Judith Keenan

Judith Keenan’s 20-year career in Canada and the United States has been focused on business development in the culture and entertainment sector. She is currently Executive Director and Founder of BookShorts Inc. and its sister company BookShorts Literacy Program. She produced her first book-inspired video in 1994 in New York City for best-selling Canadian author Douglas Cooper, and has not looked back since.   Her production credits number more than 100 news features, 16 short films, an 8-episode national television series and much more.  Visit BookShorts at http://www.bookshorts.com

Anne Collins

An award-winning non-fiction writer and former magazine editor, Anne Collins is the publisher and vice-president of Random House Canada. Writers she publishes include Douglas Coupland, Richard Gwyn, Richard Florida, Graham Swift, Peter Carey, Julian Barnes, Robert Hough, Giles Blunt, Shaena Lambert, Paul Quarrington, Alissa York, Karen Connelly, Carol Off, Paul Anderson, Kenneth J. Harvey, Bonnie Stern, Kevin Patterson, Bret Hart, LGen. Romeo Dallaire and Irshad Manji.

Robert Lantos

Robert has produced some 30 films including Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominated Being Julia, Golden Globe nominated Sunshine, the Cannes Grand Prix winner and Academy Award nominated The Sweet Hereafter; Berlin Silver Bear winner eXistenZ, Cannes Special Jury Prize winner Crash, Cannes International Critics Prize winner Exotica, Genie Award winners, Where The Truth Lies, Black Robe, and In Praise of Older Women and Canadian domestic box office phenomenon Men With Brooms. Another five of his films have been a part of the Cannes Official Selection: Night Magic (1985), Joshua Then and Now (1985, In Competition), Felicia’s Journey (1999, In Competition), Stardom (2000, Closing Night), Ararat (2002), Where The Truth Lies (2005, In Competition).

Mr. Lantos founded and built Canada’s leading film and television company Alliance Communications which he took public in 1993 and sold in 1998. Since then he has concentrated exclusively on producing motion pictures.

Nino Ricci

NINO RICCI’s Lives of the Saints (1990) won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the F.G. Bressani Prize. The novel was also a long-time national bestseller, and was followed by the highly acclaimed In a Glass House (1993) and Where She Has Gone (1997), which was a finalist for the Giller Prize. This trio of novels was adapted into a miniseries directed by Jerry Ciccoritti and starring Sophia Loren, Nick Mancuso, Fab Fillipo, Jessica Paré, and Kris Kristofferson. His most recent work, Origin of Species, will be released in September 2008.

Sarah Polley

Sarah Polley is Genie Award-winning film director and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter (Away From Her ). As a director, she is renowned internationally as well as in her native Canada. As an actress, Polley has become a favorite of critics for her sensitive portraits of wounded and conflicted young women in independent films. She has starred in such films as The Sweet Hereafter, Guinevere, Go, The Weight of Water, My Life Without Me, and Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

She has said that her choice of film roles, eschewing mainstream Hollywood movies for chancier, non-commercial independent fare, was the result of an ethical decision on her part to make films with social importance. Polley is a cinema artist. This woman wants to make, and will make films. Thus, we can understand her career choices as a desire to work with and understand the technique of some of the best directors in film, including David Cronenberg, Michael Winterbottom, and Hal Hartley.

Gary Thomas

Gary Thomas returned to Toronto in 1998 and opened Crush, one of Canada’s foremost motion graphics and effects studios, now also producing original content and live action. He began his career in animation and computer graphics, working in television commercials. He was a creative director at Centro Digital Pictures in Hong Kong, where he oversaw the development of one of Asia’s leading animation and special effects houses. After directing Cannes and Clio award winning commercials for Carlsberg, Shell, Nike and more, he moved to Sydney for Garner McLennan Design.

 

Gary’s work for Moby’s Play DVD was a Grammy finalist, and he and his Crush team have just garnered 2008’s One Show award recognizing their innovative series of shorts for Douglas Coupland’s The Gum Thief.  He has directed several short films for BookShorts, including A Life’s Passion, based on the novel Renaldo by James McCreath and licensed for national television broadcast in 2008; and The Upside of Down based on the work of Thomas Homer-Dixon.

Meet Our Illustrious Advisors

NEWS! SARAH POLLEY, NINO RICCI and GARY THOMAS join ROBERT LANTOS and ANNE COLLINS as Moving Stories Film Advisors.

Paul Quarrington

MOVING STORIES PROGRAMMER PAUL QUARRINGTON

 

Novelist Paul Quarrington is also a musician, most recently in the band Porkbelly Futures, an award-winning screenwriter and an acclaimed non-fiction writer. His last novel, Galveston, was nominated for the Giller; Whale Music won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in 1989. Quarrington has also won the Stephen Leacock Medal and the 2008 CBC Canada Reads national public program for King Leary.

 

For Paul’s comprehenive prfile, please visit http://www.paulquarrington.org