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Eileen Brennan
Biography
Eileen Brennan (September 3, 1932 – July 28, 2013) was an American actress who was known for her versatile performances in film, television, and theater. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Captain Doreen Lewis in the 1980 comedy film Private Benjamin. She also won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Mrs. Hughes in the television series Newhart.
Brennan was born in Los Angeles, California, and began her acting career in the theater. She made her Broadway debut in 1963 in the musical Little Mary Sunshine. She went on to appear in several other Broadway musicals, including Hello, Dolly! and Annie.
Brennan made her film debut in the 1967 satire Divorce American Style. She followed this with supporting roles in the films The Last Picture Show (1971), The Cheap Detective (1978), and The First Wives Club (1996). She also starred in the films Clue (1985) and Sister Act (1992).
In addition to her film and theater work, Brennan also had a successful television career. She appeared in numerous television shows, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Cheers, and Will & Grace.
She died on July 28, 2013, at the age of 80, from complications of multiple myeloma. Multiple myeloma is a type of cancer that affects plasma cells, a type of white blood cell that helps the body fight infection.
Brennan was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2001. She underwent treatment, including chemotherapy and radiation therapy. She continued to work and act throughout her treatment, and she even appeared in the 2011 film The Big Year.
In 2013, Brennan's health began to decline. She died on July 28, 2013, at her home in Los Angeles. She was survived by her husband, David John Lampson, and her daughter, Emily.
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Hiroshi Teshigahara
Biography
Hiroshi Teshigahara (January 28, 1927 – April 14, 2001) was an avant-garde Japanese filmmaker.
He was born in Tokyo, son of Sofu Teshigahara, founder and grand master of the Sogetsu School of ikebana. He graduated in 1950 from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and began working in documentary film. He directed his first feature film, Pitfall (1962), in collaboration with author Kōbō Abe and musician Tōru Takemitsu. The film won the NHK New Director's award, and throughout the 1960s, he continued to collaborate on films with Abe and Takemitsu while simultaneously pursuing his interest in ikebana and sculpture on a professional level.
In 1965, the Teshigahara/Abe film Woman in the Dunes (1964) was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1972, he worked with Japanese researcher and translator John Nathan to make the movie Summer Soldiers, a film set during the Vietnam War about American deserters living on the fringe of Japanese society.
From the mid-1970s onwards, he worked less frequently on feature films as he concentrated more on documentaries, exhibitions and the Sogetsu School and became grand master of the school in 1980.
In 1978, Teshigahara Hiroshi directed the final two episodes of the long running and popular Japanese television series Shin Zatouichi, starring Shintarō Katsu as the blind wandering Yakuza. During Akira Kurosawa's 5 year hiatus from filmmaking, he watched a lot of television and was particularly taken by the final episode of Shin Zatouichi - Episode: Journey of Dreams (1978). The influence of this particular episode included the initial casting of Shintaro Katsu in the lead roles in Kagemusha and the extended artistic dream sequences contributed to those seen in Kagemusha (1980).
On the first anniversary of his death, April 14, 2002, a DVD box set containing his best known work was released in Japan in commemoration.
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Serj Tankian
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Serj Tankian (born August 21, 1967) is an Armenian-American singer–songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, poet, and political activist. He is best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, keyboardist, and occasional live rhythm guitarist of the Grammy Award-winning rock band, System of a Down.
During his musical career, Tankian has released five albums with System of a Down, one with Arto Tunçboyacıyan (Serart), as well as two solo albums Elect the Dead and Imperfect Harmonies and a live orchestral version of the former incorporating the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra named Elect the Dead Symphony. In 2002, Tankian and Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello co-founded a non-profit political activist organization, Axis of Justice. Tankian also founded the music label Serjical Strike Records.
Tankian is ranked 26th in the Hit Parader's Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Serj Tankian, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Shannon Leto
Biography
Shannon Leto (/lɛtoʊ/; born March 9, 1970) is an American musician best known as the drummer of rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars. He co-founded the group in 1998 in Los Angeles, California, with his younger brother Jared. Their debut album, 30 Seconds to Mars (2002), was released to positive reviews but only to limited success. The band achieved worldwide fame with the release of their second album A Beautiful Lie (2005). Their following releases, This Is War (2009) and Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams (2013), received further critical and commercial success. As of September 2014, the band has sold over 15 million albums worldwide.
Leto has worked on several side projects during his career, including a collaboration with Antoine Becks, a recording with the short-lived supergroup The Wondergirls, and performing on occasional dates with Street Drum Corps. His creative contribution to music has received praise from musicians and critics. He is noted for his dynamic drumming style and his energetic live performances.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Shannon Leto, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Bertie
Biography
Katie Ellwood is a British film and television director. She works with Amber Templemore-Finlayson, collectively known as Bert and Bertie, respectively. They are best known for directing the film Troop Zero. They also directed a block of episodes for the Disney+ series Hawkeye and Our Flag Means Death. Ellwood is also known individually as the co-creator of The Getaway franchise, the basis for the crime drama series Gangs of London.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Bert and Bertie, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Georges Moustaki
Biography
Georges Moustaki (born Giuseppe Mustacchi; 3 May 1934 – 23 May 2013) was an Egyptian-French singer-songwriter of Jewish Italo-Greek origin, best known for the poetic rhythm and simplicity of the romantic songs he composed and often sang. Moustaki gave France some of its best-loved music by writing about 300 songs for some of the most popular singers in that country, such as Édith Piaf, Dalida, Françoise Hardy, Yves Montand, Barbara, Brigitte Fontaine, Herbert Pagani, France Gall, Cindy Daniel, Juliette Gréco, Pia Colombo, and Tino Rossi, as well as for himself.
Georges Moustaki was born Giuseppe Mustacchi in Alexandria, Egypt, on 3 May 1934. His parents, Sarah and Nessim Mustacchi, were Francophile, Greek Jews from the ancient Romaniote Jewish community. Originally from the Greek island of Corfu, they moved to Egypt, where young Giuseppe was born and first learned French. They owned the Cité du Livre − one of the finest book shops in the Middle East – in the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria, where many ethnic communities lived together.
Moustaki's father spoke five languages whereas his mother spoke six. The young Giuseppe and his two older sisters spoke Italian at home and Arabic in the streets. The parents placed Giuseppe and his sisters in a French school where they learned to speak French.
At the age of 17, after a summer holiday in Paris, Moustaki obtained his father's permission to move there, working as a door-to-door salesman of poetry books. He began playing the piano and singing in nightclubs in Paris, where he met some of the era's best-known performers. His career took off after the young singer-songwriter Georges Brassens took Moustaki under his wing. Brassens introduced him to artists and intellectuals who spent much of their time around Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Out of gratitude, Moustaki adopted the first name of the only musician he called "master".
Moustaki said that his taste for music came from hearing various French singers – Édith Piaf, Charles Trenet, Henri Salvador, Georges Ulmer, Yves Montand, Georges Guétary and Luis Mariano – sing.
Moustaki was introduced to Édith Piaf in the late 1950s by a friend whose praise of the young songwriter was so flattering that Piaf, then at the peak of her fame, requested somewhat sarcastically to hear him sing his best works. "I picked up a guitar and I was lamentable. But something must have touched her. She asked me to go and see her perform that same evening at the Olympia music hall and to show her later the songs I had just massacred."
He soon began writing songs for Piaf, the most famous of which, Milord, about a lower-class girl who falls in love with an upper-class British traveller, reached number one in Germany in 1960 and number 24 in the British charts the same year. It has since been performed by numerous artists, including Bobby Darin and Cher.
Piaf was captivated by Moustaki's music, as well as his great charm. Piaf liked how his musical compositions were flavored with jazz and styles that went beyond France's borders. Moustaki and Piaf became lovers and embarked on what the newspaper Libération described as a year of "devastating, mad love", with the newspapers following "the 'scandal' of the 'gigolo' and his dame day after day". ...
Source: Article "Georges Moustaki" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
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Peter Pewas
Biography
April 22, 1904, in Berlin, made an apprenticeship as a metal worker after finishing school and worked in his job in Czechoslovakia and in Austria. In 1920, he went to Weimar"s Bauhaus for nine months and studied under Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. From 1933 on, Pewas worked as a freelance commercial artist and created film posters and movie theatre adverts.
In 1932, Pewas started a documentary film project about Alexanderplatz but was arrested by the Gestapo during filming in 1934 and his footage was confiscated. Suspected of high treason, Pewas was sent to jail twice. After his release, he continued to work as a commercial artist in the movie business.
Then, Pewas started to study directing at film academy and worked as an assistant director for Wolfgang Liebeneiner"s films "Bismarck" (1940) und "Ich klage an" ("Accuse, I", 1941). In 1942, he worked for Tobis and made the short films "Eine Stunde" und "Zweiklang". In 1943, Pewas finished his first feature-length film for Terra, the heavily stylized elegiac melodrama "Der verzauberte Tag" – a film that in its aesthetics was diametrically opposed against contemporary fashion. The film was accused of "cultural Bolshevism" and eventually banned for alleged "contempt" against Germany"s lower middle class and for several nude scenes in October 1944. After the end of the war, Peter Pewas served as district mayor of Berlin-Wilmersdorf for several months before he became one of the founders of DEFA in Babelsberg. In 1947, he finished the successful sex education film "Straßenbekanntschaft" ("Street Acquaintances") that today ranks among the most influential "rubble films", for DEFA.
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Toomas Urb
Biography
Toomas Urb (born on December 2, 1958 in Tartu) is an Estonian actor and singer.
In 1984 he graduated from Tallinn State Conservatory Stage Art Department. From 1984 until 1987, he was an actor an Estonian Drama Theatre. Since 1989 he has lived in the United States. Besides theatre roles he has played also in several films. He is a member of Screen Actor's Guild. From 1978 until 1980, he was a member of Estonian sailing team.
He has recorded music with his older brother Tarmo Urb. His nephew is actor and model Johann Urb.
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Dominic Barlow
Biography
Dominic is an award-winning Executive Producer and Series Producer with over 25 years of experience in broadcast drama. Dominic has been Head of Drama and Executive Producer at two leading UK production companies, Darlow Smithson and Twenty Twenty Television where he originated and Executive Produced series such as Garlow’s Law for BBC1 and The Mill for Channel 4. His producing credits include Mr Selfridge for ITV, A Discovery of Witches for Sky 1, George Gently for BBC1, The Last Kingdom for BBC/Netflix and the Mallorca Files for BBC/ZDF/TVFrance/BritBox.
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Sahar Farahani
Biography
Sahar Farahani, born in 1998 in Tehran, is an Iranian filmmaker and Writer. She began her filmmaking journey at the age of sixteen by joining the Iranian Youth Cinema Society. Later, she continued her studies in Cinema at Soore International University and got her bachelor's degree focusing on creating artistic films and documentaries.
For many years, she has traveled the world in search of local folklore and myths, creating films inspired by them. She portrays the world of folklore and mythology in films made either in the style of magical realism or even in simple documentaries.
Her skills in painting strongly influence her filmmaking approach, especially evident in her film "Reflection of Every Star" where visual artistry and cinematic narrative merge.
She has made films in Iran, Turkey, Georgia, Kenya, and Rwanda. Her journeys have taken her to some of the most remote tribes in Africa, where she has made films about their stories.
Her latest film "Our Film Is a Butterfly" was created in an orphanage in Kenya, with the help of the children and inspired by the region’s myths.
During her travels, alongside filmmaking, she teaches children filmmaking and runs creative writing workshops in schools and orphanages around the world.
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