LYDIA DEAN PILCHER PRODUCER

Lydia Dean Pilcher is founder of Cine Mosaic, a production company committed to producing independent feature films, with an energetic focus on developing entertaining stories that promote social and cultural diversity.  Pilcher produced Amelia, releasing fall 2009 starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere; and is currently producing You Don’t Know Jack, for HBO Films starring Al Pacino and directed by Barry Levinson set to air in the spring of 2010.  Pilcher produced the 2007 Fox Searchlight releases of The Darjeeling Limited, with director Wes Anderson and The Namesake, based on the novel by Pulitzer prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, and directed by Mira Nair.  Pilcher was nominated in 2004/05 for a Golden Globe Award for the HBO feature film, Iron Jawed Angels directed by Katja von Garnier and starring Hilary Swank and Anjelica Huston.  She was nominated in 2003/04 for an Emmy, Golden Globe and Producer’s Guild Award for Normal with writer/director Jane Anderson and starring Jessica Lange and Tom Wilkinson.  Other producing credits include: Vanity Fair, Jesus’ Son, Hysterical Blindness, Cradle Will Rock, Kama Sutra - A Tale of Love, and Mississippi Masala.  Pilcher is Vice Chair of the Producers Guild of America East and serves on the Board of Directors of The New York Production Alliance.  She was named one of the 21 Leaders for the 21st Century by Women’s eNews for 2005.

ELIZABETH CUTHRELL PRODUCER

DAVID URRUTIA EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Evenstar Films is an independent film and theater production company, co-founded by Elizabeth Cuthrell and David Urrutia.  Cuthrell and Urrutia wrote and produced the feature film Jesus’ Son, starring Billy Crudup and Samantha Morton.  Jesus' Son premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, competed in the Venice Film Festival (winner, Little Golden Lion, Ecumenical Award), and went on to the Toronto Film Festival, the London Film Festival, New Directors New Films, the Paris Film Festival (winner, Best Actor, Billy Crudup), and many others.  Off-Broadway, Cuthrell and Urrutia produced the New York premiere of Denis Johnson’s play Shoppers Carried by Escalators into the Flames, starring Will Patton and Michael Shannon, as well as Roger Rees’ one-man show What You Will, which premiered at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.  Evenstar also concieved, wrote, and produced (along with Mary-Louise Parker) a series of public service announcements called Stop the Hate for the Ad Council.  The PSA urged tolerance for Arab-Americans and people of color after the attacks of 9/11.  Stop the Hate aired nationally in every major market, and was awarded the 2002 Courage Award, given by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission.  Evenstar currently has several theatre and film projects in development, including an adaptation of the novel Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, and an original screenplay, Devotion.

JESSICA LEVIN PRODUCER

Jessica Levin is associate producing the upcoming HBO drama series Tremé from The Wire creator David Simon, starring Wendell Pierce, Steve Zahn and Melissa Leo, to air in April 2010.  Levin previously post supervised Charlie Kaufman’s Independent Spirit and Gotham Award-winning Synecdoche, New York (Sony Pictures Classics, 2008), starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dianne Wiest, Samantha Morton, and Catherine Keener, as well as Carriers starring Chris Pine (Paramount Vantage, 2009), A Dog Year starring Jeff Bridges (HBO, 2009) and Emmy-winning Into the Storm starring Brendan Gleeson (HBO, 2009).  She produced the Cannes Directors Fortnight Youth Prize and Independent Spirit Award-winning feature Day Night Day Night (IFC Films, 2007).  She co-produced the Sundance Audience Award and Waldo Salt Screenwriting Prize-winning feature Grace is Gone starring John Cusack, and associate produced Justin Theroux’s feature Dedication starring Billy Crudup, Tom Wilkinson, and Mandy Moore, (The Weinstein Company, 2007) and the Sundance Waldo Salt Screenwriting Prize-winning feature Sleep Dealer directed by Alex Rivera (Maya Releasing, April 2009).  Other films she produced include Aaron Woodley’s feature Rhinoceros Eyes, which won the Discovery Prize at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival, and the internationally acclaimed short film Gina, An Actress, Age 29 by Paul Harrill, winner of the Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking at Sundance 2001.

 

MARILYN FU SCREENWRITER 

Marilyn Fu received the William Goldman Screenwriting Fellowship from Columbia University in 2000 for her first script, Riders on the Storm. In 2007, she was honored with the Tribeca Film Festival’s Creative Promise Award for The Sisterhood of Night, her second script.  Her experiences in New York City in September 2001 inspired Little Altars, which she will also direct. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. She is second-generation Taiwanese and still lives in New York City.

CARYN WAECHTER DIRECTOR 

Having earned honors at Columbia University’s Graduate Film Program, Caryn Waechter draws inspiration from photography, dance and music, as experienced in her first super 8 short film BEAT (2001).  Her 16mm short God is Good (2004), written by Dennis Lee, was awarded the New Line Cinema Award for Best Director (Columbia University Film Festival), Kodak Film Grant, Special Jury Prize (USA Film Festival), and was a Narrative Short Finalist (IFP Market).  A Californian planted in Manhattan, Caryn is a freelance photographer and editor.   

STEVEN MILLHAUSER WRITER ("The Sisterhood of Night") 

Steven Millhauser was born in New York City in 1943 and grew up in Connecticut. He was educated at Columbia College and Brown University. His first novel, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Times of an American Dreamer, was published in 1972 and received the Prix Medicis Etranger in France. Since then, he has published ten works of fiction, including several collections of stories and the novel Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997. His story "Eisenheim the Illusionist" (2006), from The Barnum Museum, was the basis of the film The Illusionist (2006), starring Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti. Millhauser's work has been translated into fourteen languages.