder in the First.
The Slamdance Film Festival is an annual film festival focused on emerging artists. The annual week-long festival takes place in Park City, Utah, in late January and is the main event organized by the year-round Slamdance organization, which also hosts a screenplay competition, workshops, screenings throughout the year and events with an emphasis on independent films with budgets under US$1 million.
Victoria Ainslie Pratt is a Canadian actress, author, and fitness model.
How Stella Got Her Groove Back is a 1998 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan, adapted from Terry McMillan's best-selling 1996 novel of the same title. The film stars Angela Bassett, Taye Diggs, Whoopi Goldberg, and Regina King. The original music score was composed by Michel Colombier.
The Best Man is a 1999 American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Malcolm D. Lee. It was produced by 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, with Lee's cousin, Spike Lee, serving as producer. The film stars an ensemble cast led by Taye Diggs and Nia Long, with the debut of Regina Hall.
Drum is a 2004 film based on the life of South African investigative journalist Henry Nxumalo, who worked for Drum magazine, called "the first black lifestyle magazine in Africa". It was director Zola Maseko's first film and deals with the issues of apartheid and the forced removal of residents from Sophiatown. The film was originally to be a six-part television series called Sophiatown Short Stories, but Maseko could not get the funding. The lead roles of Henry Nxumalo and Drum main photographer Jürgen Schadeberg were played by American actors Taye Diggs and Gabriel Mann, while most of the rest of the cast were South African actors.
Open House is a 2004 real estate musical film starring Hedy Burress, Ann Magnuson, Anthony Rapp, Sally Kellerman, Jenna Leigh Green and Kellie Martin, and directed by Dan Mirvish, a co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival. It played on the film festival circuit in 2004–05 and was released on DVD through Wellspring Media. All the actors sang live on set, rather than lip synching.
Joe Hortua is an American playwright, screenwriter, and producer. He has most recently worked as an Executive Producer and Writer on the Emmy nominated television show Better Things on FX. Hortua has written such plays as Other Parents, Making It, and Between Us which have been performed at the Manhattan Theatre Club and South Coast Repertory Theater. He is married with two children.
The Boulder International Film Festival (BIFF), sponsored by the Colorado Film Society, is held annually on Presidents Day Weekend in Boulder, Colorado USA, and has developed a reputation as one of the most compelling young film festivals in the U.S., exhibiting a number of new-but-unknown feature films, documentaries, animations, and shorts that have gone on to significant box-office success and multiple Oscar nominations, including Monsieur Lazhar, Burma VJ, Revanche, Wasp, Miracle Fish, The Conscience of Nhem Eh, Waste Land, Incident in New Baghdad, Instead of Abracadabra, Raju, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, West Bank Story, The Secret of Kells, 5 Broken Cameras, Chasing Ice, Curfew, Asad,The Missing Picture, and The Wind Rises. More than 23,600 filmmakers, national media, special guests and film enthusiasts attended the four-day BIFF 2014.
The Martin Eisenstadt hoax is an elaborate scheme of filmmakers Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin that involved the creation of a fictional "talking head", Martin Eisenstadt, who was quoted by numerous major news outlets, as well as countless blogs, all of which failed to verify his actual existence. "Eisenstadt" claimed to be the source of commentary about Sarah Palin in the wake of John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. Mirvish and Gorlin have since written a satirical novel called I Am Martin Eisenstadt: One Man's Adventures with the Last Republicans for Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 978-0-86547-914-2. The book was written under Eisenstadt's pseudonym and purports to be a first-person memoir of Eisenstadt's experience with the McCain/Palin campaign, including buying Palin's wardrobe. In the book, the Eisenstadt character denies rumors that he does not exist.
Dan Mirvish is an American filmmaker and author, best known as the co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival and co-creator of the Martin Eisenstadt hoax during the 2008 Presidential election.
Monterey Media Inc. started as a home video company founded in 1982 by Scott Mansfield. It was initially financed by Noel C. Bloom, and the titles were distributed by the Family Home Entertainment subsidiary of Caballero Control Corporation. Monterey is the second sub-label of NCB Entertainment, after FHE.
Todd Berger is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and novelist most prominently known for writing and directing the feature films It's a Disaster, Cover Versions, The Scenesters, and the documentary Don't Eat The Baby: Adventures at post-Katrina Mardi Gras.
The Best Man Holiday is a 2013 American comedy-drama film written, co-produced and directed by Malcolm D. Lee. A sequel to Lee's The Best Man (1999), it stars Morris Chestnut, Taye Diggs, Regina Hall, Terrence Howard, Sanaa Lathan, Nia Long, Harold Perrineau, Monica Calhoun and Melissa De Sousa, all reprising their roles from the previous film. Along with Lee, the film was produced by Sean Daniel.
The Great Gilly Hopkins is a 2015 American comedy-drama film directed by Stephen Herek and written by David L. Paterson. It is based on Katherine Paterson's 1978 children's book of the same name. The film stars Sophie Nélisse, Kathy Bates, Julia Stiles, Bill Cobbs, Billy Magnussen, Octavia Spencer, and Glenn Close. The film was released on October 7, 2016, by Lionsgate Premiere.
Woo Ming Jin is a Malaysian film director, writer and producer. His films have screened in film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin and Venice. He is also the co-founder of Greenlight Pictures, a film and television production house based in Kuala Lumpur.
Hank and Asha is a 2013 comedy-romance directed by James E. Duff, and produced and co-written by James E. Duff and Julia Morrison. The film stars Mahira Kakkar and Andrew Pastides. It premiered in competition at the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival where it won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature, and was later acquired for US distribution by FilmRise.
Bernard and Huey is a 2017 American drama/comedy film directed by Dan Mirvish, that was written by Jules Feiffer based on characters Feiffer created for his eponymous comic strip in The Village Voice. Feiffer originally wrote the screenplay in 1986, and it was thought lost for close to three decades. The film stars David Koechner, Jim Rash, Sasha Alexander, Eka Darville, Richard Kind, Lauren Miller Rogen, Nancy Travis, Bellamy Young, Mae Whitman.
River Runs Red is a 2018 American thriller film written and directed by Wes Miller and starring Taye Diggs, John Cusack and George Lopez.
