ALLOY ORCHESTRA
The Alloy Orchestra is a three-man musical ensemble, writing and performing live accompaniment to classic silent films. Working with an outrageous assemblage of peculiar objects, they thrash and grind soulful music from unlikely sources. 

Performing at prestigious film festivals and cultural centers in the U.S. and abroad (the Telluride Film Festival, the Louvre, Lincoln Center, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the National Gallery of Art, and others), Alloy has helped revive some of the great masterpieces of the silent era.

An unusual combination of found percussion and state-of-the-art electronics gives the Orchestra the ability to create any sound imaginable. Utilizing their famous "rack of junk" and electronic synthesizers, the group generates beautiful music in a spectacular variety of styles. They can conjure up a French symphony or a simple German bar band of the 1920's. The group can make the audience think it is being attacked by tigers, contacted by radio signals from Mars or swept up in the Russian Revolution.

The Alloy Orchestra members are Terry Donahue (junk percussion, accordion, musical saw, banjo), Roger Miller (synthesizer, percussion) and Ken Winokur (director, junk percussion and clarinet).

RAMIN BAHRANI
Writer/director/producer Ramin Bahrani was born in North Carolina to Iranian parents. After receiving his BA from Columbia University in New York City, Bahrani moved to Iran for three years and made his student thesis film, Strangers(2000). He then spent some time in Paris before returning to the states to begin work on his first feature film, Man Push Cart. Bahrani has made several short films, and has received various awards, grants and fellowships for his films and screenplays

MICHAEL BARKER
Michael Barker is the Co-President and Co-Founder of Sony Pictures Classics, a company that distributes, finances and produces independent films from America and around the world. Recent successes include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Pollock; Sweet and Lowdown; All About My Mother; and The Tao of Steve.

MARK DORNFORD-MAY
Mark Dornford-May, British born and now a South African permanent resident, worked in theatre in England for 25 years and formed Broomhill Opera before, mesmerized by the talent he had witnessed in South Africa in 1995, returned in 2000 together with Charles Hazlewood in order to create a new ensemble theatre company in Cape Town. In an unprecedented recruiting process, Mark and Charles traveled to townships nationwide scouting young aspiring performers many of whom had never previously been inside a theatre. No CV’s were required to audition, as a majority of South Africans had not been given opportunities until 1994. Over two thousand auditions took place across rural and urban South Africa and forty company members were selected to become the core group now known as Dimpho Di Kopane, meaning “combined talents” in Sotho.

Mark Dornford-May’s first film, U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin International Festival in 2005.  Son of Man which premiered at Sundance in official selection in January 2006, is his second film.

HADJII (HENRY HAND)
Writer/director/actor/humorist Hadjii was born and raised in Brunswick, Georgia.  He graduated from the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication with a BA degree in Telecommunications Arts.  In 2004, he was a finalist in the Image Film Festival Perfect Pitch Competition with his pitch for his original screenplay My Father’s Business.  His 2002 short film The Making of Brick City won 2nd place at the 2002 Peach City Short Film Festival and was featured in the 2003 Hollywood Black Film Festival.  He was also a semi-finalist in the 2002 Hollywood Black Film Festival Storytelling Competition, and he was an invited panelist discussing the state of African-American film at Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival in 2004. Earnest Hardy of the L.A. Weekly praised Hadjii’s work for its “potent mix of irreverence and social consciousness.”  Somebodies is his first feature.  He is currently completing his first novel, Staged Persona: A Manual Biography and his second feature length screenplay.  He is an adjunct instructor at the University of Georgia where he teaches writing for film and television.

ROBERT HARRIS
Borrowing a bit of dialogue from the film, Robert Harris thought it would be "fun" to resurrect the complete version of the favorite film he had never seen.  The "fun" project turned into a two-year odyssey, encompassing months of research, detective work, a touch of modern archaeology, a worldwide search and inventory of surviving elements and the painstaking examination of over four tons (sixty miles) of picture and sound elements.  With neither surviving prints nor a written continuity of the premiere version of Lawrence Of Arabia as a guide, he took on the task of reconstructing, restoring and joint-producing the restoration.
 
After Lawrence was restored on paper, the project moved from Harris' New York base to Los Angeles, where the final work was performed on the selected picture and track materials.  It was "an extraordinary honor," said Harris, "to be joined in the final restoration process by Anne Coates" (who received the Academy Award® for her editing of Lawrence) "and then by Sir David Lean, who, after directing the dubbing of some needed dialogue, flew to Los Angeles to not only oversee and approve the final form of the restoration, but after 27 years to create the Director's Cut of his masterpiece."
 
Harris, who studied film at New York University, was also involved in the restoration of Abel Gance's Napoleon, and was instrumental in its presentation in a joint effort with Francis Coppola's Zoetrope Studios. 
 
Most recently he restored Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot from surviving VistaVision elements for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, as well as Francis Thompson's three-screen Academy Award®-winning short documentary To Be Alive for the S.C. Johnson Co.
 
His past projects have been Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 Rear Window, the restoration of Hitchcock’s 1958 Vertigo, the reconstruction and restoration of Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, all for Universal Studios, and George Cukor’s 1964 My Fair Lady for CBS.  He also produced (with Martin Scorsese) the critically acclaimed motion picture The Grifters.  He currently is splitting his time between restorations of favored classics and the preparation of new productions.  His restoration work stands as the most extensive, complex and expensive ever attempted.

ROBERT HOFFMAN
Robert Hoffman began his editing career while enrolled in the Graduate Program of the USC School of Cinema-Television.  During his second semester, USC produced an independent film, and Hoffman was hired as one of the apprentice editors.  After graduating with an MFA in Production, he was employed on a few movies as an assistant film editor, including New Line Cinema’s Poison Ivy.  From there, Hoffman began to divide his time between post production supervising and cutting independent features. 

Hoffman’s editing style was curiously labeled “spunky” by Variety in its review of the mockumentary Rhinoskin: The Making of a Movie Star.  He met Terry Zwigoff while supervising the post production of Ghost World.  While making an uncredited contribution to the editing of that film, Zwigoff and Hoffman discovered that they could tolerate one another, and continued their fabled partnership on Bad Santa and Art School Confidential.  Hoffman also edited the romantic-comedy Easy (which was chosen to compete in the 2004 Sundance Film Festival), and the 2005 Showtime film Fathers and Sons.  Sadly though, after editing three films with Mr. Zwigoff, no one any longer calls Hoffman’s editorial style “spunky.”

JIM KATZ
James C. Katz has built a career in cinema equally focused on preserving the old and creating the new.  Along with Bob Harris, he was responsible for the restorations of Rear Window, Vertigo, Spartacus and My Fair Lady.  On the new side, he has produced such features as Paul Bartel’s Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (written by Bruce Wagner , executive produced Lust in the Dust, starring Divine and Tab Hunter) and was producer of Nobody’s Fool, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Beth Henley.   He is currently involved in several film and television projects for The Wyle/Katz Company, a Los Angeles production company.

As president and founder of the Universal Pictures Classics Division in the early 1980s, Katz was responsible for the reissue of five Alfred Hitchcock films -- Rear Window, Vertigo, Rope, The Trouble With Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much -- as well as the reissue of The Beatles’ A HardDay’s Night, the reissue of the Preston Sturges package, and the theatrical distribution of Abel Gance’s Napoleon, during which he cemented his partnership with Bob Harris.

LODGE KERRIGAN
Director Lodge Kerrigan lives and works in New York City. His critically acclaimed films include Clean, Shaven (1994), Claire Dolan (1998) and Keane (2004).

NATE KOHN
Dr. Nathaniel Kohn is an Associate Professor at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, teaching courses in writing for the screen, producing for film and television, cultural studies, and critical theory.  Also at the University of Georgia, Dr. Kohn is Associate Director of the prestigious George Foster Peabody Awards, considered by many to be the highest award in the electronic media.

Dr. Kohn is festival director of Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival, hosted by Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert.  He also is co-founder and festival director of Robert Osborne’s Classic Film Festival.

JOHN MALKOVICH
Actor, director and producer John Malkovich is a leading figure of both stage and screen. He has had a profound impact on American theatre as a guiding member of Chicago's groundbreaking Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and he has intrigued filmgoers with his finely etched screen performances for nearly twenty years. In 1998 John Malkovich joined producing partners Lianne Halfon and Russ Smith in forming the production company Mr. Mudd, whose first production was the celebrated film Ghost World. His feature directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs starring Academy Award® nominee Javier Bardem, followed in 2003. As an actor and producer, John Malkovich most recently wrapped principal on two Mudd productions. Both The Libertine, co-starring Johnny Depp and Samantha Morton, and Art School Confidential directed by Terry Zwigoff, completed production in 2004.

Malkovich is one of cinema's most in-demand actors, and works frequently in both American and international productions. He has worked with many of cinema's leading directors, making indelible impressions in such films as: Liliana Cavani's Ripley's Game, Spike Jone's Being John Malkovich, Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons; Wolfgang Petersen's In the Line of Fire; Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady; Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky; Gary Sinise's Of Mice and Men; Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun; Paul Newman's The Glass Menagerie; Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields; and Robert Benton's Places in the Heart.

He has twice been nominated for the Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actor, in 1985 for Places in the Heart and in 1994 for In the Line of Fire. His performance in Places in the Heart also earned him the Best Supporting Actor Award from the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review. In 1999, he won New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor for Being John Malkovich.

Malkovich is a longstanding member of the groundbreaking Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. He joined the company immediately upon completing college, and between 1976 and 1982 he acted in, directed or designed sets for more than fifty Steppenwolf productions. Malkovich's debut on the New York stage in the Steppenwolf production of Sam Shepard's True West earned him an Obie Award. Other notable plays include Death of a Salesman; Slip of the Tongue; Sam Shepard's State of Shock; and Lanford Wilson's Burn This in New York, London and Los Angeles. He has directed numerous plays at Steppenwolf, including the celebrated Balm in Gilead in Chicago and off-Broadway; The Caretaker in Chicago and on Broadway; Hysteria; and Libra, which Malkovich adapted from Don DeLillo's novel.

Malkovich has also acted in several acclaimed television productions and won an Emmy Award for his performance in the telefilm Death of a Salesman, directed by Volker Schloendorff and co-starring Dustin Hoffman. Other television credits including the recent miniseries Napoleon and the acclaimed HBO telefilm RKO 281, both garnering him Emmy Award nominations.

In addition to directing The Dancer Upstairs, John has directed three fashion shorts (Strap Hangings, Lady Behave, Hideous Man) for London based designer Bella Freud. His French stage production of Hysteria was honored with five Moliere Award nominations (2003), including best director.

With business partner Francesco Rulli, John Malkovich estabished Mrs. Mudd in 2002, a market consultation company assisting the world of fashion design.

TERRY ZWIGOFF
Writer-director Terry Zwigoff traces his career in film back to 1978, when he found a rare 1934 recording by an unknown Chicago blues musician.  A musician himself, Zwigoff was so impressed by this old 78 that he began what was to become two years of detective work to discover who the artist was and what his life had been like. Louie Bluie, a documentary film released in 1985, was the result.  The film garnered enthusiastic critical acclaim and, although only 60 minutes long, played theatrically in over 25 cities, including a two-month run at the Bleecker in New York.  Roger Ebert said the film is “a delight from beginning to end – it is a wonderful film,” and Janet Maslin of The New York Times said it is “as colorful, lively and garrulous as the man it describes."

Zwigoff’s next film, Crumb, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and became a runaway success with audiences and critics alike, appearing on over 100 “Ten Best” lists and was chosen Best Film of 1995 by a dozen major film critics. It won every single film critic’s award for Best Documentary of 1995, including the New York, Los Angeles, and National Society of Film Critics Award.  (The latter also voted it runner-up to Babe as Best Picture of the Year.) Zwigoff also won the DGA award, the IDA award, and the National Board of Review  award for Best Director. Roger Ebert called Crumb “a great and astonishing film.” Newsweek called it “an instant American Classic!” and Terrence Rafferty of The New Yorker said “[it] is a brilliant, scary movie – by a wide margin the best American film of the year…”. Andrew Sarris called it  “one of the most amazing films ever.” 

Zwigoff’s next film was Ghost World (2001), for which he received an Academy Award® Nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film received Golden Globe Nominations for performances by Steve Buscemi and Thora Birch and went on to appear on over 150 Ten Best Lists.

Bad Santa followed in 2003, starring Billy Bob Thornton, who received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance. The film garnered critical acclaim and box office success, grossing over $60 million domestically. Zwigoff’s latest film, Art School Confidential, stars John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Angelica Huston, and Steve Buscemi, along with relative newcomers Max Minghella and Sophia Myles. It re-teams him with Ghost World creator Dan Clowes and Ghost World producers Lianne Halfon, Russ Smith, and John Malkovich. It opens on April 28th, 2006.