DIGIMART is pleased to welcome the following digital pioneers:
PETER BRODERICK
Peter Broderick is President of Paradigm Consulting, which specializes in cutting-edge distribution techniques and provides strategic consulting services to filmmakers and media companies. Broderick was President of Next Wave Films, which helped launch the careers of filmmakers (such as Christopher Nolan) from the U.S. and abroad. It financed digital features through its production arm - Agenda 2000. Broderick played a key role in the growth of the ultra-low budget feature movement. A leading advocate of digital moviemaking, Broderick gave presentations on digital production at Cannes, Sundance, and Berlin. He has written articles for Scientific American, The New York Times, and The Economist. He is a graduate of Brown, Cambridge University, and Yale Law School. Now focused on the revolution in independent distribution, Broderick has given keynotes on the subject internationally and published a seminal article, “Maximizing Distribution”. To harness the power of film to impact elections, he launched www.filmstoseebeforeyouvote.org
PETER BUCKINGHAM
During Peter Buckingham’s time as deputy chief executive of FilmFour Limited, the company achieved the highest market share in its history; it also released East is East, its highest grossing film and the first to achieve crossover success with specialized and mainstream cinema audiences. Prior to his work with FilmFour, Buckingham served as managing director of Oasis Cinemas, building up a specialized chain into five cinemas and 13 screens, which included the complete design and rebuilding of the five-screen Ritzy Cinema in Brixton, South London. Buckingham also worked as director of film distribution for Virgin Vision, where he was responsible for the theatrical and video release of such films as Drugstore Cowboy; sex, lies and videotape; Paris by Night; and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Buckingham was named Video Distributor of the Year in 2000.
NICHOLAS CLAY
In addition to his role as chairman and CEO of Avica, Nicholas J. Clay currently serves as managing director of Avica Europe and Digital Cinema Ltd, Ireland. Under his leadership, Avica has remained at the forefront of digital cinema developments and was the first company to announce a major commercial digital cinema rollout in Europe - the Ireland project. Clay’s 20 plus years in the technology industry include a period with Microsoft Corporation, where, as director of both architecture development and professional media authoring technology, he directed software projects as well as creating, and then directing, the development and introduction of the industry-standard Advanced Authoring Format (AAF). Prior to Microsoft, Clay co-founded Altamira Software Corporation (acquired by Microsoft in 1994) and held key development and management positions with Adobe and Pixar Animation Studios. Educated in England, Clay today commutes between his offices in Los Angeles and London.
MARK CUBAN
In September 2001, Cuban co-founded HDNET, an all high-definition television network to air high-def sports, movies and entertainment. Cuban is revolutionizing the television industry with HDNET and has since expanded the business to include another 24/7 network, HDNET MOVIES. Cuban co-founded BROADCAST.COM, the leading provider of multimedia and streaming on the Internet, in 1995, selling it to Yahoo! in July of 1999. Before BROADCAST.COM, Cuban co-founded MICROSOLUTIONS, a leading National Systems Integrator, in 1983, and later sold it to CompuServe. Mark Cuban purchased the DALLAS MAVERICKS on January 14, 2000, and was not only successful at instilling a sense of pride and passion into Mavericks fans by presenting himself as the ultimate role model by cheering from the same seats he had in years past, but he also became the first owner in team sports to encourage fan interaction through e-mail on his personal computer. Cuban's whatever-it-takes attitude and commitment to winning has everyone's attention. Today, in addition to his ownership of the Mavericks, Cuban is an active investor in leading and cutting-edge technologies and continues to be a sought-after speaker.
IRA DEUTCHMAN
Ira Deutchman, who has been making, marketing and distributing films for some 27 years now, currently serves as president and CEO of Emerging Pictures, a New York-based digital film production and exhibition company. He also works as a partner in Redeemable Features, an independent production company he founded to develop and produce theatrical and television programming. Deutchman’s prolific career encompasses 130 films, including some of the most successful independent films ever made. He was one of the founders of Cinecom and later created Fine Line Features - two companies that, in their times, have helped define the independent film business. A graduate of Northwestern University (major in film), Deutchman today is an associate professor in the Graduate Film Division, Columbia University. He serves as chairman of the Independent Feature Project/New York and sits on advisory boards at the Sundance Film Festival and the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival.
CORY DOCTOROW
Today Cory Doctorow works as European affairs coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit group that works to uphold the values of civil liberty in technology law, policy, and standards. He represents the EFF's interests at various standards bodies and consortia, as well as at the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization. A prolific writer, Doctorow appears on the mastheads of Wired, Make, and Popular Science magazines. His science fiction novels have won him the Campbell, Sunburst, and Locus Awards, and his novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a finalist for this year's Nebula Award. Doctorow’s most recent novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, was released simultaneously in hardcover by Tor Books and as a free Creative Commons licensed download online at http://craphound.com/someone Doctorow is also co-editor of the weblog Boing Boing and co-founder of the open source P2P company, OpenCola.
LUCINDA ENGLEHART
Film producer Lucinda Englehart works extensively today in South Africa as an executive producer with Spier Films, a company poised to make a slate of South African films that will use various distribution mechanisms. Englehart’s last project was the feature U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, awarded the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival. Working with a local team, she researched and executed the project, in the end reversing the conventional distribution order by opening the film in new township venues across South Africa before the formal cinema circuit began. A political science graduate of Cambridge University, Lucinda gained experience with the BBC current affairs department, the UN Broadcast Unit, and as a producer at BskyB, before moving to South Africa to complete postgraduate studies. Today she lectures in documentary film at the University of Cape Town and works with cinema outreach projects across southern Africa.
JOHN EVERSHED
As Mondo Media’s CEO and executive producer, John Evershed oversees the company’s strategic and creative direction. Mondo Media, which Evershed co-founded with his partner Deirdre O’Malley in 1988, uses the Internet to introduce animated properties and then monetizes its content through the sale of online advertising, television rights, home video sales, mobile and merchandise rights. Aside from owning and controlling an award-winning library of over 3,000 minutes of animation targeted at teens and young adults, Mondo Media produces and distributes Happy Tree Friends, a global multimedia and licensing franchise that originated as a series of shorts on the Internet.
RICKARD GRAMFORS
Rickard Gramfors, currently serving as project manager at Sweden's Digital Houses, Europe's first digital cinema circuit, has worked for over 20 years in the film industry. Gramfors began his career in 1983 with the Swedish Film Institute, where he worked for the next 16 years, holding such diverse posts as program officer at the Cinematheque, project manager for the Centenary of Cinema, editor of Chaplin film magazine, producer of a CD-ROM of Swedish feature films, CEO of the publishing company FilmhusFörlaget, head of the International Department, and head of the European Union’s Media Desk Sweden. Gramfors went on to new challenges as editor-in-chief of the film magazine Total Film and CEO of the video-on-demand company V2H. Since 2002 Gramfors has served as project manager at Digital Houses, Folkets Hus och Parker.
MARK HOOPER
Mark Hooper graduated in theoretical physics and has specialized in computer imaging and distributed expert system design. He has a track record of 19 years of development of successful new products for high-tech companies. Mr. Hooper’s work has focused on the technology and business development of networks for electronic advertising and digital cinema. He joined Pixel Systems, Montreal, in 1998 as Vice-President of Technology and Development, under the CEO, Mr. Daniel Langlois, for the development of the company’s Autonomous Distribution System (ADS) technology. ADS is a network of computer systems used for advertising campaign management, content distribution across satellite and broadband networks, and for multi-media presentation on large- electronic displays. In 2003, working again under Mr. Daniel Langlois, Mark Hooper initiated the technology and business activities of DigiScreen Corporation. DigiScreen has developed delivery, presentation and management technologies designed to greatly reduce the cost of operations for large-scale independent digital cinema networks. In addition to supporting its client’s networks, DigiScreen has begun the process of deploying a network for independent digital cinemas across Canada.
KEN JORDAN
A New York City–based writer, theorist, and information technology consultant, Ken Jordan has led and consulted on projects for, among others, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Social Science Research Council, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Currently Jordan leads the CivicSpace for Artists Project for Leveraging Investments in Creativity, a not-for-profit initiative launched by the Ford Foundation. He also serves as project director for Open Network, an online infrastructure that distributes multimedia by progressive, independent media makers. A long-time pioneer in commercial, Web-based publishing, Jordan worked as founding editorial director of SonicNet.com; creative director of Icon New Media; and publisher of two award-winning online magazines, Word.com and Charged.com. In 1999 he co-founded the public interest portal MediaChannel.org, and in 2002-2003 was appointed director of the Art and Culture Network. Jordan edits the online journal Planetwork Journal, which explores the intersection of information technology and mankind’s political future.
STEFAN KASPAR
Stefan Kaspar worked in Switzerland as an independent journalist and filmmaker until 1978, when a film project about migration took him to Peru ? his new home. There he created a collective of independent filmmakers, Grupo Chaski (1982), only recently reconfigured as a project that uses digital technology to link inexpensive, micro-movie theatres in Peru and other Latin American countries. With the original Grupo Chaski, Kaspar produced, realized and distributed 14 documentaries and short films, as well as two award-winning features, Gregorio (1985) and Juliana (1989) - both with the participation of Lima’s street children. He has since produced many feature films. An inveterate promoter of the richness of Latin American cinema, Kaspar has founded several audiovisual companies, including Casablanca Latinfilms (1992); the Peruvian Association of film producers; and the Sociedad Peruana de la Industria Audiovisual. He also organizes the Latin American section of Germany’s “Mannheim Meetings.”
CHOW KEUNG
Hong Kong–born Chow Keung came to full-time filmmaking via undergraduate studies in anthropology and sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a stint as a news reporter, and a master’s degree in media studies (New School for Social Research of New York). Returning home, he worked for the Hong Kong Arts Centre and the Hong Kong Film Critics Society. Keung’s busy film career includes the production of films by Jia Zhangke, Yu Lik Wai, and Diao Yinan, among which are four digital films: The World, Unknown Pleasures, All Tomorrow’s Party, and Uniform. In 2003 Keung set up Xstream Pictures with Jia Zhangke and Yu Lik Wai to further develop their film distribution business in China. For the first-run release of The World (distributed to 18 cities throughout China in April 2005), 160 of the 240 screens employed the latest in digital projection.
JASON KLIOT
Jason Kliot is a prominent leader in the New York film industry, having produced over 20 films. He is Co-Partners, with Joana Vicente and Donny Deutsch, of Deutsch/Open City Films, which has a seven-figure fund to develop higher-budget independent features films. He is also Co-President, with Vicente, of HDNet Films, Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner’s newly formed high-definition production company, which produces features and documentaries, to be shot on HD. Kliot has a proven track record for producing visionary films by both auteur directors and talented new comers that are both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. His first HDNet Films production, ENRON: The smartest guys in the room, directed by Alex Gibney, had its world premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, and opened to huge critical acclaim and tremendous box office success. His upcoming HDNet Films productions, Bubble, directed Steven Soderbergh, One Last Thing, directed by Alex Gibney, and The War Within, directed by Joseph Castelo, all premiered at the recent 2005 Toronto International Film Festival. With Deutsch/Open City Films, he is currently in pre-production on Awake, written directed by Joby Harold, co-produced with Greenestreet Films and The Weinstein Company. A number of other films are in active development. Prior to the formation of Deutsch/Open City Films and HDNet Films, Kliot and Vicente ran Blow Up Pictures, producing a number of films that paved the way for a new form of independent filmmaking such as Lovely and Amazing, Chuck & Buck, Series 7 and Love In The Time Of Money. Other films include The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Coffee and Cigarettes, directed by Jim Jarmusch, The Guys, Down To You, Three Seasons, Welcome To The Dollhouse, ABC Manhattan and Strawberry Fields.
BJORN KOLL
In 1989 Björn Koll began work with Manfred Salzgeber at Edition Salzgeber, a Berlin-based theatrical distribution company, becoming CEO and main shareholder of the Salzgeber & Co. Medien GmbH after Salzgeber’s death in 1994. Today, Edition Salzgeber, distributor and operator of its own home entertainment label, stands on the forefront of digital cinema.
In 2004 Koll, together with eight European partners, created CinemaNet Europe. The rigging of 175 European screens with digital equipment has made transnational distribution of specialized products a reality. Today, together with CEO Dr. Thomas Geyer, Koll heads up DCS Digital Cinema Services GmbH, a leading European cinema encoding and wrapping company. He also serves as head of studies at VERTICALstrategies, a training program for the marketing and promotion of European films, and teaches at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in Potsdam and Munich.
GARY LERHAUPT
Gary Lerhaupt is the President of Prodigem Inc., an Internet Content Hosting Service that enables artists and media producers to own and fully control their own revenue generating distribution channel through the wonders of BitTorrent technology. Gary's past experience includes three years working as an Engineer on Dell's Linux Development Team working on open source software development. He is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Computer Science, at Stanford University.
FABIO LIMA
Fabio Lima, founder and currently chief operations officer of Rain Network Digital Cinema in Brazil, is a pioneer in digital distribution networks for independent film. To date Rain Network operates 90 digital screens in seven cities. Over the past 14 months some 50 movies have been released in digital mode over the network. For the past five years, Lima has been actively involved in bringing about convergence for television, websites, and ad agencies.
ROB NILSSON
San Francisco-based director Rob Nilsson was the first American film director to win both the Camera d’Or (at Cannes, for Northern Lights) and the Grand Jury Prize (Sundance Film Festival, for Heat and Sunlight). He recently received the Ted M. Larson Award for "outstanding contributions to the film industry" (Fargo International Film Festival) and the Indie Pioneer Award (Kansas City Filmmaker’s Jubilee). Nilsson is a pioneer in the techniques of video to film transfer, which led to today’s digital revolution. His films are featured regularly in theatres around the world and at major international film festivals. Several retrospectives of his work have been staged recently. Nilsson’s film criticism has appeared on Ifilm and the Adobe Motion Channel. He also writes a regular editorial column in RES, the world’s leading magazine on digital filmmaking. Nilsson is currently working on a book about film.
DRAZEN PANTIC
Drazen Pantic, a native of Belgrade, is the founder of OpenNet, the Internet department of the pioneering Belgrade independent media organization, Radio B92 - the first Internet service provider in Serbia. For his work with new media technologies as a medium to counter political repression in former Yugoslavia, Pantic received the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award in 1999. In addition to establishing numerous public Internet access centers, Pantic has taught, lectured, and published widely about the use of the Internet to support independent media and internationally recognized principles of free expression. Pantic currently serves as co-director of Location One, a digital arts gallery in New York. He is also a founding member of the Open Source Streaming Alliance; the collective blog Unmediated; and the Direct Video Network (DVN), an integrated platform for participatory production/publishing, distribution, and advertising of high-quality videos on the Internet.
MARK PESCE
For over two decades, Mark Pesce has been exploring the frontiers of media, science, and technology. In 1994 he received international recognition for having brought virtual reality to the World Wide Web with VRML. In 1998 Pesce received a two-year appointment as visiting professor and chair of the Interactive Media Program at the University of Southern California’s renowned School of Cinema-Television. Hired to bring cinema and broadcast television into the interactive era, he created a program that encouraged creativity and spawned a generation of entertainment professionals who will shape the media of the 21st century. In 2004 the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) offered Pesce a lecturership in interactive media. Within a year, his interactive media master’s program had admitted its first student, and convergence was being explored via the program’s training in the latest digital media techniques. Publication of Pesce’s sixth book is expected later this year.
LIZ ROSENTHAL
In 2002, after a four-year stint setting up and running the UK office for Next Wave Films (a Santa Monica-based company of the Independent Film Channel US), Liz Rosenthal established the production company Earthly Delights Films. These days, thanks to her knowledge about digital cinema possibilities, new alternative forms of distribution, and low budget filmmaking for independent film, Rosenthal is often called upon to serve as a consultant to major film festivals worldwide. As well, Rosenthal has earned her laurels as a lecturer -at schools, institutes, and film festivals in Edinburgh, London, and Berlin. Rosenthal’s current ventures include three feature projects with award-winning directors, an animation series, and a business model for the production and distribution of digital features by established filmmakers.
KEES RYNINKS
Since 2001, Kees Ryninks has served as head of documentaries at the Netherlands Film Fund, his task to reorganize and “professionalize” the Dutch documentary sector. In 2002 he initiated DocuZone, which involved equipping ten film theatres with state-of-the-art digital equipment for showing documentaries. In 2004 this concept was expanded under CinemaNet Europe, a digital distribution network for European art-house films. Ryninks began his career in the Dutch film industry as a sound recordist. After studies in direction and production at the National Film School (Beaconsfield, England), he returned to the field as a cameraman, where he held various posts before becoming an independent producer and director for the BBC, Channel Four, and ITV. In 1997, after heading up three production companies, Ryninks moved back to Amsterdam, where he founded Ryninks Films. Ryninks has produced 20-plus theatre documentaries since 1993, six of which have won major awards in Europe and America.
NEIL SIELING
Neil Sieling, formerly an executive producer with Alive TV, gained career experience with the Independent Television Service, the Open Society Institute, and the POV series on PBS. Today, he licenses programming for the Link TV channel he helped launch, and also does strategic planning. Over the years Sieling has served as executive producer for the digitally animated documentary "Figures of Speech” by Bob Sabiston and Tommy Pallotta, conducted research for a Rockefeller Foundation project examining awards in the digital arts, and done a feasibility study for the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations on new creative practices in the performing and media arts. He also helped coordinate the Augmented Social Network white paper commissioned by the Link Tank, which segued into work for the Interra Project. Latterly, Sieling has served as co-convener of the San Francisco Digital Independence Conferences (2001, 2004), and authored a major study on DVDs for National Video Resources.
NICO SIMON
From childhood Nico Simon was actively involved in the ciné-club movement in his homeland, Luxembourg. He studied social sciences at the University of Strasbourg (France), trained as a teacher, and taught until 1991. During this time he participated in the creation of Luxembourg’s first “artplex” and, under the aegis of a Ministry of Culture program, organized a network of regional theatres across the country. In 1991 he entered the film profession and was instrumental in founding the organization Utopia, where he currently serves as one of its two CEOs. Today Utopia operates 93 screens in 15 theatres (mainstream and/or art houses) throughout the Benelux countries as well as in France. Simon is also a founding member and co-vice-president of Europa Cinemas.
STEVEN STARR
Steven’s principal focus is media democratization, having just launched Indy.Tv, a free recommendation engine for independent musicians, and Dijjer.org, an open source zero-bandwidth http technology for independent creators. Recently reorganizing KPFK, the largest FM community radio signal in America, Steven co-founded several notable Internet ventures: Intel-backed P2P pioneer Uprizer, user-generated site AntEye.com and the LA Independent Media Center. With 30 years of media experience, Steven’s served as writer, director and/or producer of award-winning films (Johnnie Suede, Joey Breaker), co-creator/producer of series television (The State) for MTV/CBS, and headed the NY Motion Picture Department for the William Morris Agency, guiding the early careers of Larry David, Ang Lee, Tim Robbins and many others. Before that, Steven was a college rep for CBS/A&M Records, a concert promoter for Bob Marley and Little Feat, and a high school volunteer at a NY rock and roll radio station, WLIR-FM.
DAVID S. VADIVELOO
Internationally awarded screen director, writer and producer David Vadiveloo is one of Australia’s most prolific and successful new independent filmmakers. His “beautiful and inspirational”* (*Peter Wintonick) new cross-platform interactive series Us Mob (ABC TV and www.usmob.com.au) is the first Indigenous children’s project of its type in the world. Working previously as a human rights lawyer, notably on Australia’s landmark Alice Springs Mparntwe Native Title Claim, David’s projects have the singular focus of inspiring “agency through screenworks”. David established the country’s only ongoing ‘at-risk’ Indigenous youth video training program and his award winning films (Trespass, Beyond Sorry, Bush Bikes, Iwerre Atherrame-two paths) have stirred debate on many issues with global resonance. David is currently working on the feature adaptation of Us Mob, two new feature scripts and a four-part documentary series. His much-anticipated Alkere ‘Clear Sky’ Foundation for at-risk youth is soon to be realised and he remains active internationally as a human rights consultant and speaker.
PATRICK VON SYCHOWSKI
Patrick von Sychowski is currently director of business development for Unique Digital, the largest international digital screen advertising services company. Prior to that, he worked as a senior analyst for the media research company Screen Digest, writing and consulting on digital cinema issues. Today von Sychowski, a founding member of the European Digital Cinema Forum (EDCF), serves as an advisor to the UK Film Council's Digital Screen Network (DSN) project, expected to be the world's largest digital cinema rollout. A founder and editor of the widely read E-Cinema Alert newsletter, von Sychowski lives and works in London.
BRIAN ZISK
Brian Zisk helped found the Future of Music Coalition (FMC), a Washington-based nonprofit initiative. Today, he serves as its technologies director. The FMC, in bringing together the diverse voices of the music, technology, public policy, and intellectual property law communities, seeks not only to educate the media, policymakers, and public at large about music/technology issues, but also to develop creative solutions to challenges in the area. As well, Zisk owns Kiddie Village, a children’s educational video company whose titles are distributed by Koch Vision in Canada. He is also the founder of The Green Witch Internet Radio, an open source audio pioneer purchased by CMGI Inc. Zisk currently sits on the board of advisors of numerous companies and projects, including the leading video-on-demand company Gotuit Media and the non-profit Xiph Organization. Zisk’s wife Shoshana, an entertainment attorney and co-owner and creative director of Kiddie Village, accompanies him at this conference.
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