INSTRUCTORS & GUESTS

STAFF

Carol Caldwell is currently working on a half hour animated pilot, set in the country music scene. Her partners are a Nashville music producer and a London animation house. "This is all new to me, not just animation, which goes by its own strange laws, but TV, into which I have rarely strayed." Carol grew up in Nashville and graduated in English from the University of Florida. She had no idea she would end up as a screenwriter, but she likes the form. Prior to moving back home, she toiled 14 years in the belly of the beast: under contract to write feature length scripts for Warner Bros., MGM, Paramount, and assorted independent producers. "Most of my scripts were [my] original ideas, and none, to date have been made. Why is that? I believe it is because most of my scripts had women in the lead, did not feature guns nor explosions, and attempted to be reflective of the culture and times we live in, the lives we quietly, rather than heroically pursue." Carol's original career in New York was journalism. She wrote for Rolling Stone, Esquire, ELLE, American Lawyer, Soho Weekly News, assorted other magazines.
 

Camilla Carr is currently developing her adaptation of Nobel prize-recipient Thomas Mann's last novella, The Black Swan for the screen with British Academy Award winner, Brenda Blethyn, who will star and co-produce. The screen rights to Ms. Carr's new novella, Packard Jordan's Final Appeal to the Texas State Parole Board, have been optioned by Academy Award recipient Holly Hunter. Following the success of her critically acclaimed first novel, Topsy Dingo Wild Dog, Camilla was hired to write The for ABC. Since then, she has scripted many works for television, including a musical, High and Mighty for Dolly Parton, the frequently aired Escape From Terror (Lifetime), as well as The Marjorie Farber Story (based on the Dr. Carl Coppolino murder trials, featuring the young, brilliant F. Lee Bailey) for ABC. Camilla's adaptation of of Pulitzer prize-winning crime journalist Edna Buchanan's novel, Nobody Lives Forever, recently aired on ABC. Camilla has led the Screenwriting Seminar at three different Worldfest Film Festivals: Charleston, Houston and Flagstaff, and she looks forward to returning to Charleston, where she just bought a house.
 

Michael Catalano has over 26 years experience in the film and music business. For 15 years Mr. Catalano was a touring musician and songwriter playing with or sharing the bill with such artists as Townes VanZandt, Pine Top Perkins, Taj Mahal and Bruce Cockburn. In 1986 Mr. Catalano scored and produced the music for the Cine Golden Eagle Award winning short film Travlin’ Trains, written and directed by Eric Mofford. Mr. Catalano has also written and produced music for the Turner Broadcasting System and PBS. Mr. Catalano is the author of numerous screenplays [most recently he wrote King of the Colored Conjurers now in option with Julie Dash's Geechee Girl Productions.] Mr. Catalano has also produced numerous live entertainment events for Festival Productions in New York City. Some of those festivals include “The Benson and Hedges Blues Festival”, “The Toyota Comedy Festival” and “First Night in the Empire State Building”. He has also served as President of the Atlanta Songwriters Association and as a board member of Image Film and Video Center in Atlanta, GA. In 1997 Mr. Catalano took over as the Executive/Artistic Director of the 28-year-old Sinking Creek Film and Video Festival, which he turned into the highly successful Nashville Independent Film Festival. Post festival Mr. Catalano acted as a festival and arts organization consultant. Currently Mr. Catalano is Partner and CEO of NashFilms, LLC and NashFilms Music, LLC in Nashville, TN.
 

Portia Cobb is a documentary maker, an Associate Professor in Film at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Director of the Community Media Project, an affiliate media arts-outreach program of the film department and the Peck School of the Arts at UW-Milwaukee. Portia uses video and other media to re-establish connections between cultures and communities in Africa and the African Diaspora. Her current projects include Yonges Island, a documentary currently in development that is being shot in a community in the South Carolina Marshlands. The documentary, which was funded by the Creative Capital Foundation, will tell the story of land which was purchased by her great grandmother in 1891 and the current struggle to retain inherited properties in the low-country region of Charleston, S.C. She is also currently investigating traditional African musical forms in Sahel, Africa. Research for this project involved travel to the north and south countryside in Senegal, Mauritania and Mali in the summer of 2001, to interview and videotape musicians and Griots on site with collaborator, Ibrahima Seck, a historian from Senegal.
  

Cassandra Finch is a television freelance producer. She has written and produced several feature stories for programs that have aired on Nashville Public Television. Her segments often focus on the more artistic and creative aspects of Tennessee life. On the program Tennessee Crossroads, in which she is a regular correspondent, Cassandra has covered many memorable stories, including interviews with an African-American herbal healer, a rollicking look at an old-time country radio show, and the ongoing effort by many Tennesseans to find peace in their lives. In addition to Tennessee Crossroads, Cassandra works as a freelancer for an outdoors television show that also airs on NPT. Her broad range of experience includes a 16-year career as a news reporter and producer for various stations. She began her career as a producer on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. covering legislative issues. Her big break, however, happened right here in South Carolina when she was hired as a reporter at WPDE in Florence. After “cutting her teeth” in Florence, Cassandra went on to work in Roanoke, Virginia and finally Nashville, Tennessee where she received several community awards for her reporting, including a regional Emmy for an in-depth series on death, dying and Living Wills.
  

Sean Finnigan started life as a musician; in fact, he came from a whole family of musicians. As a vocalist, piano and B-3 player, he has performed with Gregg Allman, Blues Brothers, Garth Hudson and many others. In college, he took part in the Ohio University writing program, and in 1986 he met another literary/hyphenate, Robb Royer, and began writing screenplays. Their first effort, Club Fed, was a semi-autobiographical story of a young man who gets in trouble with the law. It was quickly optioned by Paul Bluhdorn Productions and was developed by Director Jeremiah Chechik This was soon followed by And Thurber Makes Three (optioned by Orion Pictures), and Locked Out (originally purchased by Interscope Pictures, later bought and developed by Universal Pictures). In his parallel commercial career he has garnered “Golden Mic” and “Cindy” awards from the Video and Television industries respectively. Finnigan and Royer are currently in nebulous positions with various Hollywood rascals on a number of surreal projects. Currently Mr. Finnigan is a Partner in NashFilms, LLC and NashFilms Music, LLC in Nashville, TN.
 

Mark is Technical Director for the South Carolina Arts Commission Media Arts Center. He received undergraduate degrees in English, Art and Interior Design from Wofford and Converse Colleges in Spartanburg, SC. Coming to his senses after spending time as a computer consultant and programmer, he returned to school, earning a Masters in Media Arts from the University of South Carolina. He then worked as a freelancer on commercial and corporate productions, videographer for Image Productions, and as Video Production Coordinator for Palmetto Richland Memorial Hospital. He has filmed documentaries, educational videos, ballets, legal reenactments, surgical procedures, concerts, and  avoided at all costs, weddings. Additionally, he has published Title Fight Pro Boxing, a computer game nominated for an award as “Sports Game of the Year” in 1995. A new version of the program will be published later this year "despite the fact I have no interest in boxing whatsoever". Most recently, Mark was DP for the independent film 108 Stitches, written by Columbia icon William Price Fox and shot on location around Columbia, SC. Mark was adopted by six cats several years ago and continues to strive for equilibrium. They have--without much jealously--also adopted his wife and new daughter.
  

Helen Hill has been making animated films since learning the basics in her fifth grade class in Columbia, South Carolina. Now that she has Master of Fine Arts in Film, Helen teaches animation to children and adults in New Orleans. Her little pet pig Rosie keeps her company during the long, quiet days of drawing, painting, making paper puppets, filming, and editing her films.
  

Denine Rowan has worked in the feature film industry for over twenty years. Her credits include co-producer, consulting editor, and picture, sound, music and ADR editor. Among the many films she’s worked on are Carrie, The Last Tycoon, Hair, The Wiz, Starting Over, Honeysuckle Rose, Prince of the City, An Innocent Man, and She Devil. She’s currently a full-time faculty member at the Watkins Film School, Watkins College of Art & Design in Nashville, Tennessee. Prior to moving to Tennessee Denine was a full-time faculty member at New York University’s Graduate Department of Film, and the North Carolina School of the Arts School of Filmmaking.
  

Glen Trew is a 25 year veteran of Film and Television production sound, and has vast experience with most types of production including Episodics, Documentaries, Features Films, Television Movies, Music Videos, Soap Operas, Sports, and News. Still a working sound mixer, he also owns Trew Audio, Inc (a location sound sales, rental, and service facility) and Remote Audio Products (manufacturer of location sound specialty equipment).
 

Peter Wentworth received his MFA from Columbia University in 1983. After working as a Story Analyst for Vestron, Nederlander Film & Television, New Line Cinema, and United Artists, he Produced in 1989 with Whit Stillman, Metropolitan which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. ALMA, his 1999 film, won the Award for Best Documentary at the Hamptons International Film Festival. Mr. Wentworth's Producing credits include Tom Kalin's Swoon; the NBC Movie of the Week Caught in the Crossfire; Other Voices, Other Rooms; Ripe; The Color of A Brisk and Leaping Day; Paradise Falls; The Dream Catcher which will be released by Searchparty films this fall; and My Sister's Wedding.