Spoiler Alert Radio

Ivan Dias has written and co-produced Carlos Saura’s film Fados, a fusion of cinema, song, dance and instrumental numbers, which explores Portugal’s popular musical genre of fado and its spirit of saudade.

Fados deploys mirrors, back projections, lighting effects, and lush colors to frame each song which carries the story of the Fado song from it roots to its branches.

Fados expands the songs (which traditionally involve just a singer and a guitarist) with dance and encompasses other nationalities of Portugal’s former colonies, and styles (such as hip hop, flamenco, and Brazilian reggae).

Yana Gorskaya was born in Russia, and emigrated to the United States with her mother at the age of six.

Yana was hired to edit her first feature film, 2002's Spellbound, when director Jeffrey Blitz asked his former USC mentor Kate Amend if she would recommend one of her students to work on his documentary film and she suggested Yana, who was working as a teaching assistant while completing her MFA. She worked part-time on the editing of Spellbound from 2000–2002.

Spellbound was ultimately nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and Yana won the American Cinema Editors Award for Best Edited Documentary.

Her next three features, also documentaries, were In the Name of Love , produced by Sydney Pollack, about Russian marriage agencies, Sonny Boy, directed by Soleil Moon Frye, focusing on Frye's relationship with her father, Virgil Frye, and Seeds, about the Seeds of Peace Camp in Maine.

Yana's first non-documentary feature was Rocket Science, with which she worked with Jeffrey Blitz for a second time. She then edited the independent comedy film Smart People.

Yana was a consulting editor on Taika Waititi's film Boy. Yana also edited Blitz's 2nd documentary about lottery winners, called Lucky.

Animation producer and director Darragh O’Connell oversees the visual output of Brown Bag Films. He has directed hundreds of commercials, in television, and on short films.

His production and editing credits include: the Give Up Yer Aul Sins short film series (using 1960s actual recordings of Irish inner city students telling their versions of famous bible stories) along with Crap Rap, and I'm an Animal, and Wobblyland for TV.

Darragh also works closely with the studio's up and coming younger directors. He has been busy directing many episodes of Olivia for Chorion Silver Lining and Nickelodeon.

Darragh also produced Nicky Phelan's animated short film, Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty. Granny O'Grimm is a seemingly sweet old lady who loses the plot as she tells her version of Sleeping Beauty to her terrified granddaughter.

Both Give Up Yer Aul Sins and Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty have been nominated for Academy Awards.

Cinematographer Eduard Grau created some award winning short films of his own including Bitter Kas and Scarlet Sunrise. He studied filmmaking at ESCAC in Spain.

Edu won the cinematography award twice at the Palm Springs International Film Festival for Friends Forever and The Natural Route.

He shot his 1st feature, Honor De Cavalier, at only 23, which premiered at Cannes, followed by a film in LA, called Kicks.

Edu was able to pair with director Tom Ford on the visually stunning Academy Award nominated A Single Man, a story that centers on an English professor who, after the sudden death of his partner tries to go about his typical day in Los Angeles.

Edu has also worked on a horror/thriller feature film called Buried from director Rodrigo Cortés and screenwriter Chris Sparling about a US contractor in Iraq who is buried alive in a coffin.

M. David Mullen, ASC, Director of Photography, has filmed more than thirty independent feature films and two television series in his career so far.

David was nominated for the IFP Independent Spirit Award for Twin Falls Idaho and again for Northfork, both films by Michael and Mark Polish.

He has worked on The Polish Brothers' films since 1998 which also inlcude: Jackpot, The Astronaut Farmer, Stay Cool, and Manure.

David's other projects include: Akeelah and the Bee, Lee Daniels’ Shadowboxer, Assassination of a High School President, Big Love for HBO, and Diablo Cody’s TV Series The United States of Tara, and the horror film, Jennifer's Body.

Tariq Tapa enrolled in the Graduate Film Directing Program at the California Institute of the Arts, where he made several short films, including Custody which was a Finalist at the Student Academy Awards.

He received a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship to Kashmir, India where he made his debut feature film Zero Bridge by himself, while staying with relatives. Zero Bridge premiered at the Venice Film Festival and has received rave reviews from critics.

Tariq has been nominated for 2 Independent Spirit Awards for this film. Zero Bridge is a hopeful, human portrait of a teen pickpocket who has a chance encounter with one of his victims in this gritty, moving story about daily life in Kashmir.

Suha Arraf wrote and directed several documentaries and worked as a journalist and researcher for many years.

She is a graduate of the Tel Aviv Screenwriting Academy and she also has degrees from the Jerusalem and Haifa University.

Suha co-wrote and collaborated on both The Syrian Bride and Lemon Tree with Eran Riklis.

In The Syrian Bride, Mona's wedding day is the saddest day of her life because once she crosses the border from Israel to syria to marry, she will never be able to her Druze family in Majdal Shams.

Lemon Tree is the story of a Palestinian widow who must defend her lemontree field when a new Israeli Defense Minister moves next to her and threatens to have her lemon grove torn down.

French filmmaker Hervé de Crécy has worked for H5 and RSA production companies on commercials and music videos including those for Volkswagen, Gatorade, Areva, Alex Gopher, and Massive Attack.

Herve has ventured into short films including the award winning animated short Logorama featuring a wild co-existing world past and present of logos which has won the Academy Award for Animated Short.

Swedish filmmaker Patrik Eklund made his directional debut with One Christmas Morning which won several awards including The Tromsö Palm for best Nordic short. Patrick's next short film, Situation Frank, was selected for Critic's Week in Cannes.

Patrik’s film Instead of Abracadabra received several awards at international festivals including Sundance 2009. It is an Academy Award Nominee for Live Action Short.

Instead of Abracadabra is about a man who still lives with his parents and tries to realize his dream of becoming a magician. The film, Instead of Abracadabra, features an array of charming characters and moments of magic and surprise.

Patrik has also completed Seeds of the Fall which has also been featured in Sundance. Seeds of the Fall is about middle-aged couple that lives in a passionless relationship full of sexual frustration where something happens that will change their relationship forever.

Harrod Blank grew up Santa Cruz, CA and began his lifelong love-affair with art cars by decorating his 1965 VW Beetle with plastic fruit, rubber chickens, and a television, among other items. He dubbed the car Oh My God!.

After graduating from UC Santa Cruz and drawing from the influence of his documentarian father Les Blank, Harrod began photographing art cars around the country. This led to his first documentary Wild Wheels, which has been seen by an estimated 55 million people around the world.

Harrod has continued to create art cars, his second being The Camera Van which included several working cameras among the 2500 cameras attached to the van and a third interactive musical art car called Pico De Gallo.

Harrod's most recent feature documentary film Automorphosis looks into the minds and hearts of a delightful collection of eccentrics, visionaries, and just plain folks who have transformed their autos into artworks.