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Whether the subject is Tammy Faye Bakker, Monica Lewinsky or the openly gay silent film actor William Haines, writer, director and producer Randy Barbato has a soft spot for making films about public figures ostracized or misunderstood by the media, and, by extension, society at large. Along with life and creative partner, Fenton Bailey, Barbato has created some of the more groundbreaking and sometimes controversial documentaries and made-for-TV specials. A native of New Jersey, Barbato attended graduate film school at New York University where he met Fenton Bailey, originally from Great Britain. Both dropped out after a year to form a pop band, The Pop Tarts. In 1990, the duo created their own company, World of Wonder Productions, with the intention of recording Pop Tarts music, but only after established companies rejected them.

Gerald Peary has been a film critic for more than 25 years. His cinema articles have appeared in many newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The Toronto Globe and Mail, The Chicago Tribune, and The Boston Globe; as well as in film periodicals around the world, including Film Comment, Cineaste, Sight and Sound, and Positif. Since 1996, Peary has been a weekly film critic and columnist for The Boston Phoenix.

In the field of documentary, John Walter has emerged as the medium's most eloquent and entertaining cultural historian. The Detroit-born director, who is also an unpublished poet, began his career in the film industry as a boom operator and worked in that capacity on Sam Raimi's *Evil Dead II*. In the mid 90s, he became an editor, beginning with Norman Reedus' *Messenger* (1994), and in 1995 he directed "Edison's Miracle of Light", an episode of PBS' television series *The American Experience*. In 2002, Walter made his documentary feature debut with *How to Draw a Bunny*, a portrait of the Pop Art collage artist and prankster Ray Johnson, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Documentary. He has since directed the small screen doc *The First Amendment Project: Some Assembly Required* for Court TV and edited a number of projects, including Thom Powers' *Guns & Mothers* (2003) and Amir Bar-Lev's *My Kid Could Paint That*. He currently lives in New York City's East Village with his wife, filmmaker Adriane Giebel.

Writer, actress, and comedian Jane Lynch's extensive theater background involved touring with the Second City comedy troupe and playing Carol Brady in *The Real Live Brady Bunch*. She also wrote and starred in the award-winning play *Oh Sister, My Sister*. Originally produced in 1998, the play kicked off the Lesbians in Theater program. Lynch's other stage credits include *Tales of the Lost Formicans*, *Ennui*, and *Waiting for Iggy*. She made her film debut in 1988 with a small role in the body-switching comedy *Vice Versa*. On television, she was in the Lifetime movie *In the Best Interest of the Children* and made numerous guest appearances on sitcoms. After some meager roles in *Straight Talk*, *The Fugitive*, and *Fatal Instinct*. Her breakthrough role was butch Christy Cummings, the personal dog handler to trophy wife Sheri Ann Cabot in the 2000 mockumentary *Best in Show*. Over the next two years, she played a government agent in the action movie *Collateral Damage*, a sarcastic nurse in the ABC medical comedy *MDs*, and a 1940s-style receptionist in the TNT movie *The Big Time*. In 2003, she reunited with the cast from *Best in Show* for the musical spoof *A Mighty Wind*. She performed her own music in the role of Laurie Bohner. In 2004, Lynch appeared in *Sleepover*, *Little Black Boot*, and *The Californians*.

Amy Redford is an actress, director, and producer. Redford has starred in a number of independent films and is the daughter of screen legend Robert Redford. She recently produced and directed the feature, *The Guitar *starring Saffron Burrows and Isaach De Bankole. Redford was born in 1970. She Attended the University of Colorado and studied theater in San Francisco and London.

Misty Upham is an actress and screen performer based in Seattle. Her Native American ancestral background influenced the early roles she selected; most of these film projects dealt explicitly with Native American issues. Upham first appeared onscreen in *Skins* and *Skinwalkers*, both 2002. In the 2008 *Frozen River*, Upham appears as a Mohawk Indian who supports herself by smuggling illegal immigrants over the border.

Heather Rae is an American film producer, director and actress. She produced and directed a short documentary in 1990 called Birth Our Own. Other directing filmography includes Trudell in 2005. She's acted in the movies Silent Tears in 1998, Backroads in 2000, Chrismas in the Clouds in 2001, Most Funniest in 2005, Norman Waiting in 2006, and Disappearance in 2006.