JAKE AUERBACH
(Rodin: The Sculptors’ View, England, 53 minutes, 2006)
After working at the Economist, Jake Auerbach began his film career with the Henson Organization in Britain, then spent two years in the United States and Australia working on independent feature films. He joined the BBC on his return to England, working in the cutting rooms on many varied productions before becoming a director with the music and arts department, working on such strands as Omnibus, Arena, Review, Late Show and Relative Values. In 1992 he left the BBC to form an independent production company; he has been making films as a director and producer ever since. He is also an occasional writer for national newspapers and magazines.

MICHAEL BLACKWOOD
(Jeff Wall: Retrospective, United States, 58 minutes, 2007)
Independent documentary filmmaker Michael Blackwood has produced and directed more than 100 films aiming to create a permanent record of some of the leading figures in the cultural landscape of our time. His main interest is in the areas of architecture, art, music and dance. Before starting his own production company in 1966, Michael Blackwood created series for the NBC Special Film Unit and was a producer and director in the public affairs and cultural programming departments of Deutsche Welle in Munich and Cologne. Previous Michael Blackwood film presentations at the Canadian Art Film Series (the precursor to the Canadian Art Reel Artists Film Festival) include The Cremaster Cycle: A Conversation with Matthew Barney in 2004, and Francis Bacon: The Brutality of Fact in 2005.

JAMES CRUMP
(Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe, United States, 72 minutes, 2007)
James Crump is a writer, director and producer. He holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of New Mexico and has served as curator of photography at the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research. Among other works, he is the author of F. Holland Day: Suffering the Ideal (1995) and George Platt Lynes: Photographs from the Kinsey Institute (1993). As the founder of Arena Editions, a leading publisher of photography books, he published titles on scores of leading contemporary and historical figures including Peter Beard, Eugene Atget, Garry Winogrand, Walker Evans, Peter Lindbergh and Robert Mapplethorpe. He was a co-producer of the documentary film Peter Beard: Scrapbooks from Africa and Beyond (2006). Black White + Gray, his debut effort as a feature director, was a 2007 Official Selection at the Tribeca Film Festival, the Silverdocs AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival and the Seattle International Film Festival.

RENE DAALDER
(Here Is Always Somewhere Else: The Life of Bas Jan Ader, Netherlands, 70 minutes, 2006)
Director and producer Rene Daalder has written and directed six feature films as well as numerous television and music related projects in Europe, the United States and Canada. In his native Holland, he worked as a team with Jan de Bont, made numerous films with Dutch documentary filmmaker Frans Bromet and wrote several screenplays with architect Rem Koolhaas. A man of many firsts, he developed digital filmmaking tools and movie projects at the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab. As a contributing editor, Daalder’s articles on the future of digital cinema appear regularly in the art magazine Contemporary. His writings on computers, art and architecture have been published by MIT Press and Taschen Books.

PETER SCHIERING
(Beuys and Beuys, Germany, 35 minutes, 2006)
Born in 1967 in Göttingen, Germany, Peter Schiering is the director of a cultural program for German television called Kulturzeit, specializing in art, photography and new media. His past films have included The Turner Prize 2003 (2003); The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin (2005); 9/11 and the Arts (2006) and Barney Meets Beuys (2006).

MARIA ANNA TAPPEINER
(Richard Serra: To See is to Think, Germany, 43 minutes, 2006)
Maria Anna Tappeiner is a freelance art curator, critic and documentary filmmaker living in Düsseldorf, Germany. She has produced documentaries for German television, including portraits of the artists and filmmakers William Kentridge (1999), Gary Hill (2001), Matthew Barney (2002), Sophie Calle (2004) and Richard Serra (2005). Tappeiner is also an art historian, and wrote a master’s thesis on Japanese artist On Kawara. In 2005, she directed Richard Serra: Thinking on Your Feet, her first feature-length documentary about the development of his work The Matter of Time, a $20-million commission from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

TERI WEHN-DAMISCH
(Citizen Lambert: Joan of Architecture, Canada, 52 minutes, 2006)
Teri When-Damisch is what Marcel Duchamp would have called a “cultural transvestite.” Born in Paris, raised and educated in New York, she opted for Paris after marrying the French art and architectural historian Hubert Damisch. After obtaining the French Director’s Guild Card in 1984, she has dedicated herself exclusively to the writing and directing of cultural documentaries for museums and television. Past projects include Francis Picabia (2002) and On Snow’s Wavelength: Zoom Out (2001). Citizen Lambert: Joan of Architecture received the 2007 Best Canadian Film Award at Montreal’s Festival international du film sur l’art.

BARBARA WOLF
(Philip Johnson: Diary of an Eccentric Architect, United States, 55 minutes, 1996)
Barbara Wolf received her degree in architecture from the University of Southern California before moving to New York, where she worked in the office of Philip Johnson for six years. Freelance assignments with the BBC’s Building Sights and Late Show led to the idea for Philip Johnson: Diary of an Eccentric Architect, which has been screened internationally in film festivals and on television. It continues to be used as an educational tool for tour guides at the Philip Johnson estate, and is available to the public at its visitors center. She continues to produce and direct documentary projects for arts and architectural foundations, public television and private clients. Her film credits include Ross Bleckner: Remember Me, Portraits of St. Petersburg by Deborah Turbeville and Mocking the Cosmos with Tim Roth. Barbara Wolf resides in New York City with her husband, an architect whom she met at the firm of Philip Johnson.

JOHN WYVER
(Anish Kapoor, England, 27 minutes, 2007; The Art of Henry Moore, England, 60 minutes, 2004)
John Wyver is an award-winning writer and producer, and Chairman of the innovative production company Illuminations, which he co-founded in 1982. He has produced and directed films for BBC, Channel 4 and other British broadcasters as well as for channels in Europe, the United States and Australia. His television work includes the six-part series State of the Art (1987) and annual coverage of the Turner Prize (1993–2005). In recent years he has also produced many films for Illuminations’ publishing operation, including The Art of Francis Bacon (2007). John Wyver writes and lectures frequently on the arts and media, and he is Visiting Professor at the University of Westminster. He has recently published with Wallflower Press the book Vision On: Film, Television and the Arts in Britain.

MARINA ZENOVICH
(Takashi Murakami, United States, 27 minutes, 2008; Robert Wilson: Video Portraits, United States, 27 minutes, 2008)
Marina Zenovich is an independent documentary director and producer who is perhaps best known for the documentary Who is Bernard Tapie? about the French politician/criminal-turned-actor and her obsession with him. Her other films include Independent’s Day about the Sundance Film Festival and the world of independent filmmaking featuring Steven Soderbergh, Neil LaBute and Tom DiCillo, among others. Her recently completed Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, a feature-length film about the legendary director, debuted to great acclaim at this year’s Sundance Festival.

Canadian Art
REEL ARTISTS FILM FESTIVAL
Thursday, February 21–Sunday, February 24, 2008
www.canadianart.ca/reelartists

Media Contact:
Andrea Carson
Marketing and Communications Coordinator
Canadian Art Foundation
(416) 368-8854 ext. 113
acarson@canadianart.ca

Or Ann Webb
Executive Director, Canadian Art Foundation
(416) 368-8854 ext. 110
awebb@canadianart.ca