CONVENTION is the third nonfiction feature by filmmaker AJ Schnack. His previous films include KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON (2006), for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and received the inaugural Cinematic Vision Award at AFI Silverdocs, and GIGANTIC (A TALE OF TWO JOHNS) (2002). Both films were released theatrically and on DVD in North America and were broadcast in the US on the Sundance Channel. ABOUT A SON premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and was released theatrically in France and Japan and aired in the UK on More’s True Stories.

Schnack is the author and editor of the popular nonfiction film blog All these wonderful things (http://edendale.typepad.com), which he began in 2005 and which is perhaps the most widely read resource for nonfiction filmmaking online. He is the founder and co-chair of the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking, which recently celebrated its 2nd edition at the Times Center in New York City.

Schnack is currently in production on a feature film about Branson, Missouri, the Ozark Mountain show-town with David Wilson. He is also in development on a new ensemble film (in the style of CONVENTION) that hopes to shoot in early 2010.

Steven Bognar first documentary feature, PERSONAL BELONGINGS, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast on the PBS series P.O.V. His short documentary WAITING FOR MARTY screened on the Independent Film Channel. His short films PICTURE DAY and GRAVEL both premiered at Sundance. PICTURE DAY screened at the Guggenheim Museum, and won Best Short Documentary at the Florida Film Festival. GRAVEL won Best Short Film at the Nashville Film Festival, and was broadcast on the Sundance Channel. His film A LION IN THE HOUSE (made with Julia Reichert) premiered at Sundance, screened nationally on PBS, was nominated for a Best Documentary Independent Spirit Award, won the Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking and the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Film & Digital Media. His upcoming film (made with Julia Reichert) on the closing of a General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio is scheduled to premiere on HBO in September, 2009. Bognar has guest lectured at Harvard, Yale & Stanford, has guest edited THE INDEPENDENT Film & Video Monthly, guest curated The Journal of Short Film, and for two decades worked as a media arts educator in elementary, middle & high schools.

Jennifer Chikes works as a publicity and industry consultant with documentary and narrative filmmakers at film festivals worldwide. Previously, she worked in book publishing in publicity at Henry Holt and Company and licensing rights at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Prior to CONVENTION, she produced the narrative feature film, THE FOOT FIST WAY.

Britta Erickson has spent the last decade programming and promoting the work of thousands of filmmakers through her work producing the Starz Denver Film Festival and the uber-cool outdoor film and music series, Film on the Rocks. She has served on festival juries and panels for SXSW, Cleveland International Film Festival, Savannah Film Festival, Independent Film Festival of Boston and CineVegas.

In 2008, Britta led the Denver Film Society team that worked with the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs and the Denver Host Committee to spearhead “Cinemocracy” - the official online film festival of the Denver Democratic National Convention – and she worked with Starz Entertainment, Impact Film Festival and SeaChange Communications to produce the Starz Green Room – a hub of film and ideas during the convention.

Prior to joining the Denver Film Society in 1999, Britta was the founding executive director of the Acoma Center, a non-profit performing arts venue in downtown Denver, where she co-founded Curious Theatre Company and produced several award-winning productions including the world premiere of Praying for Rain, and the regional premieres of How I Learned to Drive and Art.

Britta has a degree in broadcast journalism and did graduate-level work in art history. She is a proud (and rare) second generation Denver native.

Daniel Junge’s first feature-length film, CHIEFS, on the Wyoming Indian High School basketball team, won best documentary at the 2002 Tribeca Film Festival and broadcast nationally on PBS. Since that time, he has directed a number of films, including the regional Emmy-winner BIG BLUE BEAR, the PBS-broadcast READING YOUR RIGHTS, and the 6-part series COMMON GOOD – recipient of four regional Emmys. Junge’s award-winning feature documentary IRON LADIES OF LIBERIA, on Africa’s first elected female president, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and has aired on over 50 broadcasters worldwide, including the BBC and PBS, and won two awards at the Banff Television Festival. Junge’s most recent film, THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY, won the audience and jury awards at South by Southwest and was short-listed for an Academy Award. It recently aired on HBO, for whom Junge is currently in production on a new film on assisted suicide.

Shirley Moyers feature film work includes producing the documentaries KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON, which was nominated for a 2007 Independent Spirit Award, and GIGANTIC (A TALE OF TWO JOHNS), both of which were released theatrically in the US, Canada and abroad, and which aired on the Sundance Channel. She is currently in development on her directing debut – a feature length documentary on the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate and its affects on the Colorado River basin. She is an Emmy-winning, Grammy-nominated filmmaker, whose work has received numerous awards and honors, including MTV Video Music and Billboard Music Video awards. As a Partner/Producer in Bonfire Films she has produced over 80 short form music video projects for multiple major and indie labels, as well as the platinum selling long form video “311 Enlarged to Show Detail”. She has worked with a number of popular music artists, including blink-182, the Fugees, Ben Folds Five and 311. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College.

Laura Poitras was nominated for an Academy Award, Independent Spirit Award, and Emmy Award for MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY (2006), a documentary about the U.S. occupation of Iraq. MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY was released theatrically by Zeitgeist Films.

She received a Peabody Award and was nominated for both an Emmy and Independent Spirit Award for FLAG WARS (made with Linda Bryant). FLAG WARS premiered at the 2003 SXSW Film Festival where is won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary.

Poitras is currently working on RELEASE, a documentary about Al Quaeda and Guantanamo Bay Prison. Following MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY, RELEASE is the second documentary in a trilogy titled The New American Century about America post 9/11. The third film will focus on domestic surveillance in the United States.

She is currently the Artistic Director of Witness to Guantanamo, a multi-year archive project to conduct in-depth interviews with former Guantanamo prisoners.

Poitras is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation/Tribeca Film Institute, and a Sundance Institute Documentary Lab Fellowship. Her work has received support from the Independent Television Service (ITVS), P.O.V./American Documentary, Creative Capital, Sundance Institute Documentary Fund, New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Vital Projects Fund, Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund, Chicken and Egg Pictures, and others.

Before making documentaries, she worked as a professional chef. She lives in New York City and teaches documentary filmmaking at Yale University.

Julia Reichert is a godmother of the American independent & documentary film movement. Her film GROWING UP FEMALE was the first documentary of the modern Women’s Movement. Her films UNION MAIDS and SEEING RED were both nominated for Academy Awards for Best Feature Documentary, making her the first woman to be a two-time Oscar nominee in that category. Her film A LION IN THE HOUSE (made with Steven Bognar) premiered at Sundance, screened nationally on PBS, was nominated for a Best Documentary Independent Spirit Award and won the Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking and the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Film & Digital Media. She co-wrote and directed the fiction feature EMMA & ELVIS and produced the fiction feature THE DREAM CATCHER. Her upcoming film (made with Steven Bognar) on the closing of a General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio is scheduled to premiere on HBO in September, 2009. Julia is co-founder of New Day Films, the film distribution co-op. She is author of “Doing It Yourself,” the first book on self-distribution in independent film. Reichert has served on the editorial board of the PBS series P.O.V., has guest lectured at Harvard & Yale, has mentored dozens of filmmakers over three decades, is a Fulbright Fellow, and is professor of film production at Wright State University.

Wayne is currently producing the upcoming documentary The Death of Reasonable Doubt for director Terry Benedict (The Conscientious Objector) and he previously served as TV Pilots Programmer for the Vail Film Festival. He owns and runs production company Prosody Entertainment through which he has produced, written and directed approximately thirty industrial projects for clients including PricewaterhouseCoopers, the YMCA, Columbia University, Planitax, Inc. and outdoor outfitter Northwest Voyageurs

Wayne also serves as the CFO for Genre Film Partners, a mutual fund of genre films targeting the avid 13-29 year-old demographic. Prior to that he worked on Wall Street advising technology, media and entertainment clients in buy-side mergers and acquisitions.

As a writer, he is a member of the Writers Guild of America and his first feature screenplay, Playing Through, was optioned to an affiliate of Warner Brothers. He has been nominated for the Showtime Tony Cox Screenwriting award, the IFP Market Pipe Dream Screenwriting Award and the International Family Film Festival Screenwriting Award. He also has several acting credits and most recently appeared in Mystery ER on Discovery Health Channel and has a role in an upcoming feature film.

Paul Taylor is a director/producer who received awards at IDFA, Edinburgh, Tribeca and both an IDA & Grierson award for his first feature, WE ARE TOGETHER. Since then he has produced ROUGH AUNTIES for Kim Longinotto, which won the Grand Jury prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival 2009. Paul is currently Executive Producing a number of projects including the latest film from Steve James (HOOP DREAMS, STEVIE), alongside developing material to direct himself.

Nathan Truesdell is a multi-hyphenate filmmaker based in Columbia, Missouri. He is currently directing his first feature documentary about money artists, counterfeiters and currency designers. CONVENTION is his first nonfiction feature as producer, for which he coordinated the five camera-shoot spread throughout the city of Denver. In addition to his work on CONVENTION, he is producing a film about Branson, MO with AJ Schnack and David Wilson. He has directed a number of nonfiction and fiction short films and has taught cinematography. He enjoys producing, shooting, editing and writing bios.

David Wilson is a 1996 graduate of Hampshire College in Massachusetts whose home is Columbia, Missouri. As a filmmaker, David has made several original short films, and, in 2002, he co-wrote and produced an original experimental opera called “The Nitrate Hymnal,” which debuted in Washington, D.C. Currently, David is in production on a short documentary about competitive birdwatching and a feature-length project with AJ Schnack and Nathan Truesdell about Branson, Missouri. David is also the founder and co-director of the True/False Film Fest, one of the nation’s preeminent venues for new and nontraditional nonfiction filmmaking.

Richard Turner is Senior Vice President Business and Legal Affairs, Programming at Starz Entertainment as well as Senior Vice President Business and Legal Affairs, Acquisitions, at Anchor Bay Entertainment, both of which are subsidiaries of Starz, LLC. He is responsible for all agreements related to the acquisition of motion pictures and television shows by Starz and Anchor Bay for theatrical, television and home video distribution, both from major studios and independents. He is also responsible for distribution agreements for Anchor Bay. Richard has been at Starz since 1999. Prior to Starz, Richard was an attorney at Sony Pictures Entertainment. Recent acquisitions of Anchor Bay Films, the theatrical releasing company of Anchor Bay, include Spread, starring Ashton Kutcher, Open Road, and Not Forgotten. Anchor Bay is currently producing, along with A Bigger Boat, the motion picture Frozen.

In 2005, Richard was Chairman of the Board of the Denver Film Society, which produces the Starz Denver Film Festival, and operates the Starz FilmCenter, a year-round cinemateque located in Denver and he was a member of the board from 2001 to 2006. He is a regular attendee at international film festivals, including Telluride and Toronto. He has participated in a panel discussion at the Toronto International Film Festival on digital distribution of motion pictures. He has been a juror at the Savannah Film Festival three times.

Richard is a graduate of the University of California Santa Barbara and he graduated magna cum laude from Pepperdine University School of Law.

Heather Winters is an award-winning producer and founder of the New York based production company, Studio On Hudson, along with partner Joe Morley. Heather executive produced Morgan Spurlock’s Sundance winning and Academy Award® nominated film, SUPER SIZE ME, Anthony Haney-Jardine’s Sundance winning ANYWHERE, USA, the critically acclaimed documentary CLASS ACT, amongst numerous others. Heather is co-producer on Shirli Nada Michalevicz’s, BORDERLINE, and executive producer on AJ Schnack’s, CONVENTION. Heather is the producer’s representative on Jim Killeen’s, GOOGLE ME, and serves as a mentor, juror and Advisory Board member for the IFP Independent Filmmaker Labs as well as other organizations.

Joe has been a partner with Heather Winters partner in Studio-On-Hudson since 2000, and has served as Executive Producer on all SOH feature projects, including the 2008 Sundance Award winning narrative Anywhere USA which will be released in the fall of 2009, and Morgan Spurlock’s Sundance Award winning and Academy Award nominated documentary Super Size Me. Joe is executive producer on the upcoming documentary, CONVENTION, which will have its World Premiere at Silverdocs 2009.
An accomplished writer/producer in his own right, Joe co-wrote the 2006 SOH film Class Act, and has produced more than 100 live events and video projects. He is a working playwright whose scripts are seen in the off Broadway theaters.

Studio-On-Hudson is a New York-based production company and producer’s representative committed to seeking excellence and original voices in independent film, television, theatre and new media.

Specializing in development, production and financing of independent feature films and documentaries, Studio-On-Hudson was founded in 2000 by Producer/Writer Heather Winters and producing partner, Joe Morley.

Studio-on-Hudson is currently representing filmmakers, developing and producing an upcoming slate of film and television projects.

Studio-On-Hudson executive produced Morgan Spurlock’s Academy Award® nominated and Sundance award winning documentary, “Super Size Me”, Anthony (Chusy) Haney-Jardine’s “Anywhere, u.s.a.” (Winner, Special Jury Prize, Dramatic Competition, 2008 Sundance Film Festival) and produced the critically acclaimed documentary “Class Act” (Winner, Rhode Island International Film Festival, Artivist Film Festival). Winters and Morley are co-producing Shirli Nada Michalevicz’s “Borderline” and are the executive producers of AJ Schnack’s (Kurt Cobain, About a Son) documentary, “Convention”.