The following fimlmakers and projects were selected for the 2008 Directors Lab. Directors Vondie Curtis Hall (Waist Deep, Gridlock'd) and Andrew Wagner (Starting Out in the Evening, The Talent Given Us) are this year's instructors. The Lab is sponsored by Kodak.


Rafael Del Toro, Mullet

Logline
For the Frank family a mullet is a rite of passage, but for 16-year-old Danny Frank, it's a social death sentence.

Rafael Del Toro, Writer/Director
Rafael's love for film began in elementary school, where he shot his first film in 2nd grade with his father's 8mm camera. It was a short film about astronauts that discover a strange new planet. Growing up east of LA, Rafael stayed out of trouble by break dancing with a crew, dj-ing, and playing basketball, but it was ultimately Rafael's writing ability and creative visions that opened doors to a career in filmmaking. After attending UC Berkeley and receiving Berkeley's highest award for art, the Eisner Award (Maris), Rafael continued his studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Film Program, as a Dean's Fellow. During his time at Tisch, Rafael received a regional Student Academy Award (The Playroom), a Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker's Award (Must Be Love), a nomination for the DGA's Best Latino Student Director, a Sloan Foundation Production Grant, and was a 2-time finalist for the Richard Vague Award for his script, Mullet, as well as a Wasserman Finalist for his film 6ft in 7min. Thus far, Rafael's films have won many awards including Best Short Film and Audience Choice Awards, and have screened in prestigious film festivals worldwide. Currently, Rafael was selected as a Film Independent Project Involve Fellow, and accepted into Film Independent's Director's Lab. His upcoming projects include his first feature Mullet, 6 ft in 7 Days, the feature version of his short comedy hit about a boy with an artificial heart who's batteries are running out, Junction, a Texas murder mystery love triangle, and The To-Do-List a top secret romantic comedy.
brownbull@industryfreaks.com

Samuel Kiehoon Lee, Pleonastic

Logline
A Korean man living in Seoul undergoes a bizarre Twilight Zone-like time warp, where he encounters past and future iterations of himself.

Samuel Kiehoon Lee, Writer/Director
Lee's award winning shorts, have shown at numerous international film festivals in Canada, the US, Korea and Europe. Lee's parents emigrated from Korea to Canada, before Lee was born. He grew up in Toronto, and went to Queen's University in Kingston to study mechanical engineering. During his time at Queen's, Lee also enrolled in the film studies program. Promptly after graduating from university with two degrees, Lee stole the camera from the film department, and ran around the city of Kingston shooting a feature length project called Mute. (He eventually returned the camera). Two years after that, Lee shot another feature length film titled Standard Deviation. Since then, Lee has written several feature length scripts, and produced many short film projects garnering numerous grants and prizes. Among them include the award winning shorts How to Make Kimchi and 5 x 90: the wake. In 2006, his project Pleonastic received a screenwriting grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, and was written while researching in Korea. Lee recently took part in the Korean Film Council's Filmmaker Development Lab, where he developed the script Pleonastic with his mentor Peggy Rajski. He then went on to pitch his project at the Toronto International Film Festival, the New York IFP and Pusan International Film Festival. His vision is to make Pleonastic in Seoul, financed as a Canadian or US - Korean co-production. Afterwards, Lee intends to shoot the American remake, set in New York City.
pleonastic.movie@gmail.com

Tina Mabry, Mississippi Damned

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Three youths caught in a psychologically and physically abusive family struggle to escape familial patterns of addiction, molestation, and poverty in a small Southern town.

Tina Mabry, Writer/Director
Tina Mabry graduated from the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television with an MFA in Film Production in 2005. While participating in FIND's Project: Involve, Tina began to develop her short film, Brooklyn's Bridge to Jordan. The film has been accepted into over fifty film festivals world-wide and it has won multiple Jury and Audience Awards along with an award for Best Director. Brooklyn's Bridge to Jordan also aired on Showtime, BET Jams, and was voted #1 on the season finale of LOGO's The Click List 2: Best in Short Film. Tina recently co-wrote a feature screenplay entitled Itty Bitty Titty Committee, which was directed by Jamie Babbit (But I'm a Cheerleader, Nip/Tuck, Ugly Betty). The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival (2007) and won Best Feature Narrative at the South by Southwest Film & Music Festival (2007). In October of 2007, Itty Bitty Titty Committee broke Laemmle's pre-sale record of all time according to Laemmle sources and ranked #2 for all time best box-office sales per screen average for a lesbian film.
tmabry@morgansmark.com

Moon Molson, Meadowlandz

Logline
A black teen finds his African immigrant father passed out drunk in their tenement-building hallway and is pressured by his friends into murdering him.

Moon Molson, Writer/Director
Moon Molson graduated from Dartmouth College where he won the Eleanor Frost Experimental Theatre Prize and two Alexander Laing Memorial Screenwriting Awards. After college, Moon worked in the New York City film industry in both production and post, wrote spec sitcom pilots, and directed Off-Off Broadway theatre at the now defunct Acting Studio, Inc. as a member of the Chelsea Repertory Lab. In fall 2000, Moon entered the M.F.A. program in Film Directing at Columbia University. In summer 2002, he won the prestigious Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Student Internship and was flown to Los Angeles to work in television commercials. Moon's thesis short film Pop Foul has screened at over 75 international film festivals and has won more than 30 festival awards worldwide, including the Panavision Grand Jury Award at the 2007 Palm Springs ShortFest, the REEL Shorts Jury Award at the 2007 South By Southwest Film Festival (SXSW), the HBO Short Film Award at the 2006 American Black Film Festival, and the 2006 Student Academy Award. Moon has received fellowships and grants from the New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA), New York State Council of the Arts (NSYCA), the Jerome Foundation, and the Urban Artists' Intiative/NY. In summer 2007 he was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "New Faces of Independent Film,"� and recently attended the 2008 Sundance January Screenwriting Lab with Meadowlandz. He is based in New York City"�for now.
moonmole@mac.com

Tony Mosher, Down the Dirt Road

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A deadly confrontation forces small town meth addict Tab Richmond into hiding in the isolated, run-down farmhouse of two senile geriatrics. When he inadvertently befriends a troubled girl from the nearby town he is forced to choose between self-preservation and redemption.

Tony Mosher, Director/Co-Writer
Tony Mosher worked in the development departments of The Shooting Gallery and Miramax Films before assisting renowned writer/director Paul Schrader for four years and on two feature films. In 2004 he adapted a popular comic book series for Miramax Films and in 2005 directed and co-wrote the multi-award winning short film, Frijolito, Go!; an official selection at festivals from Nantucket to Beijing. In 2006 Tony worked with Schrader to adapt the "Burke" series of novels by Andrew Vachss to pilot for HBO. His intense indie drama Down the Dirt Road (co-written with Mitch Larson) made the finals in the Slamdance feature screenplay competition and was subsequently invited to participate in Film Independent's 2007 Screenwriter's Lab and 2008 Director's Lab. In February Tony's script The Punished took top honors at the Slamdance Horror Screenplay competition resulting in a production deal with Angel Baby Entertainment and Maverick Red. The subsequent film is eyeing a summer production. Tony is also currently finishing an epic adventure/romance based on the true story of the only prisoner to successfully escape from Western Australia's Fremantle Prison and the secret love affair he conducted with his warden's daughter while there.
tonymosher@gmail.com

Chris J. Russo, Directed by Dorothy Arzner

Logline
To make it in a man's world, sometimes you have to act like one - the true story of Hollywood's most accomplished, groundbreaking, and forgotten female director.

Chris J. Russo, Writer/Director
Chris Russo's award-winning films have screened at hundreds of film festivals worldwide including the Sundance Film Festival and have aired on several networks such as PBS and MTV's LOGO Network. Her short, A Woman Reported (starring Moira Kelly), about the moments before a hate crime, garnered critical praise in the national press as Curve Magazine wrote, "�It should be required viewing for most of Congress."� In 2002, she wrote and directed the light-hearted coming-of-age short, Size 'em Up, (starring Julie Brown, Stella Stevens and Leisha Hailey) which aired on Showtime, IFC and the Women's Entertainment Network. In 2000, Russo won the OUTFEST Best Short Documentary Audience Award for Straight Down The Aisle: Confessions Of Lesbian Bridesmaids. Russo recently directed music videos for STAX Recording artist, Soulive, to promote their album, No Place Like Soul, political campaign commercials for Santa Barbara District Attorney Candidate, Gary Dunlap, and a trailer for Friends & Lovers, a romantic comedy feature about two unlikely people in love, she plans to direct later this year. Currently, Russo is in development on three feature scripts she is attached to direct. Directed By Dorothy Arzner was selected for the Emerging Narrative Section at the IFP Market & Conference and was also selected to take part in the 2006 Film Independent Screenwriters Lab. Russo completed her BFA in Photography from the University of Buffalo, and her MFA in Film from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. In addition to filmmaking, Russo works with television producers, studio executives and cinematographers in her role as Account Manager for Eastman Kodak Company in Hollywood.
cjrusso@pacbell.net

Abigail Severance, The Summer We Drowned

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The idealistic but troubled Whiting family retreats to the woods of Maine to put themselves back together by building an eco-friendly cabin. But as their misguided dream house falls apart around them, they rapidly discover they are in way over their heads.

Abigail Severance, Writer/Director
Writer-director Abigail Severance's first film, Pump, won five Best Short awards. Since then, her work has screened at many festivals, including the Los Angeles Film Festival and Sundance. Her films have also been broadcast on the Sundance Channel and HBO and are distributed by Wolfe Video, Picture This, and World Artists. Severance has been included in several distinguished museum exhibits, including San Francisco's Bay Area Now at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Roy & Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in Los Angeles. In addition to writing and directing, she is on the faculty at CalArts and has also taught at UC San Diego and the Art Institute of California. Severance holds an MFA in Directing from UCLA where she received the school's Spotlight Award for Directing two years in a row as well as a Wasserman Fellowship in Film Production and the Carl David Memorial Scholarship. The L.A. Weekly described Come Nightfall as "an artfully rendered act of transgression" while the Bay Area Reporter called Saint Henry a "provocative and well-mounted religious parable." Severance wrote The Summer We Drowned with Mo Perkins, and participated in the 2007 Film Independent Screenwriters Lab with the project.
bellecote@earthlink.net

Suzi Yoonessi, Dear Lemon Lima,

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After her narcissistic sweetheart breaks her heart, a lonely girl with a vivid imagination channels her Native roots to reclaim the spirit of the World Eskimo Indian Olympics.

Suzi Yoonessi, Writer/Director/Producer
Suzi Yoonessi received the Jerome Foundation's New York Media Arts Grant for Vern (2004), which she wrote, directed, and produced. Vern was a finalist for the Roy W. Dean Foundation Grant, is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and is being distributed by the National Film Network. Yoonessi's short film Dear Lemon Lima, received a 2006 Jerome Foundation NYC Media Arts Grant, a 2007 All Roads Foundation grant and was recognized by 2007 Film Independent Screenwriters and Producers Labs, 2006 Tribeca All Access Connects, and 2006 IFP No Borders Market. Dear Lemon Lima, is also an official selection of the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, Nantucket Film Festival, and Los Angeles Film Festival, and received the Cross-Cultural Award at the China-American Film Festival, and a Special Jury Recognition for Directing and Cinematography at the 41st Brooklyn Arts Council Film Festival. Yoonessi associate produced the Cannes and Sundance award-winning Me And You And Everyone We Know (2005), written and directed by Miranda July, for IFC Films & Film Four (UK), with frequent collaborator producer Gina Kwon. She co-produced Miranda July's Are You The Favorite Person Of Anybody (2005), directed by Miguel Arteta, which screened in the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Yoonessi received her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute, and her MFA from Columbia University where she was a recipient of the FMI Directing Fellowship.
syoonessi@sanguinefilm.com