Killer Poet is about Norman Porter, a controversial Massachusetts prisoner with 2 life sentences who spent 25 years in prison, escaped and lived in Chicago for 20 years as a poet/intellectual under a fake name, and then was caught in 2005 by the Mass State Police and is back in max-security prison.

It won Best Documentary in the Boston International Film Festival. It also screening in many prestigious film festivals including: Hot Docs, the Woods Hole Film Festival, and the Rhode Island International Film Festival. It will also be featured in the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival.

From Shtetl to Swing is a collective journey from synagogue choirs to Harlem hotspots, from Yiddish theater to musical extravaganza, from klezmer to ragtime, from symphonic jazz to swing from the Bowery to Tin Pan Alley to Broadway to Hollywood.                     
  
From Shtetl to Swing has screened several film festivals around the world including:
Golden Prague Film Festival where it was awarded the Czech Crystal, Jewish Motifs Festival where it was award the Warsaw Phoenix, Toronto International Jewish Film Festival, San Francisco International Jewish Film Festival, and the Melbourne International Film Festival.

It also screened as part of the Great Performance Series on PBS. 

7th Art Releasing can be contacted with any requests for theatrical distribution of the film. 

Mitra is also a teacher with the Toronto District School Board where her experiences with children have inspired her to create award winning films including Just a Little Red Dot and The Peace Tree.

The Peace Tree portrays the wishes of three girls, two Muslim and one Christian, that cooperate in order to find a way to overcome their parents' resistance to observe each other's holiday celebrations.

The film has also inspired the creation of Peace Trees in schools around the world.  The official Peace Tree Day festival is celebrated on June 1st worldwide.

Zina has done commercial work, music videos, and a variety of eclectic short films.  Highlights of her work include My Dad, Safe Surf, Rendezvous, and Bloody Mary.

In Bloody Mary, Mary faces a strange room with mixed feelings of excitement and greed after her obsession with the famous drink.

She received her MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California in 2002, where she studied sculpture, film and video, and installation.

She has worked on an extensive group of experimental documentary short films about collecting, including Trina's Collections and Ann's Hoard.

Her films, sculptures, and installations have been been screened at in the San Francisco Bay area at New Langton Arts, The Exploratorium, Pacific Film Archives, Other Cinema, and the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery, in addition to the Echo Park Film Center and Midnight Special Bookstore in LA, and The Pioneer Theater in NYC.

She was the recipient of the 2005 Bay Area Video Coalition Mediamaker award, which is a competitive, in-kind grant of post-production, new media services, and certified training classes, awarded to filmmakers in the San Francisco Bay area each year to help them complete public media projects.

Aideen McCarthy decided to pursue her dream of becoming a filmmaker in 2001 after originally getting her law degree, obtaining her Masters Degree in Film Studies at the UCD School of Film in Dublin.

She started out working in the camera department on a mix of large scale feature films and short films, including  Adam and Paul, Lassie, and Becoming Jane.  In 2005, she went onto produce her first dramatic film called The Widow which explores the five stages of grief from a unique view.

Her latest work is a five-minute film called The Formorian about a mythological race of Ancient Ireland.  Additionally, she came in fourth place in the Jameson Whiskey Film Festival Trailer competition and has directed nine music video promos for the Academy of Theatre Arts in London.

Signe Baumane was born and raised in Latvia, graduating from Moscow University in 1989 with a B.A. in Philosophy. She started work at Dauka Animation Studio in Riga as an animator and cel painter.

Her animation ranges from her 1991 debut The Witch and the Cow to more recent works including The Teat Beat of Sex,  one of few animated films accepted into both Sundance and Berlin, and Veterinarian, about the circle of life and death.

Since 1995, she has lived in NYC, having worked on I Married a Strange Person with Bill Plympton and animation inserts for XX/XY among many other projects.

In addition to animation, Signe has illustrated books, worked in puppet theater design, taught animation at Pratt Institute, and is periodically publishing parts of a novel about her adventures in New York in Una, a Latvian womenâs magazine. She is a 2005 Fellow in Film of the New York Foundation for the Arts, the recipient of an individual artist grant from The Jerome Foundation, a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences.

FilmFestivalWorld.com is a membership site targeted to networking people who make films and mixed media with those whose professional focus is programming, distributing, financing and writing about films and media.

By using the tools and resources that FFW has assembled, any filmmaker can level the playing field in launching and promoting a film.  Unique areas like genre gateways also make it easy to focus on genre-specific film festivals for planning film submissions and festival attendance amd for selecting films.

The film festival celebrates the bicycles and bicycle culture through art, film, music and performance and brings together various aspects of bicycling together to advocate its ability to transport people in many ways and to have a good time.

The Bicycle Film Festival has traveled from its home base in New York City to San Francisco, Tokyo, Melbourne and many other small and large cities worldwide with each site having their own customized festival with a variety film shorts and features, art, and music.

The Woods Hole Film Festival is a week long festival held in Woods Hole on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, from the end of July to the beginning of August.

The festival includes workshops, panel discussions, staged readings and parties as well as eight days of film screenings. 2008 will mark the 17th year of the festival, which will have continued great offerings of film and related events for international filmmakers, the Woods Hole community, local filmakers, and fans of the festival from around the world.

The Woods Hole Film Festival also presents other film events throughout the year.

Taking place in late July in Brooklyn, New York, the Animation Block Party (ABP) is a four-night film festival party with the best and most unique animated shorts from around the world with special themed nights and music, attended by over two animation lovers.

ABP has also toured with a one-night "best of fest" as a midnight screening at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts, where Casey went to college.

Separate Vacations is an animated short film about a dog owner, boarding her dog before leaving for a vacation, is thrown a curve by one of the kennel's information forms. It is Anne's first animated film.

It played the SXSW Film Festival and also debuted in New England at the 2007 MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival and was an audience favorite.

Anne discussed with us her experiences covering the documentary film tour and the process of her past, present, and future film ideas.

She worked as a graphic artist for NBC Nightly News and eventually as a 3-D animator for show graphics on Dateline NBC. She has also worked on projects for both CBS Sports and MTV.

She also has taught at Pratt Institute and Lehman College, and currently teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Her MFA thesis animation is called , which won Best Concept for the Department of Digital Arts at the Pratt Show and was screened at the Brooklyn International Film Festival KidsFest and the MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival, where it was nominated for a Heartstrings Award for emotive storytelling.

Her short films include The Boy in the Air and Mild People in Aggressive T-Shirts, which have screened at film festivals across the United States, along with her latest film, Fish But No Cigar, which was the recipient of the Soul of Wit Award at the 2007 MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival. Fish, But No Cigar is a four-minute animated short about a woman who literally has bigger fish to fry.

Lyn Eliotâs films have been compiled onto a DVD available here.

She has completed three short animated films; the last of which, Arts Desire, is a 4 minute animation about a character from a Picasso painting in search of a better environment, created with a mix of traditional hand drawn animation, 3d, and After Effects.

Arts Desire has won a number of honors including NYU animationâs Richard Protovin Award as well as the Gold Student Academy Award in Animation for 2007, and as a nominee for the Thousand Words Award at the 2007 MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival.

His personal projects include a variety of animated heartfelt animated short films Pony and Kiwi! in addition to an upcoming live action short film Since Youâve Been Ong, created in 72 hours.

Kiwi! is a charming animated short about the flying hopes of a little kiwi bird which has received huge amount of response online and made its New England debut at the 2007 MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival and was an audience favorite.

Jonathan Browning has strong background in traditional and alternative theatre. In Chicago, he was an active member of the great improvisational Annoyance Theatre and a variety of other theatre companies. In Los Angeles he has performed in and directed dozens of staged pieces at such prominent venues.

The 3-minute comedic film The Job marks his directorial debut. The Job is a true crowd pleaser and has won audience awards in a number of festivals including in the Lake County film Festival, the DC International Shorts Fest, Chicago Really Short Film Festival, and the 2007 MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival.

Frog Jesus has played a number of festivals and debuted in New England at the 2007 MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival.

Ben Peters runs a film production company called Kijo in Vancouver, BC as writer/producer along with Toby Gorman, cinematographer/director, that is currently concentrating on short films and will produce features in the future as well.

He has many other plans in the works including an original remake of David Lynchâs The Elephant Man and a full length version of Jack the Ripper as well. Jonpaul is inspired by a variety of newer and older filmmakers including Tim Burton, Ray Harryhausen, and the early films of Thomas Edison.

Jack the Ripper has played a number of festivals and debuted in New England at the 2007 MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival.

This is the story of Mount Saint Charles Academy in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, a school that won twenty-six consecutive state champisonships between 1978 and 2003.

The film is now available on DVD in time for the holidays after playing sold film festivals including winning the 2006 Audience Award at the Rhode Island International Film Festival and playing for a large audience at the Woonsocket, RI Stadium Theatre in November 2007.

Craig also discusses his work in television sports features and plans for the future.

This episode was originally broadcast in Spring 2007.

He has also made an experimental political short called Fortunate Son, a music video that shows the irony of a CCR song used for a Wrangler jeans commerical in 2005.

Homage to a Catalonian Christmas has played a number of festivals including the Rhode Island International Film Festival. It also screened at the 2007 MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival, where it won the Rammie Award for special recognition for overall short short storytelling.

Blue Dreams Downtown has played a number of festivals including the Dragon*Con Short Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Short Short Film. It screened at the 2007 MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival, where it won the Thousand Words award for excellence in wordless presentation.

In 2002, he acted in Jerry Bruckheimerâs Veronica Guerin. He has written six features and is working on lucky #7. In 2005, The Irish Film Board awarded his short film Never Judge a Book funding; it premiered at the 4th Annual Dublin International Film Festival in 2006.

The film has screened in a variety of festivals worldwide, including the 11th annual Rhode Island International Film Festival, Lucky Escape also screened at the 2007 MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Soul of Wit award for exellence in clever wordplay.

Doug Lantz has worked in television broadcasting for the past 15 years and currently works at Blake House Media, a production company based in Los Angeles.  He has worked in audio engineering, videography, and producing. He has worked many programs including Good Morning America, Nightline, 20/20, Primetime, and World News Tonight.

As an alumnus of the Centerville Jazz band in 1985, his current passion includes documenting the life-changing effects of this unique high school marching band program in the film From the 50 Yard Line. In conjunction with the film, he has created a music education fundraising website March4Music.

The film was produced by Gary Cohen, who had brief career as a child actor, later working at KROQ-FM in LA, and eventually for Adobe Systems on their Photoshop and Photoshop Elements products.

Together, Gary and Lidia formed Scared Mouse Productions to produce Happily Ever After and other projects.

He has recently directed the short documentary film The Regiment, which tells the unusual story of a group of Dominican youth from Providence, Rhode Island who take part in a civil war re-enactment in Olustee, Florida.

The 14th Rhode Island Reenactors Program helps Providence high school students recreate the history of the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery Regiment. By being immersed in the life of the Black soldier of the Civil War, the students learn about the role of African Americans during the war and about the history of the war generally.  They are led by Robert Goldman, a veteran Civil War reenactor.

The Regiment had its World Premiere at the 11th annual Rhode Island International Film Festival.

Rob graduated from Ravensbourne School of Professional Broadcasting in 2000 at the age of twenty as the youngest student ever to graduate from the course. He founded his own production company, Future Time Pictures in 2004, and has directed and edited many behind the scenes featurettes including The Real Billy Elliot Diaries (for ITV1), Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Pride and Prejudice, United 93, and The Bourne Ultimatum.

Wednesday is Robâs short film debut and a very personal, intimate film for him. It is an observational piece about love, life, and pre-determined destiny. It features the concept of soulmates who meet 25 years later on a Wednesday.

I Am God is a powerful short film based on a Israeli poem about a man traveling in Israel who has lost himself. He meets a grieving mother, her orthodox neighbor, a soldier, and a young Palestinian in his travels and discovers that sometimes finding yourself is not enough.

Javier Gutierrez is the filmâs writer and director and Susana Jacques is the executive producer of the film. They have used their artistâs eye from the world of advertising at Ciber Films to develop a dark and enchanting tale of a Voodoo doll that comes to life and tries to escape from his nemesis, the witch-doctor.

This short represents the first film of three planned chapters. The captivating original score, which won First Prize for best score at RIIFF, was composed by Rodrigo Barbera.

A stand-up comic and writer, Stacy is the founder of the independent video production company Saffire Systems. A member of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), sheâs also written, directed and produced several successful commercials and short films.

Billie started performing at the age of three and has appeared in several musical productions across the country. She currently works with Stacy and three others at Crazy Parkite Productions, where she works managing production in addition to acting.

The interview was recorded live at the 11th annual Rhode Island International Film Festival.

Chris has quite a varied background which includes having worked as a ballet dancer, stunt double, and actor - both on television roles in Tour of Duty and Growing Pains, and in numerous films including Pirates of the Caribbean and The Last Samurai, featuring his horsemanship. He even wrote and directed a Troma film cult classic, The Ruining.

Chris is touring the United States with his latest film Border aboard his "Big Blue Bus" in order to educate people on the situation on the southern border. Details on the tour dates can be found by visiting his website.

Born in Poland and living in Germany, Marcin is both an actor and director, as well as the founder of Jim Pansen Production, a Berlin-based film and television production company which focuses on the medical field.

The Stewardess is a black comedy short film which investigates over consumption and manâs relationship with nature. It is on the surreal side, both funny and gross, and ironically has a vegetarian edge to it.

In addition to the screening at the 11th annual RI International Film Festival, The Stewardess also screens at the 8th Annual RIIFF Horror Film Festival October 18-21, 2007.

Her first full-length play In Vitro received a workshop reading at the Public Theater in New York in 2004 and has been optioned; she is transferring the story from stage to screen. She has several other projects in the works including a fantasy/adventure TV show and a political documentary.

Currently living in LA, she makes her film directorial debut with A Casa, the first part of Tres, three stories of intense emotional connection captured in a fleeting moment from three directors, inspired by the poetry of her grandfather, poet and filmmaker Carlos Hugo Christensen.

She will be speaking at the Scriptbiz 2007 workshop later this Fall in Providence, RI.

The film is a surreal psychological thriller about the secrets of a middle-aged actress and former ballet dancer in Berlin and her tenant, a young, attractive female student. They choose to communicate their anger via the former actressâ diary.

Kristianâs film was the winner of the International Discovery Award at the 11th annual Rhode Island International Film Festival. This interview was recorded live at the Film Festival.

His mother, Earnestine Rodgers Robinson, received no formal music training, and with her faith and family, she rose from humble southern roots to become composer of sacred classical music that took her all the way to Carnegie Hall and to a world premiere in Prague.

Our conversation with the Robinsons was recorded live at the 11th annual Rhode Island International Film Festival.

Emmanuel Jespers is an Institut des Arts de Diffusion (IAD) graduate and has been directing and films and commercials for over ten years. His films include the short film The Last Dream (2000) which won many awards including Un Certain Regard in the Cannes Film Festival, A Night to Remember (2002), and Nervous Breakdown (2002).

More recent work includes the 2007 films Two Sisters and a feature he wrote, directed, and produced called Artefacts.

His short films have been selected to more than 50 film festivals worldwide, and he has won more than two dozen prizes, including his 1st Place Best Screenplay award at RIIFF for Personal Spectator.

Allocco began his career as a musician in the bands Law and Order and Dogma. From there, he joined the company Media Jelly, producing and designing projects including Goosebumps, The Magic School Bus, and Foxâs Dr. Dolittle 2.

Allocco was also the creator of several original animated series including The Vanderfuls and Bratface and Waffle.

In 2005, Allocco joined Red Thread Productions working on many projects including producing and editing The Best of the GLAAD Awards for Logo. Earlier this year (2007), Allocco was one of fifty directors hand-picked by Steven Spielberg for the Fox TV series On The Lot.

More information on Phil Alloco is available at his company Make Things Work.

He has worked behind the scenes in production in a variety of films including editing The Chris Isaac Show and the documentary Gulf War Syndrome: Killing Our Own.

The Stone Child is about an 11-year-old boy, half Lakota Native-American and half caucasian, in rural South Dakota, and his relationship with his father after a painful divorce.

There is feature length version of the film in the works as well.

The film screened recently at the 11th annual Rhode Island International Film Festival.

JD studied English at University College Cork and has an extensive acting background in both film and television throughout the UK.

His television and film credits include: Batman Begins, The Art of Flirting (an homage to Buster Keaton), and the BBC productions Little Britain, Murphyâs Law, and Ballykissangel. Most recently, he is starring in the Channel 4 production of City of Vice.

One Last Drink Before Morning deals with three characters who come to terms with the crooked twists and turns that have led them to their desperate positions in life, set in a noir-like smoky dive bar.

It won 2nd Place for Best Screenplay at the 2007 Rhode Island International Film Festival.

She founded Five Sisters Productions with her four other sisters. Together, they have produced three feature films in which she has also appeared: Just Friends, Temps, and Manna From Heaven.

Her most recent work is a comedy short which she wrote, directed, and acted in called The Happiest Day Of His Life, which won grand prize for best comedy short at the 11th annual Rhode Island International Film Festival.

In 1936, Oswald Mosley and his army of fascist Blackshirts planned to march through the East End. However, Segalâs grandfather, Ubby Cowan, and a host of others, including Jews, Irish, and dockworkers succeeded in stopping the march. This was a seminal event in British history as it loudly declared Britains refusal to accept fascism.

Blurring the line between live action and animation, The Battle Of Cable Street retells the event by presenting a young boy, Danny, who is taken inside the magical world of his own sketchbook by his grandfather and shown what it was like to live
through the events of 1936.

Danny learns, much as his granddad did, âLook up, see the world around you. Find a voice, express yourself.â

The film screened recently at the 11th annual Rhode Island International Film Festival.

Carol is a native New Orleanian and has directed three documentaries about Louisiana musicians: Getting It Together featuring bebop pianist Willie Metcalf, Jr., My Story, My Music, My Life about renowned jazz composer and arranger Harold Battiste, Jr., and most recently Been Down That Muddy Road featuring Louisiana Hall of Fame swamp pop legend Joe Barry.

Muddy Road had its world premiere at the 2007 Rhode Island International Film Festival where it won 1st Place for Best Documentary.

The ceremony was hosted by Don Farias of RIIFF, Steve Feinberg of the RI Television & Film Office, and emceed by George Marshall of RIIFF.

The Rhode Island International Film Festival is the largest public film festival in New England, and is rated one of the top twelve film festivals in the United States. It is also a qualifying festival for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscarsâ).

The 2007 RIIFF festival featured over 320 films from 70 countries around the world.

Jason Connell has recently directed a documentary film about the lives of Hollywood background actors (often somewhat inaccurately called "extras") called Strictly Background.

He also founded the Tulsa Uncensored Film Festival, which spread to both New York and Los Angeles, underwent a name change, and is now known as the United Film Festival.

Greg Cahill has recently written, directed, and produced The Golden Voice, a short film about the Cambodian rock singer Ros Sereysothea, one of Cambodiaâs biggest stars of the 60âs and early 70âs before the advent of the Khmer Rouge. It is a tragic yet inspiring film featuring some undiscovered gems of rock and roll music.

The Golden Voice screened recently at the 11th annual Rhode Island International Film Festival.

Called Happy Monday, it is a unique experimental documentary, also referred to as a "documentary film object." It represents the tragedy of unfinished work, the stasis of images captured on negatives but never given life through projection on a film screen.

Happy Monday had its World Premiere at the 2007 Rhode Island International Film Festival.

Andrew now lives and works in New York City, where he heads the production company Telling Story.

The film was recently made into a short film directed by Bernadette Demisay and had its world premiere at the 2007 Rhode Island International Film Festival where it won 2nd Place for Best Editing.

We discuss storytelling from the writerâs point of view, and similarities between short film storytelling and its literary equivalent. We also discuss some of George Harrarâs other past and upcoming works.

Brett Harvey is President and founder of BKS Crew Productions, a Vancouver based multimedia production company and has worked as a director of photography on a number of film and television projects including two recent projects for the Canadian national television network CBC â Secrets and Lottery On Ice.

He has made the move from DP to director with his new film The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, a documentary film which explores the seven-billion-dollar per year business of marijuana in British Columbia, as well as the general history and current impact of cannabis prohibition.

The Union had its US Premiere at the 2007 Rhode Island International Film Festival where it won Grand Prize for Best Editing.

Arthurâs Paradise is a unique film, a blend of documentary and fiction, with almost no dialog and music from opera to mariachi. At times beautiful, at times disturbing, it explores the solitary life of a farmer and his animals.

Luc Beauchamp received a degree in music composition from the Università de MontrÃal before working on a number of short films including the award-winning The Lion & the Lamb.

Dana recently made his first short film Fetch, winner of the BAFTA Scotland award for best animation.

Fetch and another short film of Danaâs, Hip Hip Hurray!, both screened recently at the the 2007 Rhode Island International Film Festival.

The Manhattan Short Film Festival is a unique film festival which presents twelve short films from several countries, all screened during one week, in venues across the globe.

Audiences at each venue then vote on their favorites, and the winner is determined at the end of the festival screenings.

The 2007 festival will be held around the world between September 23rd and 30th.

Alex Merkin is the president of Production and Development of
FiveLion Films, a music video, commercial, and film production company in New York City.

He is also the director, creator, and editor of the award-winning short suspense thriller Across The Hall.

Giovanna is an Assistant Professor in Communication at the University of California San Diego, and works professionally as a cinematographer and film/video curator and juror.

She is the director and producer of internationally exhibited documentary and narrative films including BeauteouS: The Trilogy and hand-some.

Her most recent film is Period: The End of Menstruation, a feature documentary film exploring trends in hormonal birth control which change the way we think of gender, health and the ânaturalâ.

Barbara Silvestro is a 41 year old mother of three a who lost 65 pounds through diet and exercise, including using Leslie Sansoneâs and other fitness DVDs.

She was eventually invited to be a participant in the filming of a new edition of Sansone Walk Slim DVDs. We talk about her experience.

A Hero For Daisy is a film about Title IX pioneer and two-time Olympian Chris Ernst who through her protests for gender equity athletic facilities for women has opened the door to daughters everywhere. The film is dedicated to Daisy, Maryâs daughter.

Apple Pie is a film about professional athletes and their mothers from the aspect of their motherâs stories and the connections to their childrenâs lives.

Lemonade Stories is a film about renown entrepeneurs and their mothers, highlighting each motherâs impact on the entrepeneurial spirit and success of their sons and daughters.