Michèle Ohayon is an award winning director, writer and producer. Born in Casablanca and raised in Israel, Michèle graduated from Tel Aviv University (Film & Television). In 1984, she received the Israeli Best Film Award for Pressure, one of the first dramatic films on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1987, she moved to Los Angeles, where she directed a succession of critically acclaimed dramatic and documentary features. The award-winning feature length documentary It Was a Wonderful Life explores the plight of upper middle-class women who live out of their cars and become the "hidden homeless". Narrated by Jodie Foster with music by Melissa Etheridge, the film aired nationally on PBS and OXYGEN. It Was a Wonderful Life won the Gold Award at the Houston Film Festival and an IDA nomination.

Michèle completed Colors Straight Up, a second feature length documentary, in 1997. This film received nominations for the 1997 Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature, the DGA’s Outstanding Directorial Achievement and the IFP Spirit Award. The documentary received the Golden Spire Award for the Arts at the San Francisco International Film Festival, as well as 11 national awards. Colors Straight Up aired on PBS and all over the world.

In 2005 Michèle completed the documentary-comedy Cowboy del Amor, which garnered a WGA and IDA nomination. It won both Jury and Audience Awards at SXSW festival, as well as Best documentary at Santa FE, Durango and Cinefest. It keeps airing on ShowTime Network.

Michèle has also produced and directed commercials, episodic television and music videos. For her body of work, Michèle received the 1996 and the 1998 Artist’s Grant from the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department and was recognized for her fiction writing in the Chesterfield Writing Competition 2000.

Michèle is a founding board member of Cinewomen. Her goal as filmmaker is to tell good, truthful stories about real people and to make films that open hearts and minds.

Theo Van de Sande graduated from the Dutch Film Academy and has been working as a Director of Photography in the Netherlands until The Assault won the first Dutch Academy Award® for Best Foreign film in 1987. He then moved to the USA where he is currently working. All together Theo shot 50 feature films, 9 feature documen¬taries and over 40 shorts, TV series, music shows and commercials.

In Holland Theo received the Golden Calf for Best Cinematography twice, in 1972 and in 1978. It is the highest award bestowed upon a DP in The Netherlands.

Theo Van de Sande’s work includes The Assault, which received the Academy Award® (1987) and Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film, Colors Straight Up, a feature length documentary, nominated in 1997 for the Academy Award®, DGA and Spirit Award, The Pointsman, which won the prize for Best Cinematography at the Madrid Film Festival.

Theo Van de Sande has collaborated with many distinguished directors, including Robert Wise, Gary Marshall, Lasse Hallstrom, Mick Jackson, Gary Fleder and Carl Franklin. His credits include Crossing Delancey, Miracle Mile, Wayne’s World, Blade, High Crimes, Out of Time, Cruel Intentions and many more.

Kate Amend was honored by the IDA in 2006 for her career as a documentary editor. She is the editor of the 2001 Academy Award-winning documentary feature, Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport and the 2001 Oscar-nominated documentary short On Tiptoe: Gentle Steps to Freedom. Amend also received the 2001 American Cinema Editors’ Eddie award for Into the Arms of Strangers and edited the 1998 Oscar Winner The Long Way Home. One of her latest film, Beah: a Black Woman Speaks, about the late actress Beah Richards, directed by Lisa-Gay Hamilton and produced by Jonathan Demme, received the Grand Jury award at the AFI Film Festival, 2003, and aired on HBO in February 2004. Other credits include Peace by Peace: Women on the Frontline (pbs,2004); Pandemic: Facing Aids (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and HBO, 2003); Bataan Rescue (PBS’ American Experience, 2003); The Girl Next Door (Slamdance ’99); Free a Man to Fight (History Channel , March 1999); Tobacco Blues (P.O.V,1998); and Some Nudity Required (Sundance Film Festival 1998.) Other credits include Asylum, Skinheads USA, and The Making of The Age of Innocence for HBO, and the feature documentaries Legends about the longest running show in Vegas; Metamorphosis: Man into Woman, a Sundance award-winner; and Spread the Word, a film about the acappella group The Persuasions which premiered at the Smithsonian Institute and on PBS. Her work has appeared in film festivals throughout the world as well as on PBS, NBC, HBO, Lifetime, History, and Sundance Channels. In addition to her film work, Amend worked as an administrator and historian for Judy Chicago's monumental art exhibit The Dinner Party. She has produced several videos about Chicago’s art including From Darkness into Light and Atmospheres. Amend is on the faculty of the Cinema Department at the University of Southern California and holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University. She collaborated with Michèle Ohayon on the award winning Cowboy Del Amor.

Hailing from the rural town of Bakersfield in California’s San Joaquin Valley, Gonzalez studied classical guitar from Theodore Norman and composition for motion picture and television from famed film composer David Raksin (Laura, Forever Amber) at UCLA. After touring with several groups including The New Christy Minstrels, Gonzalez became music director of Luis Valdez’s (La Bamba, Zoot Suit) much heralded theater company El Teatro Campesino. There he composed the music score for La Pastorela, a PBS Great Performance Christmas special and worked with such artists as Linda Rondstadt, Freddy Fender and Los Lobos.

Since then he has composed a multitude of music scores for film, television shows and documentaries including the academy award nominated feature documentary Colors Straight Up, the New Line Cinema feature film Price of Glory, and Miramax’s Curdled. He even composed the underscore for Britney Spear’s music video “Oops, I Did It Again.” Gonzalez most recently completed scoring three seasons of Showtime’s award winning Resurrection Blvd.

In 1995 Gonzalez embarked on a path that stretched the bounds of creativity in music and art. The Grammy award winning group, Kronos Quartet, performed a composition by Gonzalez, entitled Tormenta Cantata, for string quartet, soprano and amplified paint brush. Collaborating with visual artist, Gronk, this multi-movement piece incorporated an onstage wall that had the artist “interpreting” brushstrokes written into the score. At times the brush strokes acted as a conductor’s baton, other times Gronk painted in tempo to the music performed by Kronos and the soprano.

The success of this piece led to more collaborations with Kronos and in 1997, a composer in residency with Meet the Composer in the San Diego/Tijuana area. During this residency Gonzalez composed, amongst others, Misa Azteca for orchestra, soloists and pre-Columbian percussion ensemble. This piece has since been performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 2000, and most recently, the American Cathedral and Sorbonne University in Paris in May, 2003.

Gonzalez is presently working with famed documentarian Hector Galan in a three part miniseries for PBS, Visiones, about Latino Art and Culture and reunited with Michèle Ohayon on Cowboy del Amor and Steal A Pencil For Me.

Jeroen Krabbé is a prominent Dutch actor and film director. Born in Amsterdam 1944, into an artistic family, he first came to prominence in fellow Dutch countryman Paul Verhoeven's films Soldier of Orange (opposite Rutger Hauer) and The Fourth Man with Renée Soutendijk.

His first big American film was the Whoopi Goldberg comedy Jumpin' Jack Flash. However, it is as the 'bad guy' in a string of international films from the late 1980s which brought him international stardom, with notable films being No Mercy, (1986), the James Bond film The Living Daylights, and Crossing Delancey (1987), The Punisher, (1989), and The Fugitive, (1993). He has also appeared in numerous TV productions including the last episode of Dynasty and as 'Satan' in the TV production Jesus.

He has also been both director, and producer recently with a poignant film about Jews during the 1970s in Antwerp (Flanders) co-starring Isabella Rossellini, and Maximilian Schell called Left Luggage made in 1998 and the Harry Mulisch novel adapted into film The Discovery of Heaven.

Apart from acting and directing he is an accomplished artist. In November 2004 he released the book “Schilder”, which is an overview of his paintings.

Ellen ten Damme (Warnsveld, 7 October 1967) is a Dutch actress and singer. Born in Warnsveld, she was raised in Drentse village Roden. She made her film debut in 1991 in Paul Ruven’s Waters of Maria Machita . She would also star in the drama Pleading. Further movies roles included All Rigid and No Trains, No Planes. She released her first album, "Save Me", in 2001, although she contributed to movie soundtracks before this (such as Casper: A Spirited Beginning and Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie)

Jos van der Linden is a prominent Dutch film producer who has worked on such films as 1986’s Best Foreign Film Academy Award winner De Aanslag, 1981’s The Girl with the Red Hair and 1993’s Naarden Vesting. Most recently he has worked on The Girl with the Pearl Earring and 2006’s Black Book (Zwartboek).

Alex Swart is an award-winning creative director and principal of the marketing design agency SwartAd. As a graphic designer, he created the official posters of the 73rd and 75th Academy Awards. In addition to the main title design, he also developed the key art for Steal A Pencil For Me. He first worked with Michèle Ohayon designing the advertising campaign for her Oscar®-nominated film Colors Straight Up.

Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Michael Bard has spent the last 20 years in the Northwest as a composer, professional musician and audio post-production engineer. Educated at the University of Illinois (Urbana) and Lawrence University (Appleton, WI) he now owns Studio Bard, LLC, which is a full service music and audio post-production company in Portland, Oregon. Under the StudioBard umbrella, are two other companies: AudioLandscapes, which specializes in writing and producing self-guided audio tours for museums and outdoor attractions; and Spotcasters, a company which provides voice talent casting services and web-accessible audio archive services. He has spent the past fifteen years at scoring music for TV and radio, producing self-guided audio tours for museums and attractions, and acting as Sound Supervisor for many feature length film and television projects. Recently he has completed work on Hammertime, a feature length movie for MTV Network (sound design, sound supervision), "HDTV"30 documentary and very first HDTV broadcast for PBS, Colors Straight Up 1997 Academy Award Nominee for Best documentary (sound design, sound supervision, mix),"Nerds 2.0-History of the Internet"(3) hour documentary for PBS CBS (score, sound design and mix) and The Ticket feature length movie for USA (sound design, sound supervision). StudioBard (previously Newton Bard), was the first all digital recording facility in the Northwest, and is currently part owner of WaveFrame Software Group , which designs and manufactures audio products specifically targeted to the film and television industry. Michael works closely with software and hardware designers to guide the development of digital audio production tools into the future.

Before finding himself on the other side of the console, Michael Bard released four jazz albums. The first, on the RCA label, with the band he co-led called "Matrix". The next three records were with the "Simon and Bard Group" and included guest appearances by guitarists Larry Coryell and Ralph Towner. Bard's professional music career includes multiple tours of the U.S. and Canada with an appearance at the Monterey Jazz Festival. From 1977 to 1978, he toured North America as Stan Kenton's lead saxophonist.

An Adjunct Professor at George Fox University and the Art Institute of Portland, teaching film and audio classes, Matt Meyer has been a Sound Designer, Editor & Mixer at StudioBard, Portland, Oregon for more than 10 years. He is an accomplished Foley artist and has mixed sound for features, made-for-TV movies and documentaries, and created scads of award-winning radio & TV spots and audio tours for museums, exhibits and installations. Recent movie projects include recording ADR for Men in Black II, mixing the Oscar-nominated documentary Colors Straight Up, PBS series Nerds 2.01: Wiring the Internet and Electric Money, and Too Legit: The MC Hammer Story and Warning: Parental Discretion for VH-1. Before moving to Portland, Or, he was a Re-recording Mixer at Soundtrax Studios, Burbank, CA mixing feature films, MOWs and TV shows including Homefront, American Detective, and Night of the Hunter. He also created foreign versions for over 200 feature films and TV programs including classic Disney features like Song of the South and Old Yelle. Matt started in the film business as Studio Manager and Teaching Assistant at the USC School of Cinema Sound Department, Los Angeles, CA. There he taught sound classes, mixed student films, engineered recording sessions, recorded radio dramas complete with live sound effects, and oversaw the operation of the Steven Spielberg Scoring Stage and other sound studios. While there, he received his Masters of Arts degree in Film Production.