Patrick deWitt was born in British Columbia, Canada, in 1975. His debut novel, Ablutions, was published in 2009 and became a New York Times Editors' Choice. His second novel, The Sisters Brothers, will be published in 2011. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Phil Johnston worked as a broadcast journalist for eight years, earning three Emmy Awards for his work for his work, before becoming a filmmaker. He holds a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.F.A. in film from Columbia University. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and their transsexual cat, Wayne.
J. C. Chandor has honed his distinctive narrative voice over the past 15 years by directing, producing, and writing award-winning commercials, documentaries, and narrative films. He directed and produced a six-part concert film series featuring Sting, Elton John, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Beck and also worked on the three-part documentary series In Pills We Trust (2002) for Discovery Europe. His writing credits include Every Fifth House, a project for Telefilm Canada. He also wrote and directed the short Despacito (2004). Margin Call is his narrative-feature directorial debut.
Mike Cahill
Mike Cahill was born July 5, 1979 in New Haven, Connecticut. Since a young age, he would experiment with filmmaking on Fisher Price and VHS camcorders. While studying Economics at Georgetown, he bought a Hi8 camera from a pawnshop and taught himself to edit on Adobe Premiere. Instead of pursuing a career in Economics, Cahill began working for National Geographic, first as an intern, but within a few months, he became the youngest field producer, editor, and cinematographer on the staff. After several years filming sharks, turtles, and other sea life for the "Crittercam" series, Cahill moved to Cuba for a year to make the award-winning documentary, Boxers and Ballerinas. He later migrated to Los Angeles where he worked on various documentaries including the Sundance 2006 films, Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man and Everyone Stare: The Police Inside Out. He also produced and directed several episodes of MTV's Emmy Award winning series True Life. Additionally, Cahill creates video art under the name Day Old Teeth, and he directed the Hand of God installation that showed in March 2009 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Cahill is currently developing several feature projects; among them is one on reincarnation and another about a fashion designer who lives at the bottom of the sea. Currently, Mike resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Brit Marling
Brit Marling is a rising actress, writer and producer, whose emerging talent made an indelible mark at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival as the first female multi-hyphenate to have two films premiere side by side. Marling will next be seen in SOUND OF MY VOICE, which premiered at Sundance in the Next category and at SXSW in the Festival Favorites category. Director Zal Batmanglij makes his feature debut and once again, Marling starred, co-wrote and co-produced. Sound of My Voice follows a young couple who infiltrate a cult lead by Maggie (played by Marling). The film is set to be released by Fox Searchlight later this year. Marling recently began production on Nicholas Jarecki's financial thriller Arbitage, starring opposite Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, and Laetitia Casta. The film follows a desperate hedge fund magnate (Gere), trying to complete the sale of his financial empire before it's revealed that he is guilty of fraud. A grave error forces him to turn to an unlikely ally for help.
Marling's foray into filmmaking started during her college years at Georgetown University, as she began writing and starring in projects that her friends were working on. This introduction led Marling to take a leave of absence from school, moving to Havana, Cuba to codirect the documentary BOXERS AND BALLERINAS, which followed young artists and athletes living in the communist country. Marling graduated valedictorian from Georgetown, having studied Economics and Studio Art. Her work experience included a stint as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs.
Will Reiser is currently writing a feature adaptation of the German movie Men which is for Warner Bros and has Todd Philips attached to direct. Additionally, it was recently announced he will be reteaming with longtime collaborators and filmmakers Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Jonathan Levine to write the feature comedy entitled Jamaica. Reiser grew up in Tarrytown, New York, and attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. After graduation, Reiser landed an associate producer job on HBO's "Da Ali G Show," where he first worked with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. He later ran Ben Karlin's production company, Superego Industries, where Reiser wrote, produced, and developed film, television and online projects for HBO.
Garfunkel and Oates probably aren’t what you expected when you first heard the band name. Instead of ’70s singer/songwriters, the duo are Los Angeles-based comedy-folk singers Riki Lindhome (Garfunkel) and Kate Micucci (Oates) who perform “Flight of the Conchords”-esque material to a growing fanbase. For their appearance on the Spirit Award stage, the pair went…
Everyone from Brett Ratner to Mel Gibson to Michael Fassbender’s penis was up to be mocked.
There were winners and there were losers, and then there were the musical performances. Both My Morning Jacket and Somali artist K’Naan took the stage during the show to spin tunes, entertaining the legion of stars in attendance as well as IFC viewers. Below, check out Kentucky rockers My Morning Jacket playing one of their…
“That that vision just was so realized and that it affects audiences the way it does is the big surprise to me and everybody else,” he said.
