Ute Aurand (b. 1957, Frankfurt, Germany) studied filmmaking at the Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie (dffb) from 1979 to 1985, and started producing her own films in 1981.
 Between 1990 and 1995, she created the series Filmarbeiterinnen-Abend at the Arsenal cinema, Berlin, featuring mostly experimental films made by women.
She co-founded the monthly Filmsamstag programs (www.filmsamstag.de) that ran from 1997 to 2007. Her teaching experience includes the Experimental film class at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Zürich; Deutsche Film - und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb); and in 2001, 2002, and 2004 she taught for extended periods in India.
In October 2008 she had a U.S. film tour with Renate Sami and Milena Gierke that went to the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Harvard Film Archive, Mount Holyoke College, and Anthology Film Archives. In May-June 2009, the tour headed to Japan where they went to Waseda University, Tokyo; the Museum of Modern Art, Yokohama; and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

Luke Fowler (b. 1978, Glasgow, Scotland) is an artist, filmmaker, and musician who over the past 15 years, has explored numerous communities of people, outward thinkers, and histories of the left, through rigorous and diverse modes of research. Deploying self-shot 16mm and archival footage, Fowler recounts the stories of alternative histories in Britain, from anti-psychiatry to feminist photography, communal music-making, and workers’ night classes. The work produced is poetic and political, structural and documentary. Working with archival material and collaborating with sound artists such as Lee Patterson and Eric La Casa, Fowler has produced a diverse series of portraits that includes psychiatrist R.D. Laing, Marxist historian E.P. Thompson, avant-garde composer Cornelius Cardew, and reclusive environmentalist Bogman Palmjaguar. Fowler studied printmaking at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee, Scotland. His films have been presented widely, with recent screenings at the Harvard Film Archive, the Museum of Modern Art, and La Casa Encendida; and at international film festivals such as London, Rotterdam, and Berlin. He was nominated for the 2012 Turner Prize and received the inaugural Derek Jarman Award in 2008.

Naomi Kawase is a filmmaker based in Nara, Japan. Born and raised in Nara, Kawase studied Film at Visual Arts Osaka, graduating in 1989. Her documentary shorts Embracing and Katatsumori’ received international recognition and awards at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in 1995. With her first feature, Suzaku (1997), she became the youngest filmmaker to receive the Caméra d’Or at the Festival de Cannes. At Cannes, she has also won the Grand Prix with Mogari / The Mourning Forest (2007), the Carrosse d'Or in 2009 with Nanayo, and also served as one of the jurors for the competition in 2013. In 2015, Kawase was honored with the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Minister of Culture. Aside from being a filmmaker, she writes serial essays and makes commercials. She is also the founder and Executive Director of the Nara International Film Festival, where she emphasizes support for the young generation of filmmakers. The 2016 festival will be held September 17-22. Her latest feature film, An / Sweet Bean (2015), has been a huge success around the world, and the DVD is on sale in Japan.

Saul Levine (b. New Haven, Connecticut) is a maker and advocate of avant-garde film and, more recently, video. He is currently a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he has taught for more than 35 years and has programmed for the longstanding MassArt Film Society. His work has been screened nationally and worldwide, and recently was honored at the 2015 L’Âge d’Or Festival inBrussels and at the 2016 (S8) Peripheral Film Festival in Coruña, Spain.

Brigid McCaffrey is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker whose work focuses on environments and people in precarious states of flux. Her films reflect a tension between individualism and community amidst increasingly unstable economic and ecological landscapes. Shaped by the process of portraiture, the films respond to the physical and emotional changes of their subjects, creating documents that fuse representations of self and place. Her films have screened at various venues, including the Bradford International Film Festival (BAFICI), Cinéma du Réel, DocLisboa, L’Alternativa, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Torino International Film Festival, Other Cinema in San Francisco, and the Los Angeles Filmforum. Her film, Castaic Lake, was awarded Best Cinematography at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2011. Paradise Springs received the Marian McMahon Award at Images Festival in 2014, and was presented by Ballroom Marfa for the 2015 edition of Artists’ Film International. She received an MFA in Film and Video from CalArts and a BA in Photography and Film from Bard College.

Luis Ospina (b. 1949, Calí, Colombia) studied film at the University of Southern California and at UCLA, and was part of Grupo de Calí (Calí Group), along with artists Carlos Mayolo and Andrés Caicedo. He has directed 34 films, including two feature-length fiction films: Pura sangre / Pure Blood (1982) and Soplo de vida / Breath of Life (1999); and seven feature-length documentaries, among them: La desazón suprema: Retrato de Fernando Vallejo / The Supreme Uneasiness of Fernando Vallejo (2003), Un tigre de papel / Paper Tiger (2007), and Todo comenzó por el fin / It All Started at the End (2015). His short films and documentaries include: Oiga vea / Listen and Look (1971) and Agarrando pueblo / The Vampires of Poverty (1978), co-directed with Carlos Mayolo. His films have won awards at international film festivals such as Oberhausen, Biarritz, Havana, Sitges, Bilbao, Lille, Miami, Lima, and Toulouse. His work has been shown at the Tate Modern Gallery, Simon Guggenheim Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Dokumenta Kassel, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Reina Sofia Museum, and Jeu de Paume. Ospina is the director of the Calí International Film Festival (FICCALI).

Joaquim Pinto (b. 1957, Porto, Portugal) was a sound mixer for more than 100 films, in which he worked with such directors as Manoel de Oliveira, Raúl Ruiz, Werner Schroeter, and André Téchiné. Between 1987 and 1996 he produced some 30 films, including João César Monteiro’s Recollections of the Yellow House and God’s Comedy, both awarded at the Venice Film Festival. Some of his recent works are collaborations with Nuno Leonel: Rabo de Peixe / Fish Tail (2015), Fim de Citação / End of Quote (2013), O Novo Testamento de Jesus Cristo Segundo João / The New Testament of Jesus Christ according to John (2013), Porca Miséria / Pig of a Story (2007), Sol Menor / G Minor (2007). Pinto’s recent solo work is the biographical documentary E Agora? Lembra-me / What Now? Remind Me (2013).

Billy Woodberry (b. Dallas, Texas) is an independent filmmaker who has taught at the School of Film/Video and the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts since 1989. His feature film Bless Their Little Hearts (1984) is an essential work of Los Angeles cinema, informed by Woodberry's familiarity with Italian neorealism and the work of filmmakers in Cuba, Brazil, India, and Africa. It won the Interfilm ecumenical jury award at the Berlin Film Festival and was added to the Library of Congress' National Registry of Films in 2013. Woodberry has appeared in Charles Burnett'sWhen It Rains (1995), and provided narration for Thom Andersen's Red Hollywood (1996) and for James Benning's Four Corners (1998). Woodberry's two-hour video,The Architect, the Ants, and the Bees, was part of Facing the Music, a 2004 group exhibition, video, and multimedia installation at the REDCAT gallery, documenting the building of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the transformation of downtown Los Angeles. His work has screened at the Viennale, DocLisboa, Amiens International Film Festival, Camera Austria Symposium, Harvard Film Archive, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, and the Museum of Modern Art.

Kidlat Tahimik is an idol of iconoclasts worldwide, a pioneer of the postcolonial essay film, and the grandfather of the Philippine New Wave. He has made a career of—as he puts it—“straying on track.” Born Eric de Guia and educated at the Wharton School of Business, Tahimik renounced both career and name to become Kidlat Tahimik (roughly translated as “Quiet Lighting”) and embrace a filmmaking aesthetic unabashedly personal and defiantly political, filled with both warmth and fire. Tahimik’s postcollege sojourn in Germany resulted in a friendship with Werner Herzog (who cast him in The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser), a marriage, and a deceptively ramshackle debut film, Perfumed Nightmare (1977), whose easygoing interrogation of neocolonial identity, Philippine culture, and global economies turned it into a surprise international “hit.” Never shying away from embracing a proud, postcolonial identity, yet always grounded in personal observation and a quiet, understated humor, Tahimik’s works take special joy in highlighting the indigenous cultures and history of the Philippines and beyond, whether honoring Tahimik’s beloved bahag loincloth, profiling local craftsmen and women, or recounting tales of Magellan’s Filipino navigator/slave. Assembled from countless hours of filming, drawn from months and years worth of work, “my footages are like tiles in a mosaic,” he writes. “You shuffle them, change them around. In my process, nothing is permanent.”