MIKE PRATT

With a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University, Mike Pratt has earned numerous scholarships and awards for his films. His thesis film, THE BEAUTIFUL WORLD, won Outstanding Experimental, Cinematography, Art Direction, Technical Award, Sound Design and others at the 1994 NYU Film Festival.

In the beginning, he worked on asphalt crews, was a short order cook, did stints as a fashion model in Milan, Italy and was a pro surfer in California and Hawaii. After owning a surfboard factory in Florida, it was on to New York, and a scholarship in the NYU film program.

Five years of cab driving later, he graduated cum laude. In addition, he received numerous school-based awards, including best narrative screenplay in the 1989 NYU Video Festival for the short I HAVE NO PICTURE OF THE SKY. He was the cinematographer for EYES OF A BLUE DOG. Upon graduating, he spent six months developing OCEAN DRIVE, a sit-com based on the South Beach Miami OCEAN DRIVE, a sit-com based on the South Beach Miami Fashion scene.

In 1995, he and Stephen Earnhart, of Miramax Films, completed A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A FOOL, a film dealing with a hapless carney finding himself transformed from unwanted outcast to heroic savior of a floundering circus. Aside from film work, his other current projects include a collection of short stories, an audio play, and a novel. Mike Pratt is a musician as well as a filmmaker, and recently signed a six-record deal with David Byrne’s label. Being that he is the quintessential starving artist, he occasionally works on commercial projects such as co-sound designer on the feature HALLOWEEN VI, and SUDDEN MANHATTAN an arthouse farce written and directed by Adrienne Shelly. For his diverse life experience, numerous artistic involvements, and unusual aesthetic sensibility for filmmaking, we are very proud to present Mike Pratt to you as a judge for the 29th Film Festival.

JULIA REICHERT

Julia Reichert has been an active independent filmmaker since 1970. Two of her films, SEEING RED and UNION MAIDS, have been nominated for Academy Awards in the feature documentary category.

The five films she created with partner James Klein (including the above and GROWING UP FEMALE, METHADONE: AN AMERICAN WAY OF DEALING, and MEN’S LIVES) have been screened at most international film festivals, including the New York, Telluride, Sundance and Berlin Festivals. All of her work has been broadcast on national prime time television on PBS. Her critically acclaimed film SEEING RED was released theatrically in one hundred cities.

Ms. Reichert’s greatest challenge to date was the co-producing, co-writing and directing of her first fiction feature, EMMA & ELVIS. Her instincts have always drawn her to explore the edges between political and personal life. EMMA & ELVIS encompasses the pain and joy off an activist’s life. UNION MAIDS focuses on a generation of working class women who organize trade unions. SEEING RED examines the generation of Americans that joined the Communist Party in the 1930’s. This film 1s an informed look into the lives of the individuals of
the American Communist Party, who found their passionate commitment to their beliefs ended up in disillusionment in the system.

As a priority, Ms. Reichert has been committed to building the independent film community in Ohio and nationally throughout her career.  She co-founded New Day Films, a distribution cooperative for independent films, in 1971, and was a founder of the Film Fund, a foundation that supported the making of social issue media, in 1977.  She received her Bachelor of Arts, in Documentary Arts from Antioch College, in Ohio. Now a professor at Wright State University, in Dayton, Ohio, she is currently directing, writing and producing a documentary series about the cultural history of women’s sexuality. Ms. Reichert’s extensive knowledge and experience in producing, funding, and distributing high quality films is a true inspiration and testament to the independent spirit of film.

STANDISH LAWDER

As a filmmaker, art historian, teacher and artist, Standish D. Lawder’s internationally known as one of the founding fathers of the experimental film movement in the early 1960’s. Standish has devoted his life to the exploration of film and the visual realm, taking the viewer on a majical tour into the subconscious world of dreams and imagination. His experimental films – 28 of them, including prize winners at some of the world’s most prestigious festivals – are combinations of metaphysical musings, sociological satire, cartoon humor and commentary on contemporary paranoia.

“Film,” Lowder says, “has a majic all its own. I’ve spent my life trying to ‘mine the majic’ out of it”. Everywhere in Lawder’s existence, art in­tersects with science and technology. Art his­tory captured his imagination, and he earned a doctorate on the subject at Yale University. Lowder later inaugurated the first course in the history of film at Yale where he taught from 1965-1975, founding the Yale Film Festival.

In 1975, Standish became the chairman of the department of visual arts at the University of California at San Diego, building the art film program into one unrivaled in the country, emphasizing film as an art, and performance rather than a dramatic presentation or conventional narrative tool.

When the experimental film movement began to wane in the early 1970’s, Standish began searching for alternative modes of vision. In 1973, he was awarded the first Guggenheim Fellowship in stereoscopic (3-D) filmmaking, an activity that had absorbed his energies ever since. “3-D is one of the most fascinating visual experiences I’ve known,” he says. “The world is intensely real with a sense of objects in space – like a magical Easter egg you can walk right into.”

Standish currently lives in Denver working out of his stereoscopic film studio Babylonian productions. It is an honor to have such a profound visionary share his dreams of joy and madness with us all.