2009 Talent Lab Governors
Don McKellar
Don McKellar was born in Toronto and is one of the most prominent figures on the Canadian film scene. His many acting credits include Bruce McDonald’s Highway 61 (1991), which he also wrote; Gary Burns’s waydowntown (2000); Thom Fitzgerald’s The Event (2002); and Olivier Assayas’s Clean (2004). He co-wrote the screenplays for François Girard’s Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993) and The Red Violin (1997), among others. In 2005, he wrote and directed the short films Phone Call from Imaginary Girlfriend: Istanbul and Phone Call from Imaginary Girlfriend: Ankara. He has received three Genie awards, including the Claude Jutra Award for direction of a first feature for Last Night (1998), which also won the Prix de la Jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival. His second feature, Childstar, played at the Festival in 2004. He recently wrote the screenplay and starred in Fernando Meirelles’s Blindness (2008). McKellar stars in Leslie, My Name is Evil and Cooking with Stella which both feature in this year's Festival along with his debut Future Projections installation Imaginary Lovers.
John Collee
John Collee is a Sydney-based novelist and screenwriter with a background in medicine and journalism. Before turning to full time writing he worked as a doctor in the UK, Madagascar, Gabon, the Solomon Islands, the former Soviet Union and elsewhere. For 6 years in the 90’s he wrote a popular medical/science column in the UK Observer newspaper. Raised in Scotland, he now lives in Sydney, Australia with his wife Deborah and their 3 children. His credits include the Oscar-nominated Master and Commander written with Peter Weir, and the Oscar-winning Happy Feet written with George Miller and others. His novels include Paper Mask, Kingsley’s Touch and The Rig, all of them published by Penguin. He has developed projects in recent years with Steven Spielberg, Guillermo Del Toro and Zack Snyder. He is currently working with Chris Columbus. His latest film Creation directed by Jon Amiel and based on a biography of Charles Darwin is opening the Toronto International Film Festival this year. He is a co-founder of 350.org.Australia - which is part of the international movement 350.org. who are dedicated to raising awareness of the science of global warming.
Danny Boyle
Born in Manchester, England, Boyle started his career in the theatre. He first worked with the Joint Stock Theatre Company, and then in 1982 with the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, where he was the artistic director until 1985. In 1985, he became the deputy director of the Royal Court Theatre, where he stayed until 1987. He made his feature directorial debut with the John Hodge scripted Shallow Grave (1994) followed by Trainspotting (1996), adapted from the novel by Irvine Welsh. Boyle’s work also includes A Life Less Ordinary (1997) The Beach (2000), 28 Days Later (2002), Millions (2005) and Sunshine (2007). In 2008 he directed Slumdog Millionaire, the story of an impoverished child on the streets of Mumbai who competes on Indian’s variant of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? This is his most critically-acclaimed film to date which has won numerous awards including Golden Globes and Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. He also won a Directors Guild Award for his work Slumdog Millionaire and it was selected as the Cadillac People’s Choice Award at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. Boyle is to direct Ponte Tower about a girl moving into South Africa’s famed fifty-four story skyscraper as well as the film Solomon Grundy, about a baby who experiences an entire lifetime in just 6 days.
Miranda July
Miranda July is a filmmaker, performing artist and writer. She grew up in Berkeley, California where she began her career writing and directing plays in high school. July’s videos, performances, and web-based projects have been presented at sites such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in the 2002 and 2004 Whitney Biennials. She wrote, directed and starred in her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Camera d’Or. Her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, was published in 2007 and won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. It has been translated into 17 languages. Her fiction has also been printed in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. In 2002 July created the participatory website, www.learningtoloveyoumore.com, with artist Harrell Fletcher, and a companion book was published in 2007 by Prestel. Eleven Heavy Things, her interactive sculpture garden, is currently on view in the 2009 Venice Biennale. She lives in Los Angeles.