Jason Anderson
has written about film for Toronto's eye Weekly for the last five years. A native of Calgary with a degree in English literature from the University of Toronto, he also writes regularly about movies, music and books for The Globe and Mail, Toro, Cinema Scope, Rev, Marquee and Toronto Life. He has (almost) finished two experimental short films and recently completed Letterboxed, his first book of short fiction. |
Bill Evans
is Director of Showcases at the National Screen Institute - Canada and Director of the NSI FilmExchange Festival. A filmmaker in his own right, Bill Evans is also an award winning events producer, and has a broad range of film festival and programming experience including five years as the programmer and Executive Director of Edmonton's Metro Cinema. He worked at Pacific Cinematheque, Vancouver Film Festival and the Moving Pictures Film Festival before joining NSI in 1999. Mr. Evans studied Drama and English at the University of Alberta and Film Production and Film Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. |
Lee Anne Gillan
is a freelance writer, based in Halifax Nova Scotia, who watches too many movies and does too little typing. She is the film critic for the Halifax Daily News and is heading into her 6th year as a programmer for the Atlantic Film Festival. Before she became completely sedentary, she worked behind the film front lines as a projectionist and popcorn wench for 8 years. Lee Anne is working on her first book, and trying to find a reason to set it in Australia. |
Marc-André Lussier
Movies have always been the passion of his life but Marc-André Lussier has been professionally talking about them for fifteen years. He started his career by hosting and producing Projection spéciale, a radio show devoted to cinema on a public access station in Montreal. During those eight years, he was also invited to participate in many shows on radio and television. In 1995, he was asked to be a special contributor to La Presse, the largest French daily newspaper in America. By then, Marc-André could also be seen and heard regularly on Radio-Canada (CBC), where he served as a contributor on morning shows (CBF Bonjour, VSD, C'est bien meilleur le matin) and on television (Christiane Charette en direct, Matin Express). For one season, he worked at CKAC, a private talk radio station. He is now a full time writer at La Presse. |
Michelle Marion
As the Director, Canadian Independent Production for the pay-TV networks The Movie Network and Mpix, Michelle is responsible for the networks' Canadian programming strategy consisting of pre-buying and making equity investments in Canadian feature films as well as commissioning original programming including series, made-for pay-TV movies and documentaries about film.
Michelle has previously held several positions at Astral in the Communications and Strategic Planning departments alongside her "freelance" career of script analysis and story editing for various Canadian production companies and producers. Michelle has a B.A. from Trinity College, University of Toronto, and an M.A. in English from Queen's. |
Jeremy Podeswa
is the writer, director and co-producer of two feature films: The Five Senses (Fine Line Distribution; premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Directors Fortnight, Winner of the Genie Award for Best Director, and the Award for Best Canadian Film at the Toronto International Film Festival®) and Eclipse (Strand Releasing; nominated for two Genie Awards). He has also directed the television movie After the Harvest starring Sam Shepard (winner of the Directors Guild of Canada Award), and episodes of the acclaimed HBO series Six Feet Under and Carnivale, the Showtime series Queer as Folk and The Chris Isaak Show, and the FOX series Wonderfalls. He is currently writing and directing a feature film based on the best-selling novel Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels. |
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Patricia Rozema
Director, producer, writer. Born in Kingston, Ontario 1958. Raised in Sarnia, Ontario by Dutch Calvinist parents, Patricia Rozema is one of Canada's most accomplished and internationally recognized filmmakers. Throughout her narrative feature film work she has maintained an elegant female consciousness while drawing male characters with compassion. Most notably, Rozema has established herself as an exceptional and distinctly sensual visual artist. Her films are characterized by self-referential narration, idiosyncratic protagonists who are often struggling artists, formal adventurousness, and the use of fairy tales, mythology and poetry as structuring notions. Rozema's debut feature is one of Canada's most celebrated and circulated success stories. I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, a serious comedy about a socially inept Girl Friday, was made for a mere $350,000 and was not only remarkably successful critically, but commercially. The film went on to win the coveted Prix de la Jeunesse at Cannes in 1987 and was recently voted as one of the top ten Canadian films of all time. Rozema followed up this success with White Room, an ambitious and dark contemporary tale of fame. Then, with the semi-autobiographical When Night is Falling, Rozema crafts a lyrical lesbian love story involving a Christian professor and a circus performer. Her subsequent project, the richly textured Six Gestures, part of the Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach series was awarded a Prime Time Emmy. Rozema's next two films, however, would exit from Canadian production. Mansfield Park (U.K.) is a sophisticated revisionist adaptation of Jane Austen's novel and Happy Days, an Irish production, is a filmed version of Samuel Beckett's absurdly despairing play in which a woman lives partially buried in a mound. Rozema is currently developing another project with Miramax. |
Denis Seguin
Toronto-based writer/broadcaster Denis Seguin has been writing and reporting about film and the business of film for the past 15 years. A contributing editor to UK-based Screen International magazine and a frequent contributor to many Canadian publications, he is a two-time National Magazine Award nominee. He is currently writing a documentary about the British film industry in Hollywood. |
David Spaner
Vancouver Province movie critic David Spaner is the author of the book Dreaming in the Rain: How Vancouver Became Hollywood North By Northwest. David also reviews movies on Global TV and has worked as a reporter, editor and feature writer for numerous publications. Born in North York, Ontario, he grew up in Vancouver and graduated from Simon Fraser University and Langara College. |
Sandy Wilson
has been making award winning documentaries and short films since the 60's, but she is perhaps best known as the writer, director, co-producer of the international hit My American Cousin which won the International Film Critics Award at the Toronto Festival of Festivals in 1985. My American Cousin won Genies for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Actor and Best Actress in 1986. Wilson wrote and directed the sequel American Boyfriends and directed Harmony Cats in 1992. Harmony Cats was nominated for 13 Genies and won Best Director at the Seattle Women's Film Festival.
Sandy is currently in development with several scripts; The Cave, Florence and The Clutching Sisters. Sandy lives near Penticton BC and teaches in Kelowna at the Centre for Arts and Technology in the Okanagan. |
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