48
Guest Bios Justine Eister
Chantal Akerman Chantal Akerman is a Paris-based filmmaker, writer, actor, producer, composer, and one of the most important European directors of her generation. Akerman started making her own films in the late '60s and gave a new meaning to the term "independent film" as an embodiment of pure independence and creativity. Her body of work includes Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; Saute ma ville (Blow up my town); News from Home; Les Rendezvous d 'Anna; Je, tu, il, elle; Window Shopping; Toute une nuit (All night long); Les Annèes 80 (The Eighties); Nuit et jour (Night and Day); D'Est (From the East); Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des annèes 60 à Bruxelles (Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 1960s in Brussels); Un Divan à New York (A Couch in New York); Sud; and La Captive. Almayer’s Folly is her 46th film.
Dale Brumfield Dale Brumfield is the author of Standers; Remnants: A Novel about God, Insurance and Quality Floorcoverings; Three Buck Naked Commodes: and 18 More Tales from a Small Town; and the eBook releases Trapped Under the Pack-Ice and Bad Day at the Amusement Park. He is also an arts features writer, cartoonist, and opinion commentator in Richmond, VA's Style Weekly magazine, and in 2010 won numerous state and national awards for his investigative cover story The Best Worst Movie you Never Saw, about the ‘lost’ 1982 Richmond movie Rock n' Roll Hotel. He lives in Doswell, VA, and blogs at www. newsfromdoswell.com.
Justine Eister grew up on Vashon Island. She moved to Olympia in 2006 to attend The Evergreen State College, graduating in 2010. You Make Me Feel So Young is her feature film debut, though her face is already familiar to many Olympians due to her prominent social position in several local circles.
Richard Elfman Richard Elfman grew up in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles (Boyz n the Hood (1991)), and has been a semiprofessional boxer, food and wine critic, and successful stage director. He is also a noted Afro-Latin percussionist and the founder of the original Mystic Knights of the Oingo-Boingo. Richard's first novel, “The Schlemazl of Sebriem” will be published later this year.
Suzanne Fletcher Suzanne Fletcher is an actress based in Los Angeles, best known for her collaborations with Sara Driver and photographer Nan Goldin.
Dan Halsted Dan Halsted is the head programmer at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR, as well as the organizer of the Grindhouse Film Festival and founder of the 35mm Shaolin Film Archive. In 2009, Dan unearthed the largest collection of 35mm martial arts films in the Western Hemisphere from an abandoned Chinese theater in Vancouver, B.C. He's dedicated himself to preserving these films and presenting them to modern audiences.
Todd Haynes Portland, Oregon resident Todd Haynes grew up in Encino, CA before earning a B.A. in Arts and Semiotics at Brown University and working towards a M.F.A. at Bard College. His 1991 debut feature, Poison, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Subsequent films include Safe (1995), Velvet Goldmine (1998), Far From Heaven (2002), and I'm Not There (2007), as well as the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011). He has earned an Academy Award nomination for Original Screenplay and has won two Independent Spirit Awards.
Rachel Leah Jones Rachel Leah Jones is a director/producer born in Berkeley, California and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel. She has a BA in Race, Class, & Gender Studies and an MFA in Media Arts Production. Her directorial credits include 500 Dunam on the Moon (France/USA, 2002) and Ashkenaz (Israel/Netherlands, 2007). Jones has worked on numerous socially and politically engaged documentaries in Israel/Palestine such as Wall, Citizen Bishara, and The Bombing (dir. Simone Bitton) and Raging Dove, Café Noah and Warp And Weft (dir. Duki Dror). Over the years, she has been affiliated with various progressive media outlets such as the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem, where she worked as a researcher, writer, and photo editor, and the critically-acclaimed public TV/radio program Democracy Now!, where she worked as a camera operator and video editor.
Phillip Kaufman
OFS is proud to make Philip Kaufman an inaugural recipient of the Olympia Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award! Raised in Chicago and schooled in the ivy covered lecture halls of the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School, Kaufman went on to a career in filmmaking that has lasted nearly half a century. It has been said that his early backpacking years through Europe watching Cassevettes films in tiny cinemas served as fuel to the fire in his becoming a filmmaker. You can see the independent influence of the self exiled American in Europe in one of his most iconic films Henry and June, which is a classic story