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Lisa Simmons is the founder and president of The Color of Film Collaborative, Inc., (TCOF), an organization of actors, producers, directors and others with an interest in creating and supporting positive images of people of color in film, theater, and other media. The Color of Film Collaborative co-produces the Roxbury Film Festival, a festival that celebrates the vision and the voice of independent filmmakers of color. Lisa has been producing independent films in the Boston area for over 10 years and serves on the Board Filmmakers Collaborative and The League of Women for Community Service, and is a former member of Women in Film and Video/New England for which she served for two years. She has received the Image Award from Women in Film New England, the Diversity award from Our Place Theater Project and a leadership award from the Urban League Guild of Eastern Massachusetts. Currently Lisa spends most of her time behind the camera producing, mentoring and creating more and better opportunities for filmmakers of color. In addition to producing other filmmakers' work, Lisa is also an independent producer and is currently producing and writing a documentary on the history of Boston's Black theatre during the WPA. She has also produced live theater in and around the Boston area.

Roger Rees is a five-year veteran of the Williamstown Theatre Festival where he has directed Jon Robin Baitz's *The Film Society*, *The Rivals* by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, *The Late Middle Classes* by Simon Gray, and Shakespeare's *The Taming of the Shrew* in which he also played Petruchio opposite Bebe Neuwirth. He appeared in WTF's 2004 production of *Cabaret & Main*, and took part in the Festival's 50th Anniversary Celebration, As Dreams Are Made On, this past August.

Since 1994, Anne Brengle has brought her considerable management and curatorial skills and her far-reaching vision to her position as Executive Director of the New Bedford Whaling Museum. She received her B.A. from New York University and completed coursework for an M.A. in Museum Studies at Lesley College Graduate School. She holds certificates from the Getty Leadership Institute, the Museum Management Program, University of Colorado; Project Management, Harvard University Graduate School of Design; Executive Summer Institute and Center for Creative Leadership, Jessie Ball duPont Fund Institute; Summer Institute-American Arts and the American Experience, Boston University, Museum of Fine Arts, and Yale University. Ms. Brengle served as Executive Director of the Rotch-Jones-Duff House and Garden Museum, New Bedford, 1991-94. Her awards include: New Bedford Standard Times Woman of the Year, 1999; Official Citation, State Senate of Massachusetts for Bringing a sense of dignity and culture to the city of New Bedford, 1998; Community Leader of the Year, New Bedford Chamber of Commerce, 1997; Official Citation, City of New Bedford for Significant contribution to the city's arts and culture, 1996. Ms. Brengle currently is Vice President of the Council of American Maritime Museums, and serves on the boards of the New Bedford Historic Commission, Waterfront Historic Area League, and the Massachusetts Advocates for the Arts, Sciences and Humanities.

American producer/director/cinematographer George Stevens made his professional acting debut at age five in the company of his actor-parents. Developing an interest in photography as a hobby, Stevens became an assistant movie cameraman at the age of 17. From 1927 through 1930, he was principal cameraman at Hal Roach Studios, shooting such classic two-reelers as Laurel and Hardy's *Two Tars *(1928) and *Below Zero* (1930), as well as a handful of feature films, including the 1927 Western *No Man's Law*. Stevens was elevated to director in 1930 for Roach's *Boy Friends* series. Stevens' directorial style displayed the same acute sense of visual dynamics that had distinguished his earlier work as a cameraman; the director refined and improved upon that style through sweat and persistence. Once he reached the "A" list, Stevens became one of the most meticulous and painstaking directors in the business, commencing production only after extensive research, filming take after take until perfection was achieved, and then spending as much as a full year editing the finished product. During World War II, Stevens was made an officer in the Signal Corps, filming vivid color footage of such historical milestones as the D-Day maneuvers and the liberation of the death camps; much of this footage was incorporated into the 1984 documentary *George Stevens: A Filmaker's Journey*, assembled by George Stevens Jr. After the war, Stevens produced and directed his final RKO assignment, *I Remember Mama* (1948), then moved to Paramount for what many consider his crowning achievement -- 1951's *A Place in the Sun*, a brilliant filmization of the Theodore Dreiser novel *An American Tragedy*. *A Place in the Sun* won Stevens his first Oscar for best directing in 1951. The more time and effort Stevens expended on his individual projects, the fewer he produced. His output between 1953 and 1959 consisted of *Shane* (1953); *Giant* (1956), in which he put the awkward Cinemascope screen to superb artistic use, winning his second Oscar in the process; and *The Diary of Anne Frank* (1959). While George Stevens' reputation was tarnished by the disappointments of his last years, critics and fans alike have taken a "forgive and forget" stance since his death in 1975, preferring to cite his huge manifest of hits rather than his final faltering misses.

Mark Feeney was born on July 28, 1957, in Winchester, Mass. Brought up in Reading, Mass., he graduated from Harvard College in June 1979 with a magna cum laude degree in History and Literature.

A highly-respected historian of the African-American experience, Dr. Spencer R. Crew's innovative museum exhibits have brought new life to American history. He is perhaps best known for his study of the Great Migration the massive movement of Southern African-Americans to Northern cities in the early twentieth century. Crew was both the first African-American director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History (NMAH) and the youngest. In 2001 he became executive director and CEO of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Jill Soloway is currently the Executive Producer of Showtime's *United States of Tara*. For four years Jill was a writer/Co-Executive Producer of HBO's *Six Feet Under*. She also worked on *Grey's Anatomy*, *Tell Me You Love Me*, and *Dirty Sexy Money*. Jill is in pre-production to direct her first feature film, *Tricycle*, and is writing the screenplay for *Marry Him*, a romantic comedy, for Warner Brothers and Tobey Maguire. She also adapted the screenplay for the sorority book *Pledged*. She is the author of the best-selling *Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants*, a hilarious, dirty, sad collection of essays and rants that was hailed as a post-feminist manifesto for the next generation. She is currently writing *And Then What*, a young adult novel for Harper Collins. It's about best friends, money and power that travels from Echo Park to Malibu and back again. Jill started off doing theater with her sister Faith in Chicago, where they created the stage phenomenon *The Real Live Brady Bunch*. Jill also created *Sit n' Spin*, a twice-monthly, standing-room-only night of comedic monologues and music. Recently, she co-founded OBJECT, a non-profit that seeks to engage young women in fun feminist activism.

Frank Wilczek has received many prizes for his work in physics, including the Nobel Prize of 2004 for work he did as a graduate student at Princeton University, when he was only 21 years old. He is known, among other things, for the discovery of asymptotic freedom, the development of quantum chromodynamics, the invention of axions, and the exploration of new kinds of quantum statistics (anyons). Much in demand for public lectures to a wide range of audiences, Frank has been anthologized in *the Norton Anthology of Light Verse* and twice in *Best American Science Writing* (2003, 2005). His television appearances include "ghostbusting" for Penn and Teller (2005). Frank grew up in Queens, NY and attended the University of Chicago. After getting his Ph.D. from Princeton, he spent time on the faculty there and at the Institute for Advanced Study, as well as at UCSB's Institute for Theoretical Physics, now the KITP. Frank is currently the Herman Feshbach professor of physics at MIT.