Esteemed 2008 Jury Members
Peter Russell attended Cambridge University (UK), he studied mathematics and theoretical physics. Then, as he became increasingly fascinated by the mysteries of the human mind he changed to experimental psychology. Pursuing this interest, he traveled to India to study meditation and eastern philosophy, and on his return took up the first research post ever offered in Britain on the psychology of meditation. He also has a post-graduate degree in computer science, and conducted there some of the early work on 3-dimensional displays, presaging by some twenty years the advent of virtual reality. In the mid-seventies Peter Russell joined forces with Tony Buzan and helped teach "Mind Maps" and learning methods to a variety of international organizations and educational institutions. Since then his corporate programs have focused increasingly on self-development, creativity, stress management, and sustainable environmental practices. Clients have included IBM, Apple, Digital, American Express, Barclays Bank, Swedish Telecom, ICI, Shell Oil and British Petroleum. His principal interest is the deeper, spiritual significance of the times we are passing through. He has written several books in this area -- The TM Technique, The Upanishads, The Brain Book, The Global Brain Awakens, The Creative Manager, The Consciousness Revolution, Waking Up in Time, and From Science to God. As one of the more revolutionary futurists Peter Russell has been a keynote speaker at many international conferences, in Europe, Japan and the USA. His multi-image shows and videos, The Global Brain and The White Hole in Time have won praise and prizes from around the world.
Marco Mazzei – Director of PhotographyMarco Mazzei is a Director of Photography based in Los Angeles and Boulder. Raised in Florence, Italy, he began his career in film and TV as a focus puller on feature films for Director's of Photography Dante Spinotti, Bojan Bazelli, and Oliver Stapleton on such films as "The Grifters" and "Patty Hearst". In 1991 he began his career as a shooter with such notable music videos as Red Hot Chili Peppers "Give it Away", Prince "Gett off", and Eric Clapton's "If I Could Change the World." Nominated twice for the MTV Best Cinematography award, Marco now shoots TV commercials for many top clients such as Volkswagen, Mitsubishi, Neutrogena, L'Oreal and many others. He is particularly known for his work with celebrities and has photographed many movie stars and models which most recently include Jennifer Garner, Sally Field, Diane Lane, Salma Hayek, and Cindy Crawford.
Bob Soderstrom – Screenwriter, member of the WGABob has written screenplays for Beacon Pictures, Warner Bros., and New Line Cinema. His inspirational story for Beacon Pictures, "The Madison Kid," is the true story of a gifted college drop out who became the youngest person ever to win the World Series of Poker Main Event.His story for Warner Bros. involves a man who, after recording and watching his dreams, learns to wake up to his life potential and become alive in his life rather than his sleep.Soderstrom's screenplay "Jerusalem," which won the Austin Film Festival screenplay competition, is about an American Jew and a Palestinian widowed woman in 1948 who overcome differences in a search for the Dead Sea Scrolls. Soderstrom is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he worked on behalf of indigent clients, and he also is an alumnus of the United States Peace Corps, where he served in Papua New Guinea.
David Ortolano – Producer, Director, Performer and MonkeyDavid Ortolano is a filmmaker without a film, a painter trapped in a musical theater mind, a musician disabled by drama and a poet without language. After spending a lifetime gathering and hunting, he expects to die with three shoes on his feet. To put it bluntly, he's a monkey disguised as a tortuga without the shell. In the past 17 years he has trained and worked professionally as a Director, Teacher and Multi-Disciplined Performer in many parts of the world including Indonesia, Spain, France and various parts of the United States. Currently, he teaches design and production and is the Technical Director of the Performing Arts Department at Naropa University. He is also is the founder and Executive Producer of the Boulder International Fringe Festival.
Gay HendricksGay Hendricks has served for more than 30 years as one of the major contributors to the fields of relationship transformation and bodymind therapies. Along with his wife, Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks, Gay is the author of many bestsellers, including Conscious Loving, At The Speed Of Life, and Five Wishes. Dr. Hendricks received his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Stanford in 1974. After a twenty-one-year career as a professor at University Colorado, he founded The Hendricks Institute, which offers seminars in North America, Asia and Europe. He is also the founder of a new virtual learning center for transformation, Illumination University, www.illuminationuniversity.com. Throughout his career he has done executive coaching with more than 800 executives, including the top management at such firms as Dell Computer, Hewlett Packard, Motorola and KLM. His book, The Corporate Mystic, is used widely to train management in combining business skills and personal development tools. In recent years he has also been active in creating new forms of conscious entertainment. In 2003, along with movie producer Stephen Simon, Dr. Hendricks founded The Spiritual Cinema Circle, which distributes inspirational movies to subscribers in 70+ countries around the world, www.spiritualcinemacircle.com. He was the executive producer of the feature film, Conversations with God, and has appeared on more than 500 radio and television shows, including OPRAH, CNN, CNBC, 48 HOURS and others.
J. Gluckstern - FilmmakerJ. Gluckstern's films and film-related works have been shown in Korea, Mexico and throughout the United States. He's received numerous grants, awards and commissions, among them a professional development fellowship from the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in 2006, and he's taught film production at the University of Colorado-Boulder since 1999. He's also been an arts journalist since the late 1980s, writing about film and art for many regional and national publications.
Marlowe Fawcett – FilmmakerMarlowe is a writer/director/producer and freelance journalist living in Boulder, CO. He has written film and art reviews for The Economist, The Times Literary Supplement and Indiewire among others. After receiving his Master of Fine Arts from Naropa University’s Kerouac School of Writing and Poetics in 2003 he shelved his novel and wrote, directed and produced a feature romantic comedy, The Other Half, which won the Audience Award at the 2006 Porto International Film Festival. Since then, Marlowe has produced two short films (one in LA, one in Colorado), co-directed and produced a feature documentary, and attended the birth of his first child, Luca Elias, in November 2007. He is currently developing a new feature film, Eggs - a comedy about the industry of reproduction.
Jerry Aronson – FilmmakerJerry Aronson - Advanced Certificate, AFI, Los Angeles; M.S., Institute of Design, IIT, Chicago) Mr. Aronson, a recently retired Senior Instructor at CU Boulder, is a distinguished documentary filmmaker and teacher. One of his best-known films is The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, a winner of the International Documentary Association Award in 1993, a finalist for a Peabody award, as well as over 250 national and international awards and screenings. The 2 disk, 8 hour DVD set was released in 2007 by New Yorker Films. His film The Divided Trail earned an Academy Award Nomination for best documentary short in 1978 and was broadcast on a special PBS series in 1980 entitled: Matters of Life and Death. His six-hour documentary mini-series American Music: The Roots of Country aired to wide acclaim on TBS in 1996. He has won grants from the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities. He also collaborated with Stan Brakhage. Among his many other award winning films are Fun With Lines, Old Glory Marching Society, Superstars, and Options. Mr. Aronson taught intermediate and advanced film production, primarily focusing on the video based advanced production class: Making the Personal Documentary. Mr. Aronson was with the film department for over 34 years. He is responsible for establishing the Production Department within Film Studies with founder Virgil Grillo in 1973, established the successful internship program in 1979 and was instrumental in establishing the BA/BFA film major in 1989. Jerry was awarded the prestigious Boulder Faculty Assembly Excellence in Teaching Award in the Spring of 2006.
Stephen Simon – ProducerBorn into a successful Hollywood family, Stephen Simon grew up during the big studio heyday of the late forties and fifties. Mentored by Hollywood greats such as Stark (producer of STEEL MAGNOLIAS, THE GOODBYE GIRL, FUNNY GIRL) and Dino De Laurentiis (producer of over 150 motion pictures, including RED DRAGON, HANNIBAL, KING KONG), Stephen Simon became a highly regarded and well respected veteran producer and executive in his own right with over 30 years of experience in the entertainment industry, producing or being responsible for the production of over 20 motion pictures. He has produced acclaimed projects such as the Academy Award® Winning WHAT DREAMS MAY COME (starring Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding Jr.) , the classic SOMEWHERE IN TIME (Starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour), ALL THE RIGHT MOVES (Starring Tom Cruise) and was an executive producer on fan favorite BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (starring Keanu Reeves). In 2003, Stephen made his directorial debut, INDIGO, (starring Neale Donald Walsch) which was produced entirely in the State of Oregon with a $500,000 budget. INDIGO has since become a grassroots phenomenon with its one weekend worldwide release in January, 2005 grossing over $1.3 million. INDIGO is currently being widely distributed on DVD by Monterrey Media. In 2004, Mr. Simon co-founded The Spiritual Cinema Circle with Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks. The Circle, a monthly DVD subscription service that distributes 4 spiritually-themed films a month, became an immediate international success story and now has subscribers in more than 70 countries. By late 2004, The Circle had become successful enough to venture into original film production so it acquired the rights from Neale Donald Walsch to make CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD into a movie. Directing and producing CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD was the culmination of a dream for Stephen who had wanted to make a film version of CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD since he first read the material in the late-90's, but couldn't find a financier to make a deal with Walsch for the rights. "My career has been marked mostly by my passion for three projects," he says. "It took me 3 years to get SOMEWHERE IN TIME produced, almost 20 years to get WHAT DREAMS MAY COME made, and now almost 8 years to get CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD to the screen."
