FESTIVAL PANELISTS & SPECIAL GUESTS

NORMAN ALADJEM
After receiving his J.D. from the UCLA School of Law, Mr. Aladjem began hiscareer in1981 as an attorneypracticing at the renowned entertainment law firm, Armstrong, Hirsch,Jackoway, Tyerman & Wertheimer.

In 1987 Mr. Aladjem founded Innovative Talent, Inc., a personal management and production company, where, in addition to representing clients in the motion picture, television and music industries, he produced and co-wrotethe motion picture Firewalker, starring Chuck Norris and Louis Gossett, Jr.

In 1992, Mr. Aladjem took a sabbatical from the entertainment industry to work on President Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign.  During that period, he met the Chief Executive Officerof the 1994 World Cup USA and, after the successful completion of the presidential campaign, he went on to join the organization to serve as Director of the World Cup USA Legacy Tour and served as amember of the World Cup’s Head of State protocol group.  In 1995, Mr. Aladjem joined Writers and Artists Agency as an agent, quickly rising to become Chairman and CEO of the company in 1999.

In 2004, Mr. Aladjem sold Writers and Artists to Paradigm, where he is currently head of theinternational and independent film packaging and financing unit.

Paradigm, with offices in Beverly Hills, New York, Nashville and Monterey, represents actors, writers, directors and producers in the motion picture, television, and theater areas, as well as major recording artists in the music arena.

Mr. Bordwell has a special interest in Hong Kong and Japanese cinema, as well as in classic Hollywood filmmaking.  He has been a guest of universities and film festivals in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. On Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, he thinks that Yasujiro Ozu is the greatest director who ever lived; on other days, his favorite changes.

MICKEY COTTRELL
inclusive pr is the brainchild of Mickey Cottrell.  A veteran of all facets of film publicity, Mickey brings a distinctive touch to every film he chooses to adopt.  In 25 years of this, he has had the great joy of representing many film artists, some in his association, honored with seven Jury Prizes at Sundance, three Oscars and numerous other nominations and awards.

Cottrell has become a specialist in filmmakers’ publicity, playing an instrumental role in launching the directing careers of Phillip Noyce, Gus Van Sant, Julien Temple, Vincent Ward, Bruce Weber, Diane Keaton, Percy Adlon, Bryan Singer, and most recently, wunderkinds Tony Barbieri (One), David Gordon Green (George Washington), Todd Louiso (Love Liza) and Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation).  He has has opened over 100 films, including Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, George Washington, Bernard Rose’s ivansxtc and most recently, Tarnation, Funny Ha Ha and Ballets Russes.

Mickey Cottrell's publicity career began inadvertently when he called the local L.A. film critics to get their input on the programming needs of the local community as he embarked on transforming the classic Loyola Movie Palace into a revival house in 1981.  The critics had never been asked this question by an exhibitor, and one by one, they took Mickey out to lunch and poured out their cinema hearts’ desires.  During this time, Michael Ventura of the L.A. Weekly wrote that Mickey's was "the finest film programming in Los Angeles." Some of Mickey’s most tremendous successes gave a new life to films that might not otherwise have had the chance, ranging in scale from big budget to minute. 

Mickey spent 5 months as Special Media Consultant on the release of Phillip Noyce’s The Quiet American. This began with overseeing the film’s world premiere at the 2002 Toronto International Film Fest.  Prior to the fest, Harvey Weinstein had no intention of releasing the picture, which looked to be headed straight to the shelf of your local Blockbuster.  The day after the fest ended, Miramax, unable to ignore the remarkable reception from the international media there, changed their minds.  The following morning, a front-page story in Variety blazed with the heading, “Toronto Buzz Gets Quiet Release”.  Subsequently, its star Michael Caine was nominated for an Academy Award®.  Mickey, hired as publicist for all elements of the film by its financier, was the picture’s principal trumpeter and a vital source of clarity on a once-fading project, now renewed by PR.

Right at the other end of the production spectrum, the 2004 Sundance Film Festival saw two triumphs for movies of a hugely smaller scale.  Mickey represented Down to the Bone, which won the Directing Award and the Special Award for Acting.  A second film on the 2004 roster in Park City was arguably the most important indie of that year, Jonathan Caouette’s micro-budgeted towering achievement Tarnation, which also enjoyed endless praise on the Croisette at Cannes, a standing ovation in its Directors Fortnight presentation and was dubbed by Pascal Thomas, the president of the French directors’ guild, “THE event at Cannes this year!”  Tarnation went on the next month to win the Best Documentary Award and $25,000 cash purse at the 2004 Los Angeles Film Festival.

At Sundance 2005, Mickey introduced four films, with the now celebrated Ballets Russes lifting crowds to their feet, as it was to do at other key fests, including Toronto and the Hamptons, where it took the Audience Award.  The film was picked up by the savvy, classy specialist Zeitgeist, with Mickey kept on to over oversee all national press, screening for NYC and LA-based long lead, in addition to the Los Angeles release.

 At Toronto 2005, in addition to Ballets Russes, Mickey did his first Closing Night film for a major fest, undertaking Edison there, with its many stars in toe.  With Morgan Freeman, Justin Timberlake, LL Cool J, and Dylan McDermott in great demand for interviews and photo shoots, Mickey coordinated serving over 100 in-person outlets in less than 24 hours.

Other highlights of Mickey’s recent adventures in publicity include campaigns that stretched into a full year on Greendale, a film by rock legend Neil Young, and taking on The Thing About My Folks, penned by and starring Paul Reiser, opposite Peter Falk.  The latter opened film festivals in Florida, and Nashville, and took the Audience Award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival before being picked up by Picturehouse.  Cottrell also joined filmmaker Stuart Gordon and star William C. Macy for the fest campaign on their Edmond, adapted by David Mamet from his play, at Telluride 2005.  Mickey was invited by Roger Ebert as a special guest to his Overlooked Film Festival in 2004 and 2005.  In March of 2006, Mickey will be a special guest at the Robert Osborne Classic Film Festival, where he will be interviewed by Osborne onstage at the University of Georgia.

In addition to extensive festival and release work, Mickey helmed Oscar campaigns for more than a dozen documentaries and foreign films (with two winners), as well as the Special Oscar for master film composer Alex North.  He has also acted as unit publicist on the over thirty films, including Bagdad Café, My Own Private Idaho, Drop Dread-Fred, and Somebody to Love. Mickey has served as a member of the selection committee for the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, as well as taking on corporate clients as varied as Morton’s Restaurant and Cirque du Soleil

JIM EMERSON
Jim Emerson is a Seattle-based writer and film critic who has worked in nearly every part of the movie biz--screenwriting, production, editing, marketing, exhibition, journalism and criticism.

He is the co-creator and editor of, as well as a contributor to RogerEbert.com.  He was the editor of the Microsoft Cinemania, a multimedia movie encyclopedia on CD-ROM and on the web, and has been the editorial director of other film-related web projects such as Reel.com and the now-defunct start-up, FilmPix.com. Emerson was movie critic for the Orange County Register (and member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association), and has written for many other publications and web sites including the Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times, MSN, Film Comment, Amazon.com, and Premiere.  He also co-authored (with his friend and sometime writing partner Julia Sweeney) the play and screenplay Meas Big Apology and the film Its Pat: The Movie, and is a creative consultant on Sweeney’s current monologue, Letting Go of God.  He has been a film programmer for the famous Market Theater in Seattle, the Seattle International Film Festival and the Floating Film Festival. His own rarely-updated web site ’s CinePad: www.cinepad.com

DOC ERICKSON
C.O. "Doc" Erickson, an executive producer, has over thirty years' experience as a producer and production manager on many of Hollywood's biggest films.  He began his career at Paramount Pictures, serving as production manager on five Alfred Hitchcock films: Rear Window, To Catch A Thief, The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo. 

Doc left Paramount to become John Huston's associate producer on The Misfits, Freud and Reflections in a Golden Eye.  He was production manager on Joseph L. Mankiewicz's There Was A Crooked Man and Cleopatra.  He also spent three years supervising film  production for Brut Productions and later became associated with Robert Evans on Chinatown, Players, Urban Cowboy and Popeye. 

ERIC PIERSON
Dr. Eric Pierson received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Communication Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2000).  He is currently an Associate Professor in the Communication Studies department at the University of San Diego.  His areas of interest include Blaxploitation, film culture, political economy, and media ethics. 

LISA ROSMAN
A former labor organizer, Lisa Rosman has worked as a writer and editor for such publications as Us Weekly, The Brooklyn Rail, Indiewire, and Premiere magazine. She is also the film editor of the online weekly Flavorpill. Check out her musings on film and TV at The Broad View

MICHAEL WIESE
Filmmaker/publisher Michael Wiese was born in Champaign, went to Uni High, and was a cub photographer for the News Gazette.

In San Francisco, he produced Hardware Wars, a popular short film parody of Star Wars, and Dolphin, a PBS Special on interspecies communication.  Later, at Vestron Video, Wiese oversaw the production and/or acquisition of over 300 videos, including programs from The Beach Boys, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, and Arnold Palmer.  He also launched The National Geographic Video series.

Today, he oversees Michael Wiese Productions (www.mwp.com), with offices in Los Angeles and Seattle, from a 200 year-old-stone cottage in Cornwall, England. The company publishes over 80 filmmaking books that are used by film professionals and students in over 600 film schools worldwide.