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Tina Mabry
Biography
Tina Mabry (born February 9, 1978) is an American film director and screenwriter from Tupelo, Mississippi. Following the release of her first feature film Mississippi Damned (2009), she was named one of '25 New Faces of Indie Film' by Filmmaker magazine and among the 'Top Forty Under 40' by The Advocate. Mabry began her film career with her short film Brooklyn's Bridge to Jordan (2005). In 2007, she penned the film Itty Bitty Titty Committee. The film was directed by Jamie Babbit and premiered at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival. In 2015, Mabry was hired as a producer, writer, and director on the OWN series Queen Sugar, created by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey.
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Graeme Clifford
Biography
Graeme Clifford is an acclaimed Australian film director, his directing credits include the Academy Award nominated film Frances, Gleaming the Cube and the mini-series The Last Don, which received two Emmy nominations.
Clifford was a leading film editor for over ten years, before he made an impressive feature directorial debut with Frances, the dramatic real-life story of actress Frances Farmer, which gained Academy Award nominations for Jessica Lange and Kim Stanley. His second feature outing was the Australian historical adventure-drama Burke & Wills which was chosen as a participant in the 1986 Cannes Film Festival.He followed up with the contemporary action-suspense drama Gleaming the Cube, starring Christian Slater, and Deception (a.k.a. Ruby Cairo), starring Andie MacDowell, Liam Neeson and Viggo Mortensen.
Born in Sydney, Australia, Clifford obtained his wide-ranging experience in editing, special effects, sound recording/mixing, animation and assistant directing at Artransa Park, Sydney’s only film studio for many years. He received additional tutelage working under directors like Robert Altman and Nicholas Roeg. His collaborations with Altman include M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Images and The Long Goodbye. For Roeg, Clifford edited Don't Look Now, for which he was nominated for a British Academy Award, as well as The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Clifford’s other feature editing credits include Norman Jewison’s F.I.S.T., Sam Peckinpah’s Convoy, Bob Rafelson’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and the cult-classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Clifford’s television directorial credits are many and varied. They include episodes of Joan of Arcadia, The Guardian, Twin Peaks and Faerie Tale Theatre, and the movies Profoundly Normal (Kirstie Alley, Delroy Lindo), See You In My Dreams (Aidan Quinn, Marcia Gay Harden), Redeemer (Matthew Modine), Past Tense (Scott Glenn, Lara Flynn Boyle, Anthony LaPaglia) and Mario Puzo’s The Last Don Parts I and II, an Emmy-nominated 10 hour mini-series (Danny Aiello, Joe Mantegna, Jason Gedrick, Daryl Hannah).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Graeme Clifford, licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Denise Benoit
Biography
Denise Benoît (10 September 1919 – 29 May 1973) was a French actress and singer, active across a wide range of genres on the stage, radio and television. Other members of her family were musicians.
From a family of musicians, she was a daughter, grand-daughter and great-grand-daughter of musicians. Her mother (Léontine Benoît-Granier, died 1957) was a musician and composer who won prizes at the Paris Conservatoire, while her father Henri Benoît was a notable viola player in Paris, who was a member of the Capet Quartet in the 1920s, participating in several of their recordings during that period. Her brother, Jean-Christophe Benoît (born 1925) was a popular and much recorded baritone. Born Denise Marie Armande Frédérique Benoît in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, Denise spent the bulk of her career there, and died in the same city while still active.
Denise Benoît began learning the violin at the age of three from her father, later continuing with her mother. As a young woman, she began her professional life playing in Parisian theatre orchestras; while at the Théâtre Marigny a man looked into the pit and asked her whether she would not prefer to be playing on stage rather below it. Through several theatrical contacts she became the student of Jean Meyer, spent a year the Conservatoire and began her acting career in 1942. Her break-through came with an "unforgettable" portrayal of Natalia Stepenovna in A Marriage Proposal by Tchekhov. Her first role, in Sixième étage, was as a cleaning lady, and this debut tended to type-cast her for some time as servants, concierges and domestics. On screen she became restricted to being a secretary, a domestic and a waitress, and so began to refuse this type of role.
In 1945 while a student of André Brunot at the Conservatoire d'art dramatique in Paris she took part in a televised play by Courteline; at the time she was only recognized as an actress, with her singing career yet to begin. In the 1950s, living in the Boulevard Malesherbes, Paris, already well-known on disc, she had facilities for recording at her apartment.
Léontine, Jean-Christophe and Denise appeared together on record in some of the 'Chants de France' folksong series on Ducretet-Thomson. The extensive series of records of folk songs from around France was the brain-child of her mother Léontine, so it was natural that the family were at the centre of these recordings.
In the 1950s she began a long association with radio broadcasting, which at the time she expressed a preference for, including for ten years on the regular programme of Louis Ducreux. While taking a respite for the birth of her first child in the early 1950s, Joseph Kosma guided her in broadening her song repertoire and wrote a few for her. After this, a career in cabaret began, with appearances at L'Écluse on the Left Bank, and she sang at other venues until the birth of a daughter in 1957.
Source: Article "Denise Benoît" from Wikipedia in english, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Ronnie Wood
Biography
Ronald David Wood (born 1 June 1947) is an English rock musician, best known as a member of the Rolling Stones since 1975, and a member of Faces and the Jeff Beck Group.
Wood began his career in 1964, playing lead guitar with several British rhythm and blues bands in short succession, including the Birds and the Creation. He joined the Jeff Beck Group in 1967 as a guitarist and bassist, playing on the albums Truth and Beck-Ola. The group split in 1969, and Wood departed along with lead vocalist Rod Stewart to join former Small Faces members Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones in a new group named Faces with Wood now primarily on lead guitar. The group found great success in the UK and mainland Europe from the early days on, but only reached major fame in the US during their last year of existence, 1975, with a major tour of the US. Wood sang and co-wrote the title track from their final LP, Ooh La La, released in 1973. He also worked extensively on Stewart's first few solo albums.
As Faces began to split, he started several solo projects, eventually recording his first solo LP, I've Got My Own Album to Do, in 1974. The album featured bandmate McLagan as well as former Beatle George Harrison and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, a longtime friend of Wood. Soon after Mick Taylor left the Rolling Stones, Richards invited Wood to join them; he did so in 1975, initially temporarily, but became an official member in 1976.
Besides I've Got My Own Album to Do, Wood has recorded several other solo efforts. Now Look was released in 1975 and peaked at No. 118 on Billboard; he also collaborated with Ronnie Lane for the soundtrack album Mahoney's Last Stand. Wood also released Gimme Some Neck in 1979, which hit No. 45 in the US; 1234 was released in 1981, peaking at No. 164. He released Slide on This in 1992, Not for Beginners in 2002, and I Feel Like Playing in 2010. As a member of the Rolling Stones, Wood was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 and was inducted a second time, as a member of Faces, in 2012.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Ron Wood, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Jean-Pierre Mocky
Biography
Jean-Pierre Mocky (6 July 1929 – 8 August 2019), pseudonym of Jean-Paul Adam Mokiejewski, was a French film director, actor, screenwriter and producer.
Mocky was born in Nice, France to Polish immigrant parents, Jeanne Zylinska and Adam Mokiejewski. His father was Jewish and his mother was Catholic.
Mocky appeared as an actor in the 1955 film Gli Sbandati and in many other movies, including some of those he also directed (Solo, L'albatros, L'Ombre d'une chance, Un Linceul n'a pas de poches). His 1987 film Le Miraculé was entered into the 37th Berlin International Film Festival.
He began as an actor in the cinema and theater. In particular, he played in Jean Dréville's Les Casse-pieds (1948), Jean Cocteau's Orphée (1950) and Bernard Borderie's The Mask of the Gorilla (1957). But it was especially in Italy that he became famous, thanks to his role in I vinti by Michelangelo Antonioni.
After working as an assistant with Luchino Visconti on Senso (1954) and Federico Fellini on La strada (1954), he wrote his first film, La Tête contre les murs (1959) and planned to direct it himself, but the producer preferred to entrust the task to Georges Franju. He went on to direct the following year with Les Dragueurs (1959). Since then, he has never stopped shooting.
As early as the 1960s, he was able to reach a wide audience with crazy comedies such as A Funny Parishioner (1963) and La Grande Lessive (1968). After May 1968, he turned to darker films with Solo (1969), in which he shows a group of young terrorists of the extreme left, then L'Albatros (1971) which shows the corruption of politicians.
In the 1980s, he returned to success with a film denouncing, a year before the drama of Heysel, the excesses of some football fans (À mort l'arbitre, 1984) and a comedy denouncing the hypocrisy around the pilgrimage to Lourdes (Le Miraculé, 1987). In the 1990s and 2000s, his films met with less success, but Mocky continued to shoot with much enthusiasm.
In the beginning, his films were dedicated to the uprising against the restrictions imposed by society. Later, he concentrated on farce, as in Bonsoir where the homeless Alex (Michel Serrault) pretends to be the lover of the lesbian Caroline (Claude Jade) in order to save her inheritance from her homophobic relatives.
Mocky's cinema, often satirical and pamphleteer, is generally inspired by the truth of society. He worked with few resources and filmed very quickly. He worked with Bourvil (A Funny Parishioner, The City of Unspeakable Fear, La Grande Lessive and The Stallion), Fernandel (The Exchange and Life), Michel Simon (The Red Ibis), Michel Serrault (twelve films including Le Miraculé), Francis Blanche (five films including The City of Unspeakable Fear), Jacqueline Maillan (five films), Jean Poiret (eight films) and with the stars Catherine Deneuve (Agent Trouble), Claude Jade (Bonsoir), Jane Birkin (Noir comme le souvenir), Jeanne Moreau (Le Miraculé) and Stéphane Audran (The Seasons of Pleasure).
In 2010, he received the Prix Henri-Langlois for his entire career and the 2013 Alphonse Allais Prize. The International Festival of Film Entrevues in Belfort in 2012 and the Cinémathèque française in 2014 dedicated full retrospectives to him.
He died on 8 August 2019.
Source: Article "Jean-Pierre Mocky" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Peter Graves
Biography
Peter Graves (born Peter Duesler Aurness; March 18, 1926 – March 14, 2010) was an American actor. While growing up in Minnesota, he excelled at sports and music (as a saxophonist), and by age 16, he was a radio announcer at WMIN in Minneapolis. After two years in the United States Air Force, he studied drama at the University of Minnesota and then headed to Hollywood, where he first appeared on television and later made his film debut in Rogue River (1951). Numerous film appearances followed, especially in Westerns. However, Graves is primarily recognized for his television work, particularly as Jim Phelps in Mission: Impossible (1966). Peter Graves died of a heart attack on March 14, 2010, just four days before his 84th birthday.
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Roly Santos
Biography
Roly Santos is an Argentinean filmmaker graduated from CERC-ENERC (National Cinematographic School) and sociologist from UBA (Buenos Aires University). He shot in a lot of countries around the world. Makes his directorial debut with "How Silly we are grown up" a fiction feature (2000-Official Selection San Sebastian, IFF La Havana and IFF Figueira Foz). He was involved as producer and director in episodes films documentaries such as"Crisol" (Argentina 2011, 8 chapters x 28'), "Hi India" (India 2015, 5 chapters x 26'), "New Dubliners" (Ireland 2016, 5 chapters x 26') . He has got a "Mention" in IFF La Havana (Cuba) and "Best Director" and "Best Edition" awards for "Hands Together" (documentary feature) in Figueira Film Art (Portugal 2015). With Italian partners made "Caffè Sospeso" (feature documentary released by Netflix in 2018). Produced and Directed "Dedalo" Fiction film episodes (8 chapters x26'), and 2019 a fiction feature "Water Pigs", in co-production between Argentina and Brazil. Roly Santos, as a sociologist he taught about "labor rights" and "intellectual property rights" for technicians, directors, actors and musicians of the film industry worldwide. Author is also a member of "DAC" Argentine Directors, Argentores (scriptwriters) and 100autori (Italy).-
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Shakib Khan
Biography
Shakib Khan (born Masud Rana) is a Bangladeshi film actor. He made his debut in Ananta Bhalobasha (1999), though it did not lead to widespread fame. After a few years, Khan established himself as one of the most successful actors in Bangladeshi film history. Khan secretly married actress Apu Biswas in 2008. They worked together in 72 movies. In his career, Khan has received various awards, including three National Film Awards for Best Actor, for Bhalobaslei Ghor Bandha Jay Na (2010), Khodar Pore Ma (2012), and Aro Bhalobashbo Tomay (2015) and Eight Meril Prothom Alo Awards
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Vladimir Nabokov
Biography
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1899-1977) was a Russian-born multilingual novelist, poet, translator, critic and entomologist considered the foremost of the post-1917 émigré authors. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian while living in Berlin. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov was a professor of Russian literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959, before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland.
Beginning with King, Queen, Knave (1928), his writing began to feature intricate stylistic devices. His novels are principally concerned with the problem of art itself, presented in various disguises, as in Invitation to a Beheading (1938). Parody is frequent in The Gift (1937–38) and later works. His novels written in English include the notorious best seller Lolita (1955), which brought him wealth and international fame; Pale Fire (1962); and Ada (1969). His episodic novel about an émigré professor of Russian in the United States, Pnin (1957), is to some extent based on his experiences as a literature professor. His critical works include a monumental translation of and commentary on Aleksandr Pushkin’s Evgeny Onegin.
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Harmony Blossom
Biography
Harmony Blossom was named by her parents Joan Marie Witte;a graphic artist and schoolteacher; and Start Gregory Clark; environmental consultant, singer-songwriter and the man who started corporate sponsored residential curbside recycling. Her Grandfather Norbert F. Witte was one of the NASA engineers who designed the first space shuttle. Her other Grandfather Russell Clark was a psychology professor at Yale University by age 28. Harmony has two brothers, Blue Morningstar Clark; and Shawn Peter Clark. Born and raised in the Redwood Forest along the Russian River, Harmony spent her summers picking blackberries and swimming in the wild. Harmony attended Summerfield Waldorf school for her first two years. She then moved into public school at Westside elementary in beautiful Sonoma County, California where learned the ukulele at age 8 and found her love for the Theater during the community production of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as Veruca Salt at age 9. Her first professional play was at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts (now Wells Fargo CFTA) at age 14. Harmony moved to Santa Monica after high school and a couple years later joined and dedicated herself to the American Repertory Company with run by the late great Manu Tupou (1995-1999). Landed her first commercial and entry into the Screen Actor's Guild in 1999. Starred in the Playwright's Arena's production of Alan Bowne's Beirut as 'Blue' in 1998. Her first lead role in a feature film was the same year in the independent flick 'Triples'. Harmony speaks and sings in Spanish, plays acoustic guitar, and has been known to build and sculpt wood furniture. She also has a degree in Ayurvedic Nutrition and has practiced Yoga since a small child.
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