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PAH-FEST:New Mexico 2007
July 16-22 in Grants, New Mexico
Festival Judges
PENELOPE SPHEERIS
From cutting edge independent features to mainstream studio comedies to historically significant documents of youth culture, the span of Penelope Spheeris' work has made her an internationally recognized artist. After graduating from UCLA Film School with a Master of Fine Arts degree, she worked as an editor and cinematographer, then formed Rock 'n' Reel, the first music video company in Los Angeles. She directed and produced music videos for such acts as Fleetwood Mac, Foghat, Funkadelic, David Essex, and America, among many others. She is best known for the critically acclaimed documentaries, "The Decline of Western Civilization", "The Decline II: The Metal Years", and most recently, "The Decline: Part III" about punk kids living on the streets, the profits from which are donated to charities for homeless and abused children. Penelope's early feature credits include "Suburbia", "The Boys Next Door" and "Dudes". In 1991, she directed her first studio film, the box office smash, "Wayne's World" and subsequently directed and produced "The Beverly Hillbillies". Other studio pictures include "The Little Rascals", "Black Sheep" and "Senseless". "We Sold Our Souls for Rock 'n Roll", the feature documentary on Ozzfest was presented at Sundance. Most recently, Spheeris directed and produced the independent feature "The Kid and I", about a young man with Cerebral Palsy. Currently she is the writer-director of the Janis Joplin biography: "The Gospel According to Janis".
ELYSE ROBERTS
Elyse Meredith Roberts, a native of Chicago, brings to this team a wealth of knowledge gained from her experience through her business, civic, and political organizations. She is Chairman and CEO of Digi-Flicks International, Inc., a company she co-founded with Wayne Kurzeja, providing world-class security, transport solutions and systems integration for digital cinema distribution and exhibition. Elyse Meredith is the Executive Producer of Christopher Coppola's latest Digital High-Definition feature film, The Creature of the Sunny-Side Up Trailer Park. Elyse is the wife of Illinois manufacturer, Raymond J. Roberts, principal of Coilcraft, Inc. She is also President of Cayco Construction Inc., a commercial contracting firm that builds for the fast food industry. She is the Trustee of the Roberts Family Foundation benefiting The Lyric Opera of Chicago, Raue Center for the Arts, The BHARE Foundation, The Pioneer Center and others. Elyse Roberts has served as Secretary of the Board of Directors for the Pioneer Center for over 20 years. The Pioneer Center serves developmentally disabled and mentally ill clients in Illinois.
RICHARD BEGGS
Richard Beggs, a sound designer and mixer on more than 60 feature films since 1976, has worked with Francis Coppola, Barry Levinson, Sophia Coppola, Alfonso Cuaron and other major directors. He won an Academy Award for sound for Apocalypse Now and a TEC Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Film Sound, and has received five Golden Reel sound nominations.
Beginning in 1988, in addition to his work on films, he created scores for three contemporary ballets, winning an Isadora Duncan Award for the ballet score of “The Awakening.”
Trained as a painter, Beggs received a B.F.A from the San Francisco Art Institute and an M.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts). He exhibited at SFMOMA, the Oakland Museum of Art and collaborated with the S.F. Museum of Conceptual Art.
Beggs continues to paint and teaches film sound as an adjunct professor at the California College of the Arts. He is an associate fellow of Berkeley College at Yale University, and sits on the board of directors of the San Francisco Arts Education Project.
A native San Franciscan, Beggs has his sound studio at the San Francisco Film Centre in the Presidio of San Francisco. His recent projects include Marie Antoinette, released fall 2006, and Children of Men.
ROBERT M. YOUNG
Robert M. Young, one of our foremost independent filmmakers, has an award-winning body of work that includes classic documentaries and acclaimed feature films, such as Nothing But A Man, Alambrista!, Short Eyes, Rich Kids, One Trick Pony, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, Extremities, Dominick and Eugene, Triumph of the Spirit, and Caught.
Mr. Young’s numerous awards include: Cannes’ Camera d’Or, San Sebastian’s Golden Concha for Best Film, Cuba’s Golden Coral for Best Film, Venice’s Primo San Georgio and The City of Venice Prize, an Emmy, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Memorial Awards for Journalism and an Academy Award Nomination for Children of Fate: Life and Death in a Sicilian Family which also won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Mr. Young has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
One of his earliest documentaries, Secrets of the Reef was named by Time Magazine “one of the ten best films of the year.” And his film for CBS: Eskimo: Fight for Life, won an Emmy as Best Documentary of the year. As a writer/director/cameraman and associate producer for the acclaimed NBC White Paper series, he made Sit-In and Angola: Journey to a War. For the latter, he walked 400 miles behind Portuguese lines with Angolan rebels to film the first encounters of their war. Both films received the George Polk Memorial Award as well as being cited in a Peabody Award to NBC. The Angola film also received the Overseas Press Club Citation for Best Foreign Reporting of the year. Young’s next film, The Inferno portrayed slum life in Palermo, Sicily so powerfully that NBC declined to air it. In 1993, Young’s son Andrew and his daughter-in-law Susan Todd, incorporated the NBC film into their film Children of Fate: Life and Death in a Sicilian Family, for which they received an Academy Award Nomination. Father and son together received the Best Cinematography Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
Young has made numerous other prize-winning documentaries. Among them are, The Maze, In the World of Sharks and the National Geographic Specials, Man of the Serengeti, Bushmen of the Kalahari and The Great Apes. In 1964 Young lived in an igloo above the Arctic Circle to capture the winter life of the Netsilik Eskimos. The project was sponsored by the National Science foundation and the Ford Foundation. It is the most accurate record of their traditional life. His first dramatic film for television, JT, received a Peabody Award.
For his first narrative feature, Young co-wrote, co-produced and photographed Nothing But a Man, winning two major prizes at the Venice Film Festival, as well as making numerous ten best lists. Nothing But a Man, also distinguished by being Malcolm X’s favorite film, was elected to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1994. Young’s first fictional feature film as writer/director and cinematographer, Alambrista! about a young Mexican who illegally crosses into the United States, won the coveted Camera d’Or for Best First Feature at the Cannes Film Festival and Best Feature at the San Sebastian Film Festival. A Director’s cut of Alambrista! is currently being released through the sponsorship of the Ford Foundation.
Young also produced American Me with Edward James Olmos. He also produced and photographed The Plot Against Harry for which he received an Indie Spirit nomination for Best Picture as well as Best Cinematographer.
Young’s other features include: Talent for the Game, Saving Grace, We Are The Children, Roosters, and Showtime’s Slave of Dreams and Solomon and Sheba, both filmed on location in Morocco. He also directed several episodes of ABC’s Nothing Sacred. His next theatrical feature film was Caught .which received an Indie Spirit Nomination for Best Director. He then directed a dramatic Imax film that is now in release: Panda: The China Adventure, set in China in 1936. He has recently directed for ITVS a fictional film True to the Game, written by a young African-American woman about life in Harlem. He also directed La Estrella, an hour episode for the program American Family. Last year he co-directed WALKOUT, a feature film for HBO. His latest directed films are four episodes of the new TV series BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.
He has recently completed his latest feature HUMAN ERROR (aka Below The Belt).