Miranda July

 

Miranda July was born in 1974. According to her official Web site[mirandajuly.com/about], “Miranda July (July is not her original familyname) is a filmmaker, performing artist and writer. She grew up inBerkeley, California, where she began her career by writing plays andstaging them at the local punk [rock] club. July’s videos, performances,and web-based projects have been presented at sites such as theMuseum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in the 2002and 2004 Whitney Biennials [all three museums are located in NewYork City]. Her short fiction has been published in the Paris Review,Harper’s, and the New Yorker, and a collection of stories is forthcomingfrom Scribner in May 2007. July created the participatory websitelearningtoloveyoumore with artist Harrell Fletcher and a companionbook will be published by Prestel in fall 2007. She wrote, directedand starred in her first feature-length film, Me and You and EveryoneWe Know (2005), which won a special jury prize at the SundanceFilm Festival and four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, includingthe Caméra d’Or. July recently debuted a new performance, and iscurrently working on her second movie. She lives in Los Angeles.”

 

Isabel Coixet

 

This director, writer, producer, and occasional actress wasborn in Spain in 1960. After studying history in college,Isabel Coixet began a career in advertising. Eventuallyher love of filmmaking merged with the productionside of her advertising experience, and she started a filmproduction company. Coixet has made films in severallanguages with companies in Spain, Canada, France,and the United States. Her first English-language film,Things I Never Told You, was made in 1996 and featuredan American cast. She has been nominated twice forSpain’s Goya Awards, and her films have been included innumerous film festivals, including Sundance.

 

Annie Sundberg

 

Working in the genres of reality TV,documentary, short, drama, and independentfilm, this writer, director, producer, andcinematographer has produced a numberof award-winning films. Her 2006 film TheTrials of Daryl Hunt, based on the true storyabout an African-American man who waswrongfully convicted and imprisoned for years,was nominated for both Independent Spiritand Sundance Grand Jury awards. The DevilCame on Horseback, based on a true account ofatrocities in Darfur, is due out in 2007.According to the Dartmouth (College)Alumni in Entertainment and Media Website [alum.dartmouthentertainment.org/newsanddocs.html], 

 

Annie Sundberg “coproducedIn My Corner, a feature documentaryfilm on the world of amateur boxing and thelives of young men who train in the SouthBronx, which premiered nationally as part ofPBS’s award-winning P.O.V. [point of view]series (1999).“Her television credits include A&E’s[Arts and Entertainment network] “FamilyPlots”—a documentary series about a familyrun funeral parlor. As producer and director,she helped launch the series ‘Now Who’sBoss’ for New York Times Television. Ms.Sundberg’s producing credits also include the1996 Academy Award and Emmy winning ‘One Survivor Remembers,’ a co-production of HBO [Home Box Office]and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the 1995 ten-part ‘History of American Cinema Project’ for PBS[Public Broadcasting Service, a member-supported network]. Since starting her work in film as a reader for Miramax,she has worked extensively as a freelance writer and producer. After completing a National Outdoor Leadership Schoolsemester in Kenya, Ms. Sundberg taught English language skills through the World Food Programme in Nairobi. She isa graduate of Dartmouth College, where she earned a BA in English Literature.”

 

Sarah Polley

 

The Canadian began her acting career as a child, working in both film andtelevision. Sarah Polley has since moved on to roles in mainly independentfilms, often playing characters in the midst of tragedy of some sort. Shehas appeared in two Isabel Coixet films, Things I Never Told You and TheSecret Life of Words. Polley has recently taken up directing, mostly of projectsfor Canadian television. The 29-year-old has been described as sociallyconscious, and she has drawn comment as much for the roles she has turneddown as for those she has chosen to play. Polley, who makes her home inToronto, has been nominated for acting awards in Canada and at festivalsthroughout the United States.In May 2007, Away From Her hit American theaters, earning Polleydirectorial accolades for her sensitive handling of a love story featuring twocouples, each dealing with one partner with Alzheimer’s disease. Polley’spromising career has achieved another milestone.

 

Alfonso Cuarón

 

Born in Mexico in 1961, Alfonso Cuarón studied film in Mexico thengained experience working with English-language films being shotin Mexico. Over the years he has made a number of films that wereadapted from literature, from the children’s classic The Little Princessand Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, to J.K. Rowling’s HarryPotter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. In 2007 two of his films werewidely heralded: Pan’s Labyrinth, which he produced, and Childrenof Men (also based on a novel), which he cowrote and directed. Pan’sLabyrinth was nominated in several categories for Academy andBAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) awards, as wellas others, winning several awards, and Children of Men won severalawards for Cuarón in both writing and directing. Pan’s Labyrinthwas produced through his production company, Esperanto Films.Cuarón is often celebrated with friends and countrymen Guillermodel Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu, who helped bring Mexico’scontributions to contemporary world cinema to global audiences.There’s no confirmation yet from the studios, but there is talk of Cuarón’s returning to the land of Harry Potter todirect the final film of the series. He is reported to have said that working on his first Harry Potter film was a veryhappy two years, and he would be glad to revisit the experience, depending on the content of the as-yet-unpublishedvolume.

 

Noah Baumbach

 

Noah Baumbach was born in 1969. He has written, directed, and/orappeared in numerous films. His first film, Kicking and Screaming, aboutfriends reluctantly graduating from college, premiered at the New YorkFilm Festival in 1996 and claimed many accolades for a first film. After afew films in the late 1990s, Baumbach was more often seen as an authorthan filmmaker until his 2005 film, The Squid and the Whale. Largelyautobiographical, the film starred Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels andearned Baumbach nominations for Independent Spirit and AcademyAwards. His newest film, Margot at the Wedding, is expected to be releasedin 2007 and stars Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, andJohn Turturro. His second collaboration with Wes Anderson, The FantasticMr. Fox, is in preproduction. Their previous collaboration, The LifeAquatic With Steve Zissou, was released in 2004 and starred Bill Murrayand Owen Wilson. Baumbach is the son of an author and a critic andgrew up in New York.

 

Gabriele Muccino

 

Born in 1967, Gabriele Muccino attended film school in Romeand has become a successful filmmaker in his native Italy. His filmThe Last Kiss (L’ultimo bacio) won an award at the Sundance FilmFestival in 2002 that may have helped bring his talent to Americanattention, introducing him to his next phase of filmmaking.He has drawn acclaim for English-language projects, includingthe 2006 film, The Pursuit of Happyness, which earned an Oscarnomination for actor Will Smith. Muccino is currently workingon a television series and is in preproduction on a film entitledMan and Wife, which is reported to be about an immigrant’s lovefor the United States, and a film entitled A Little Game WithoutConsequence that will star Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz.

 

Tyler Perry

 

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1969,Tyler Perry’s childhood included poverty,abuse, and hardship. In 1990 he saw anepisode of The Oprah Winfrey Show duringwhich Winfrey advised people to processtheir difficult backgrounds through writingabout them. Perry’s writing eventually becamehis first plays. Today the award-winningplaywright, author, actor, producer, anddirector is primarily known for his plays andfilms about day-to-day dilemmas of African-American life. In the first screen adaptation ofone of his plays, Perry played three characters,and he continues to appear in subsequentfilms.Perry’s films, which reach back to African-American urban theater traditions, have beencharacterized as morality plays, and they oftenfeature a prominentfemale characterwhose wisdomand consciencehumorously guidethe other characters.Perry drew fromthe influence of hismother and an auntto create this leadingcharacter, nicknamed“Madea,” and he plays her with humor, finely attuned to the culture of her community and that of his largely African-American audience.The persona of Madea is also prominent in his first book, Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea’sUninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life. Published in 2006, it spent several weeks atop the New York Times bestseller list for nonfiction and won prestigious Quill Awards that year in both best humor book and book of the yearcategories.

 

At any given time, Perry may have several plays in production, movies in the theater, and television showsin the works. According to his official Web site, www.tylerperry.com, Perry currently has two television series underproduction, House of Payne and Meet the Browns, scheduled to appear on cable television in 2007 and 2008. His mostrecent film, Daddy’s Little Girls, was released in February 2007.

 

Will Smith

 

As a child in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania, Will Smith earned thenickname “the Prince” for charming hisfriends. According to his official Website [www.willsmith.net], at age 12 hebegan performing rap music, and by16 he had become “The Fresh Prince,”a well-known rapper, often performingwith his friend “Jazzy Jeff.”At the same time, Smith wasgaining attention for his acting; atage 22 he moved to California tostar in a comedy television seriescalled The Fresh Prince of Belair(Belair is an affluent communitynear Los Angeles, California). By thetime the series ended six years later,Smith had begun working in film,and today he has become one of themost successful actors in Hollywood,having demonstrated his dramatic andcomedic range in such films as Ali, thelife story of boxer Mohammed Ali;Men in Black; Hitch; Bad Boys; and his2006 film, The Pursuit of Happyness, forwhich he earned an Oscar nominationand won numerous awards, includingan NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Image Award. The success of The Pursuitof Happyness was particularly sweet because it was a production of Smith’s film and television production company,Overbrook Entertainment, which he began with a business partner and which has already produced a number of hitfilms, and because the movie featured his eight-year-old son, Jaden (pictured with his father).In April 2007 the weekly newsmagazine Newsweek declared the 38-year-old actor, musician, producer, husband, andfather the “most powerful actor on the planet,” in part due to his reported worldwide career box-office earnings of $4.4billion. When interviewed for the Newsweek article, one studio head is reported to have said about Smith’s popularity,“…There’s Will Smith and then there are the mortals.”

 

Lucy Liu

 

Born in New York to parents who had emigrated from Taiwan, LucyLiu did not learn English until age five. After high school, she attendedthe University of Michigan, earning a degree in Asian language andculture. Near the end of her college career, Liu tried out for and wona role in a stage production of The Wizard of Oz, and her acting careerwas launched. Today, the 38-year-old has quite an acting resume,including voices for several animated films, a regular role in thetelevision series Ally McBeal, and roles in a number of films, includingKill Bill I and II and a starring role in Charlie’s Angels and its sequel. Liuhas also started producing films, including documentaries. She starredin one of her productions, 3 Needles, in which she played an HIVpositivewoman in China.A renaissance woman, Liu is an artist whose works have had threegallery shows. She practices martial arts, plays a musical instrument,skis, and climbs rocks. She speaks fluent Chinese, as well as someJapanese, Italian, and Spanish. Liu traveled to Pakistan and Lesotho inher role as an ambassador for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, and she wonan Asian Excellence Award for her visibility as an Asian American in themedia.

 

Sofia Coppola

 

Born to famed filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola in 1971, Sofia Coppolaarrived just in time to make her movie debut as the infant being baptizedin his film The Godfather. By The Godfather: Part III in 1990, she hadmoved up to the role of Mary Corleone. Sofia Coppola pursued an actingcareer, first as a child (often under the name Domino Coppola) and thenas a teen and adult, but by the 1990s she had followed her father into theroles of producer and director. The 2004 film Lost in Translation earnedher a best director Oscar nomination, making her only the third womanand the first American woman to be so honored. Her 2006 film, MarieAntoinette, updated the story with contemporary music, a reflection of oneof Coppola’s passions. It was nominated for numerous awards, includingthe Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the CinemaPrize of the French National Educational System. Marie Antoinette alsowon an Academy Award for best achievement in costume design.

 

Salma Hayek

 

Born in 1966 in Mexico, Salma Hayek has turned talent, beauty, andintelligence into a highly successful career as an actress, producer, anddirector in productions in Mexico, the United States, and other countries.After becoming a television and film star in Mexico, Hayek came to theUnited States to learn that, at that time, there were limited roles for Latinactresses in American films. Through perseverance, talent, and a bit ofpersonal activism, the actress, who is part Lebanese, began to win biggerand more diverse roles. At the same time, and perhaps partly as a resultof a desire to ensure better roles for herself and other actresses, she movedinto the field of producing. Her first feature film, El coronel no tiene quienle escriba (1999), was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and was Mexico’sentry for the Academy Award for best foreign film.Hayek won many accolades for her portrayal of the legendary Mexicanartist Frida Kahlo in Frida, a film she also produced. The film wasnominated for six Academy Awards. Other films include Fools Rush In; Inthe Time of Butterflies; The Wild, Wild West; Desperado; From Dusk Till Dawn; and Once Upon a Time in Mexico.One of Hayek’s biggest impacts has been made on the small screen, with her adaptation and production of anAmerican version of the Colombian television program Yo soy Betty La Fea. The hit show Ugly Betty, in which Hayek hasa recurring role, has won Image, Golden Globe, and Peabody Awards and has been praised for raising the visibility ofminority characters and teaching audiences, especially young girls, that appearance is not the most important or valuablecharacteristic.

 

Minnie Driver

 

Born in London in 1970, Minnie Driver spent part of her childhood inBarbados. She was educated in England and attended the Webber DouglasAcademy of Dramatic Art. Driver started with a music career, switchedprimarily to acting for a while, and now balances the two. Her musiccredits include both singer and songwriter. Her film work includes Circle ofFriends, Return to Me, Grosse Pointe Blank, The Phantom of the Opera, andGood Will Hunting, for which she received an Academy Award nominationfor best supporting actress. She had a recurring role on the television seriesWill and Grace, and in 2007 she began a new series, The Riches, on the FXcable channel. Driver has lent her voice to several animated films, includingThe Simpsons Movie, due out in 2007. She received producer credits forthe 1998 film At Sachem Farm (released in 2001) and the upcoming RippleEffect, in which she costars with a cast that includes Forest Whitaker andVirginia Madsen.

 

Ben Affleck, MattDamon, andProject Greenlight

 

According to the ProjectGreenlight Web site [www.projectgreenlight.liveplanet.com], it’s the HollywoodCinderella story. Twochildhood friends struggleto break into acting. Afteryears of hard work, theywrite their own script(Good Will Hunting),star in it, get recognized,become famous, and winan Academy Award forbest screenplay. It’s thetrue story of Matt Damonand Ben Affleck, and itinspired them to teamup with American Pieproducer Chris Mooreand Miramax Film andTelevision to create a contest and community that would open the industry to aspiring writers who need a big break.The first Project Greenlight screenwriting contest (PGL1) started in the fall of 2000 and received more than 7,000original scripts. The contestants were short-listed to 250, then narrowed down to 30 and finally to ten very excitedfinalists who got to shoot a scene from their screenplay. 

 

The top three participated in an interview process that awardedPete Jones a $1 million budget to shoot his winning script, Stolen Summer.Within months Jones’s completed film, starring Aidan Quinn and Bonnie Hunt, premiered at Sundance, and Joneswas on the promotion circuit telling national audiences about his film. In a series that has been nominated for an Emmythree times, HBO documented the journey from script to screen, and Affleck and Damon’s goal was realized. ChrisMoore said about PGL1, “The show helped people see how hard it is to make a movie, how stressful it is to make yourfirst movie, and finally how rewarding it is when you show it to your first paying audience.” PGL2 in 2003 and PGL3in 2005 expanded into new film genres, giving a professional venue to two more groups of would-be filmmakers.In their own stellar careers, Affleck (at left, in above photo) and Damon have come a long way from the undiscoveredroommates who dreamed up that first screenplay. Damon has played Jason Bourne, a fictional undercover CIA agent,in three films; appeared in Ocean’s 11 and its sequels; been nominated for an Oscar for Good Will Hunting; and recentlyappeared to high acclaim in the hits The Good Shepherd and The Departed. Affleck has also been busy. He has actedin four films released in 2006 and 2007, including Hollywoodland and Smokin’ Aces, and he is writing, producing, anddirecting Gone, Baby, Gone, due out in 2007.

 

Drew Barrymore

 

At age eight, Drew Barrymore became a worldstar for her role as the little sister, Gertie, inStephen Spielberg’s 1982 blockbuster E.T.: TheExtra-Terrestrial, although it was by no meansher first role. Her first television commercial wasaired when she was only 11 months old. Borninto one of Hollywood’s legendary families,Barrymore’s success carries on the tradition ofher Barrymore and Drew relatives, includingLionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore. As ateenager and young adult, Drew Barrymore hada bad-girl persona, inspired by her real problemswith substance abuse and the types of parts shechose to play. Beginning in 1996, she reinventedher career, appearing in a series of romanticcomedies, including The Wedding Singer, NeverBeen Kissed, and 50 First Dates, in which sheoften, in a rather complete turnaround, playedshy, vulnerable roles. Barrymore also madeforays into more dramatic roles, such as that of ateenage mother in a failed marriage in the 2001film, Riding in Cars with Boys. 

 

Along the way,Barrymore formed a very successful productioncompany, producing her Charlie’s Angels films,as well as other projects, including an updatedversion of Cinderella, Ever After. She currently stars with Hugh Grant in the film Music and Lyrics.Drew Barrymore was recently chosen to represent Giles Deacon, a British designer. In a March 2007 interviewwith the British edition of Vogue, Deacon explained his reasons for choosing her: “She’s highly intelligent, a greatbusinesswoman, and a role model, but she’s also someone that’s made mistakes in the past and come through and Ithink people respond to and respect that.”Exploring her interest in documentary films, Barrymore has directed several projects that garnered critical attention.One project involved her working in and filming child-feeding programs throughout Africa over the course of morethan a year. She became increasingly involved in the plight of hungry children and in the work of agencies and groupstrying to address this problem. In recognition of her work in this area, in May 2007 the United Nations World FoodProgram (WFP) named Barrymore their Ambassador Against Hunger and challenged her to use her celebrity toadvocate for school feeding projects. One of her first assignments was to attend meetings on Capitol Hill with U.S.senators to lobby on behalf of feeding programs.

 

Badr Ben Hirsi

 

Badr Ben Hirsi grew up in London,where his family went into exile duringYemen’s revolution in the 1960s. Heearned a master of arts degree in dramaproduction from Goldsmiths College.In 1995 a visit to Yemen led to hismaking of The English Sheikh and theYemeni Gentleman, which has beendescribed as a lyrical documentary. Itfollows a British expatriate with years ofexperience living in Yemen introducingBen Hirsi to his homeland.After September 11, 2001, therewas much demand for documentariesfrom Arab filmmakers. Ben Hirsi’s projects included the 2003 documentary Yemen and the War on Terror, and the 2002film 9/11 Through Saudi Eyes, which featured interviews with the families and friends of the hijackers, Arab mediarepresentatives, political and military analysts, a psychologist, and others—who gave their perceptions of events andissues involving September 11. This video, the first documentary to scrutinize 9/11 from the Saudi perspective, has beenincluded in the social studies section of the Cambridge Educational Core Curriculum Video Collection, which haddescribed it as “a powerful learning tool for students of political science, the Middle East, and Islam.”Ben Hirsi turned to feature films. His A New Day in Old Sana’a won the prize for best Arab film at the 2005 CairoInternational Film Festival. It was shown at the Alwan Film Festival in New York. 

 

Although Ben Hirsi had receivedYemeni government approval and funding at the beginning of the project, the minister of culture would not allow thefilm to be shown commercially in Yemen; however, it was shown as a British entry in a Sana’a film festival.Ben Hirsi hopes his experience making filmsin the Middle East will encourage other Arabfilmmakers, particularly in the more conservativeGulf countries, which have little in the way ofa cinema tradition. He has seen other youngdirectors who were trained in Europe or NorthAmerica returning home to make films despitethe difficulties. “There’s a new wave of Arabfilm,” Ben Hirsi said in an interview on theNetribution Web site. He adds that there is“a new and very exciting style and things arechanging.”