Rea Tajiri is a Japanese American video artist and filmmaker. She was born in Chicago, Illinois. Tajiri attended California Institute of the Arts and worked as a producer on various film and video projects in Los Angeles and New York. Tajiri's video art has been included in the 1989, 1991, and 1993 Whitney Biennials. She has also been exhibited at The New Museum for Contemporary Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum, The Walker Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archives.  -"in.com"

Lourdes Portillo is a Mexican-born Chicana director, producer, and writer, who first came into contact with film making in Hollywood at 21 years of age while assisting a friend in making a documentary. Portillo apprenticed at San Francisco National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians which  She received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1978. She specialized in documentary style and has directed several films—After the Earthquake (1979), Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (1986), La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead (1988), Vida (1989), Columbus on Trial (1992), Mirrors of the Heart  (1993), Sometimes my Feet go Numb (1993), El Diablo Nunca Duerme (1994), Hoy es tu Dia (1998), Corpus: A Home Movie About Selena (1999), Conversations With Intellectuals About Selena (1999), Culture Clash: Mission Magic Mystery Tour (2001), Señorita Extraviada (2001), My McQueen (2004), Al Mas Alla (2008).   http://www.lourdesportillo.com/films/films.php?category=films   http://www.lourdesportillo.com/about/about_bio.php

Liz Garbus graduated Magna Cum Laude from Brown University in 1992 and is a Fellow of the Open Society’s Center on Crime, Communities, and Culture. In 1998, Garbus achieved international public and critical acclaim for her Academy Award-nominated film, THE FARM: ANGOLA, USA. Garbus has also spoken at a number of film-related events, including the 1999 and 2000 Independent Feature Film Market, panels and workshops at the Sundance Film Festival, as a Guest Lecturer at NYU, and she has served on juries at several major film festivals. SOURCE:http://www.sfjff.org/film/biography?id=4696&last=Garbus&first=Liz&role=Director

JENNIFER PHANG wrote and directed the award-winning feature film HALF-LIFE, which premiered domestically at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and internationally at the 2008 Tokyo International Film Festival as a Grand Prix Nominee. LOOK FOR WATER, Phang’s follow-up project, was selected for the 2008 Sundance Screenwriters Labs, won the L’Oréal Woman of Worth Vision Award at the Tribeca All Access, and received both an Annenberg Film Grant and a Cinereach Grant from the Sundance Institute. - http://urbanworld.org/narrative-shorts/advantageous/

Writer and director Najwa Najjar has worked in both documentary and fiction. Previous work includes several award-winning films including Naim & Wadee'a (2000), Quintessence of Oblivion, Blue Gold (2004) and They Came from the East (2004). In 2009, she produced a collective of short films: Gaza Winter. Her debut feature film Pomegranates & Myrrh (2008) picked up 10 international awards; was sold worldwide and released theatrically. Najjar has been a speaker on numerous panels about cinema and a jury member at several international film festivals.   -Festivalscope.com

Carmen Marron had no desire to ever become a filmmaker. She was a guidance counselor in south Phoenix, and was working with kids; in an area similar to the community she grew up in- a rough neighborhood in Chicago. She met kids who reminded her of her friends growing up; who kept making the same choices that ruined their lives. Seeing that film and television was a way to reach out to kids, she decided to write a script about characters that mirrored their lives and hopefully inspire kids to make better choices. http://movieline.com/2011/05/09/meet-carmen-marron-hollywoods-most-improbable-auteur/

Gurinder Chadha is one of Britain’s most proven and respected filmmakers. She began her career as a BBC news reporter and directed award-winning documentaries for the British Film Institute, BBC, and Channel Four. Her first feature, Bhaji on the Beach, was nominated for a BAFTA and won the Evening Standard British Film Award for best newcomer. What’s Cooking?, which opened the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, was the first British script invited to the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab. Bend It Like Beckam was an audience favorite at Sundance in 2003 and was nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA; it remains the highest-grossing British film ever in Great Britain. http://sundance.bside.com/2010/films/itsawonderfulafterlife_sundance2010 

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Lemmons started her career at age 19 as a hostage in the telefilm 11th Victim. She went on to do Off-Boradway stage work for the next 10 years in such productions asRomeo and Juliet, Balm in Gilead, and The Avenue U Boys, before returning to the screen. In 1988 she started working in films like Spike Lee's School Daze, Vampire's Kiss and Silence of the Lambs, as well as more telefilm work. She even landed the role of Alex Robbins in the television series Under Cover. Following the advice of her husband, actor Vondie Curtis-Hall, she decided to direct a screenplay she had penned calledEve's Bayou, and went on to achieve this goal with flying colors. Besides being the highest grossing indi film in 1997, it also received the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature, seven NAACP Image Award nominations, and a special first time director award created just for her by the National Board of Review. She continued to act for the next couple of years in films like Gridlock'd and 'Til There Was You, but focused much of her attention to writing and working with scripts like The Passion, The Impersonator and Privacy. In 2001, she reprised her role as director for the film The Caveman's Valentine, starring Samuel L. Jackson.  -Tributemovies.com

Patricia Riggen is a native of Guadalajara Mexico. She began her career as a write for a documentary series for Guadalajara television and later worked as the Creative Executive for the Mexican Film Institute. In 1998, Riggen moved to New York City where she earned a master’s degree in Directing and Screenwriting from Columbia University. La Misma Luna is Riggen’s first feature, it also the 3rd highest grossing Mexican film in the United States and the 5th highest grossing in Mexico.

Born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Ian Iqbal Rashid grew up in Toronto, Canada. His first feature film, Touch of Pink (2004), which he both wrote and directed, was partially filmed in Toronto. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was distributed internationally by Sony Picture Classics. Prior to that, Rashid’s only directorial experience had been two short films, but he’d also written for British television, including the critically-acclaimed TV Drama, This Life, for which he shared a Writers Guild of Great Britain Award. He returned to Toronto to film his second feature, a dance film called How She Move (2008), penned by Canadian screenwriter Annmarie Morais and featuring a cast of newcomers. Rashid, the author of three award-winning collections of poetry, lives in London with his Australian partner Peter Ride. http://www.tribute.ca/people/ian-iqbal-rashid/12785/