LIVING GODDESS

Marc Hawker and Ishbel Whitaker are owners of the award winning DarkFibre. Marc produced David LaChapelle's Oscar short listed RIZE and Ishbel directed the LIVING GODDESS. They have made films for Levi's, worked with the KLF and have a background in extremeperformance art and installation work.

Ishbel Whitaker started her career in theatre as an actor in the ensemble company of a leading Polish experimental director. This was the start of a long journey into archetype and myth. She has worked in computer games and advertising as a creative director, developing a future city with the acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid, and creating a T-Girl pop band for the global ad agency BBH.
Co-directed 4 commercials for Amnesty International with Marc Hawker on human rights abuse in the war on terror and 42 day precharge detention. Living Goddess (shortlisted for Grierson Best Newcomer Award 2008)  is her first project as a director. The film was made with her long term collaborator Marc Hawker.

Marc Hawker is an award winning Director, Creative Director and Producer. Originally graduating as an architect, Marc was awarded The Royal Institute Of Architects Silver Medal and went on to teach experimental aesthetics as Guest Professor at The Southern California Institute of Architects, Glasgow School of Art, The Architectural Association and Tulane University, New Orleans. During the Balkan War he became a presenter on the pirate radio station, B92, in Belgrade, Serbia. His film of B92 was commissioned by channel 4. moving into performance art and installation his work was commissioned by the scottish arts council, british council, NRLA. Before turning his attention to film, Marc developed a number of projects as a Creative Director with the ad agency Bartle Bogle and Hegarty and co-wrote, produced and creative directed Levi's seminal and critically acclaimed film Ash: Love and Destruction, broadcast on Channel 4. His directing debut was Zombietown, Just Another Rock and Roll War Story, commissioned by Channel 4 was finalist at the New York Film Festival.  .He produced David Lachapelle’s debut feature, RIZE. shot living goddess and co-directed the 4 amnesty films which have redefined the way the organisation makes commercials.
They have just completed 3 high profile commercials for the United States government highlighting the dangers of the drug crystal meth.

 

THIN ICE

Born in 1958, Håkan Berthas studied at the New York International Centre of Photography and has worked as a photographer and cameraman for film and television. Since 1998 he has directed several films and documentaries for Swedish television. His work has won several awards, including the 2005 European CIVIS television prize for directing the documentary Nabila, a profile of a popular Muslim female rapper living in Sweden.

Fredrik Gertten, filmmaker & producer at WG film, Sweden
Fredrik Gertten speaks fluent Spanish and has worked as a journalist in Nicaragua in the eighties
and nineties.

 

ON THE ROAD WITH THE RED GOD: MACHHENDRANATH

Kesang Tseten

Kesang Tseten is a writer and filmmaker of Tibetan origin from Nepal. He is a graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and of Amherst College.
Among his films are "On the road with the red god: Machhendranath", which explores the complex human interactions that lie beneath the surface of the ancient and traditional chariot festival of the deity Rato Machhendranath.  The film won the Grand Prize at the 2006 Kendal Mountain Film Festival, as well as a Mention for the Prix Nanook-Jean Rouch at the 2006 Bilan du Film Ethnographique, and was voted Best Documentary of the Decade by the Nepal Motion Picture Association in 2005
Kesang Tseten’s We Corner People won Best Nepali Documentary at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (2006) and was selected as the inaugural film for the 2nd International Film Festival on Water, “Voices from the Water.”

The film "We Homes Chaps", a personal documentary about a boarding school, Dr. Graham's Homes, founded in 1900 by a Scottish Presbyterian missionary in Kalimpong, India, to shelter and educate outcast Anglo-Indian, Tibetan refugee and other children of marginal communities; "We Homes Chaps" was screened at the Margaret Mead International Film and Video Festival, Mountainfilm Telluride, Visual Communications in LA and numerous other venues.
Tseten wrote the original screenplay for "Mukundo" (Mask of Desire), which won the Best Script Award from the Nepal Motion Pictures Association in 2000. The film was an Academy Award selection from Nepal.
A second feature script "Karma", about an errant Buddhist nun, is presently in production.
His stories have appeared in An Other Voice: English Writing from Nepal, which he co-edited and was published by Martin Chautari in 2003, and Secret Places, New Writing from Nepal in Manoa, published by the University of Hawaii.