Film & TV, The Creative Process: Acting, Directing, Writing, Cinematography, Producers, Composers, Costume Design, Talk Art & Creativity

Debora Cahn is the Emmy-nominated showrunner and executive producer of Netflix’s The Diplomat, a political thriller series starring Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell. She’s worked with television’s leading showrunners, including Shonda Rhymes, Terence Winter, Steven Levinson, and Howard Gordon. Her career began working on Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing which has led to projects such as the hit Showtime...

"I only do cinema and film and TV projects which really matter to me, where I think that it's important, there's something being said here which I want to support. So mostly I will start with just making some sketches from the script. Of course, it's a journey, and it's a fundamentally collaborative journey. So, once the images start to happen, then there's a whole dialogue process with the rest o...

Composer Max Richter is known for his ability to translate profound human emotions into music. Max’s record Sleep is the most streamed classical album of all time and his catalogue has surpassed 3 billion streams. A prolific collaborator, he scored and performed for Kim Jones for the Dior shows, and the new Wayne McGregor and Margaret Atwood ballet MADDADDAM, and arts collective Random Internation...

This Earth Week, remember to renew your commitment to sustainability and share your love for the planet. 00:25 JERICHO BROWN - Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet, Author of “The Tradition” & “The New Testament” 00:39 JILL HEINERTH - Explorer, Presenter, Author of “Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver” 01:02 ALICE FULTON - Poet - Recipient of MacArthur “Genius”, NEA & Guggenheim...

“I've been fortunate over the last 13 years to meet some of the world's leading conservationists. Dr. Sylvia Earl, David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, his Royal Highness Prince Khaled bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, who came to the film festival in 2014, where we showed some films from his foundation. And there have been a number of others, award-winning filmmakers, and a number of celebrities that have...

Christopher J. Gervais is an award winning producer. His animated film Dream won a 2017 Golden Lion for film and a Silver Lion for music at the 64th Annual International Festival of Creativity. He is environmental and marine scientist and has decades of experience in field work and research with multiple academic institutions and natural history museums. A former science and social studies teacher...

“I call it the percolating trauma inside him, and I think that it's a combination of things with Matthew Rhys who plays Perry Mason. Again, it's holding onto this trauma that happened a dozen years ago in the war, that this is not something that he has really dealt with. And I think that you can't take that lightly. It doesn't go away with time. It doesn't heal. It's still inside you, and it's sti...

Michael Begler is showrunner, writer, and executive producer of Perry Mason, which debuted as HBO’s most-watched series in nearly two years upon its premiere in June 2020. The critically-acclaimed show stars Emmy-winner Matthew Rhys, Juliet Rylance, Katherine Waterston, Hope Davis. In the second season of the Emmy-nominated series, the scion of a powerful oil family is brutally murdered. Power, so...

“In certain ways, I'm using my intellect and or making these connections, but then I'm also trying to do things such as... So the whole concept of subjectivity in a film is you're representing a particular character's point of view, but there's another way to express that. It's through mise-en-scène. So you can express a character, you could have a complete tableau and create the proscenium c...

Chase Irvin is a Canadian American cinematographer making waves in the film industry. Chayse has received immense critical acclaim for his vision and style. He has worked on features, shorts, and visual albums, most notably in his collaboration with Director Kahlil Joseph on the film Beyoncé: Lemonade. He lensed Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, which received 6 Academy Award nominations, winning for be...

“With UnPrisoned and with really my whole body of work as a producer, I'm really drawn to stories that make people feel seen that take issues that have stigma and shame attached to them, and making those issues just more palatable and more human. And few people realize that 50% of American families are touched by incarceration. And when you meet someone like Tracy McMillan, who really is...

Joy Gorman Wettels is the founder of Joy Coalition, an impact producing venture with a focus on creating purpose-driven film and television content for a global audience. She executive-produced the newly-released UnPrisoned, and is currently working on a multi-part storytelling ecosystem inspired by landmark civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize. Her body of work includes, notably, the c...

“So if I'm managing a complicated life support device while I'm shooting stills or video underwater, there's a dual thing going on. The creative side of my brain loses all track of time, just as anyone that would ever sit down to paint or draw or even play on the computer. Time is just gone. But that left side of the brain has to keep track of time and constantly be monitoring my life support stat...

Jill Heinerth is a Canadian cave diver, underwater explorer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker. She is a veteran of over thirty years of filming, photography, and exploration on projects in submerged caves around the world. She has made TV series, consulted on movies, written several books and is a frequent corporate keynote speaker. Jill is the first Explorer in Residence for the Royal Canadian...

“The Harder They Come, that film was made by a very close friend of mine. And it was at a period where Jamaican music had started to really catch fire a bit. It was certainly selling in England. It was starting to grow, and there was interest in England and Europe. Not really in America. America wasn't interested in it at that period in time at all. But it was really decided to try and get th...

Chris Blackwell, an inductee of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, is widely considered responsible for turning the world on to reggae music. As the founder of Island Records, he helped forge the careers of Bob Marley, Cat Stevens, Grace Jones, U2, Roxy Music, among many other high-profile acts, and produced records including Marley’s Catch a Fire and Uprising. Blackwell currently runs Island Outpo...

Florian Hoffmeister is a prolific director of photography. Recent works by Hoffmeister include his lensing on the Apple TV+ series Pachinko, the critically-acclaimed political thriller Official Secrets starring Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, and Matt Smith, and TÁR starring Cate Blanchett. Hoffmeister is well-known for his collaboration with Terence Davies on feature films The Deep Blue Sea, star...

"That's the art of communication. And that's, I think, something that's so hard to do through the screen as well. And that was how I started turning the poems into films initially was - Can I get the essence of this message to land through a screen? And that's actually very hard with spoken word, very hard with this medium, especially in a digital age where everyone is scrolling, scrolli...

Max Stossel is an Award-winning poet, filmmaker, and speaker, named by Forbes as one of the best storytellers of the year. His Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move takes the audience through a variety of different perspectives, inviting us to see the world through different eyes together. Taking on topics like heartbreak, consciousness, social media, politics, the emoti...

"I need a balance of light and dark. It can't be just one thing. I want you to be laughing one minute and by the end I want you to be crying. For me, character study is what is the most important. It all comes down to the characters. It's less about action or things like that, which you can have some of that, but it tonally, has to be female-centric and you have to be crying and laughing. There's...

Debra J. Fisher is a writer, producer, and director. She currently serves as the showrunner, writer, and executive producer of the Netflix series Ginny & Georgia.  Season one of the hit series was watched by over 52 million subscribers in its first month on the platform, gathering a devoted fan base. The highly anticipated second season premiered on January 5th. Ginny & Georgia is Deb...

"For me, there is something about art, it's not a monologue. When I do a video dance for a Japanese audience or a sci-fi comedy for a French audience then I do try to think about if I want to shock the audience at a certain moment. I think that the same things that would shock a French person would not necessarily shock an Israeli or a Japanese person, you know? I think that what's funny is that f...

Author, Screenwriter, and Director Etgar Keret is a recipient of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, the Charles Bronfman Prize, and the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Jellyfish, which he directed with his wife Shira Geffen. Most recently, they created the TV mini series The Middleman (L’Agent Immobilier) starring Mathieu Amalric. His books include the short story collection...

"What I think made me want to pursue film or what started my fascination with film and cinema were definitely Fellini, Antonioni, and Bertolucci; the masters, if you will, that kind of make you dream - make you just go to a movie theater, enter this space, and just have a communal experience. I know looking at the screen and just being completely immersed and experiencing stories or experienc...

Cinematographer Manuel Billeter has worked across a variety of iconic and groundbreaking shows and films including Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Law & Order, Person of Interest, Orange Is The New Black, Lawless, and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también.  Most recently he has been Director of Photography on the HBO Max series The Gilded Age, starring Carrie Coon and Christine Baranski...