Spoiler Alert Radio

Lynne Sachs is a teacher and experimental documentary filmmaker originally from Memphis, TN and now lives in Brooklyn, NY that teaches experimental film and video at NYU.Lynne’s films explore the relationship between personal memories and broader, historical experiences. As an experimental filmmaker, she tries to make images that lead to new ways of thinking about the language of film. Some of her films include: Following the Object to Its Logical Beginning, Sermons and Sacred Pictures, States of Unbelonging, Which Way Is East, and Wind in Our Hair. The Last Happy Day is an experimental documentary portrait Lynne created of Sandor Lenard, a distant cousin and a Hungarian medical doctor. Lenard was a writer with a Jewish background who fled the Nazis. Eventually Sandor found himself in remotest Brazil where he embarked on the translation of Winnie the Pooh into Latin, an eccentric task which catapulted him to brief world wide fame.

Writer/director Rob Connolly discovered a love for creating visual images through studying art and photography while growing up in rural Mount Airy, North Carolina. His passion for visual storytelling developed further while chronicling his travels around the world. His latest work and thesis, Our Neck of the Woods, is about the character Bob Underwood's mundane life manufacturing plastic lawn-ornament deer and his connection to an enchanting Georgian refugee that he attempts to rescue her—whether she needs it or not. It has screened in Sundance and a variety of other large and small film festivals.

Madeleine Olnek is a filmmaker, director and playwright. Her first short comedy Hold Up, was an official selection of Sundance and the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Her plays have been described by playwright Paula Vogel as "incredible contemporary masterpieces" in American Theater Magazine.

Madeleine is also one of the authors of A Practical Handbook for the Actor with a foreword by David Mamet. Her latest short film, Countertransference, screened at Sundance as well and won the Adrienne Shelley Award for Best Female Director, the Grand Jury award for Outstanding Dramatic Short at Outfest, and was featured in the Live Action Shorts program in the Newport International Film Festival.

Tom Hall has worked at the Hamptons International Film Festival and Nantucket Film Festival in Guest/Industry and Programming over the years along with work in New Media at Bravo/IFC.

He has directed short films for Bob Mould’s Carnival of Light and Sound Tour and is a member of the indieWIRE blogging community with The Back Row Manifesto.

Tom is also the Director of Programming at the Sarasota Film Festival and is currently the Artistic Director of the Newport International Film Festival which happens during the 1st week of June.

Miriam Cutler has been writing, producing, and performing music for over 20 years and is based out of Los Angeles. She began her musical career as a singer/horn player in several bands, including the popular Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. She also led The New Miss Alice Stone Ladies Society Orchestra and the jazzy Swingstreet, writing most of their music and arrangements, producing several recordings, and touring with them. Her love of jazz also led to a stint co-producing albums for Polygram-Verve including Joe Williams, Nina Simone, Marlena Shaw, and Shirley Horn.Miriam's scores have been featured in a variety of projects including numerous narrative features and award-winning documentaries, as well as television, and even two circuses. She is known for being versatile, her integration of world music styles, and working collaboratively.She has served on documentary juries including the first-ever World Cinema Documentary competition at Sundance, The Independent Spirit Awards, International Documentary Association Awards, and American Film Institute's Film Festival Awards.Miriam also serves on the Board of The Society of Composers and Lyricists and has been an advisor for the Sundance Institute’s Composers Lab.

John Bergin has worked on a variety of creative projects including album artwork for bands Gravity Kills, Pigface, Voodou, and the Rachel Getting Married soundtrack.

He has also created music and music videos for bands including Lolo and Blackmouth (a side project that we he performs on with Jarboe of Swans), and the children’s albums Noah’s Ark and Kaleidosaurus.

He has created and contributed to several graphic novels and comics including: Bone Saw, The Crow, Ashes, and Golgothika. He also created short films including: Cloud Warriors and Nesting Grounds.

John's most recent project is an animated feature film based on one of his graphic novels, From Inside. It tells the story of Cee, a young pregnant woman who finds herself on a damaged train crossing a post apocalyptic landscape.

Margaret Brown has worked on a variety of films including cinematography work on the film Ice Fishing, the narrative short 99 Threadwaxing, producing the narrative feature film, Mi Amigo, and producing the narrative short Six Miles of Eight Feet which won a Student Academy Award. She has also directed and produced music videos for Okkervil River and Cat Power.She has more recently focused on documentary work including the acclaimed documentary Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt, and The Order of Myths which won her awards including the Truer Than Fiction Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. The Order of Myths is about the world of secret societies and centuries-old traditions branching from the 1st Mardi Gras in America celebrated in Mobile, Alabama organized along enduring color lines.

Brendan Toller, graduate of Hampshire College, has created his 1st feature, the eclectic documentary I Need That Record! The Death (Or Possible Survival) Of The Independent Record Store, a documentary feature examining why over 3000 independent record stores have closed across the U.S. in the past decade.

I Need That Record! features interviews with folks including: Ian Mackaye of Dischord Records, activist/author Noam Chomsky, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Mike Watt, guitar composer Glenn Branca, Pat Carney of The Black Keys, Mike Dreese of Newbury Comics, and independent record store owners across the US.

Petr Cikhart, Director of Photography, was born and raised in Prague. As a 19-year-old Assistant Director, he covered the war in Chechnya for Czech TV, and was arrested and held hostage for two days by Russian soldiers during the assignment. It was his first field shoot, and he was hooked.He immigrated to the United States in 1995 after winning a journalism internship at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. After finishing his internship and working briefly as a lobsterman in Maine, he moved to New York City to resume his career behind the camera.He has lent his talents to several television programs, including CBS’s The Amazing Race, which won him a primetime Emmy, National Geographic’s Be the Creature, A&E’s Dog The Bounty Hunter, WGBH's Science Investigators, Throwdown with Bobby Flay on The Food Network, ABC and the Discovery Channel ’s reality series Detonators, and PBS’s Fiesta Mexicana. He has also traveled to more than 80 countries on all continents for a variety of projects, such as Farmingville, the LA-gang documentary Gangs: Escaping the Life for Showtime, and Blindsight, which was filmed in the Tibetan Himalayas.Petr has also recently worked on the fiction side of film as the DP on projects including the feature-length movie May the Best Man Win starring members of the Upright Citizens Brigade and the experimental feature film, Euphoria.

Copywriter and filmmaker, David Rakowiecki started in advertising writing award winning TV spots for major brands including Heineken, Amstel Light, Sprite and Converse. He found advertising creatively unfulfilling and turned to writing screenplays.He has attended NY Film Academy, where he wrote and directed the shorts The Bottle and Five Cent Refund. After NYFA, he wrote and directed an Olympics-themed commercial for Heineken that was recognized in the New York Times and took lessons in guerilla improv technique at Upright Citizens' Brigade Theatre in New York. David created the film Spoiler Alert, which is a black comedy about Brad, the operator of a movie scoop website and Harrison, a down on his luck film director who has squandered his artistic abilities in pursuit of easy paydays.