THOMAS LAHUSEN. Producer, director, cinematographer, picture and sound editor. Teaches Russian/Soviet cultural history and film at the University of Toronto. Self-trained in film directing, editing, and camera work, he has been involved in the past years in several film projects, including the history of the Soviet Far East and China, Soviet and post-Soviet film distribution and exhibition, as well as Central-Asian cultural and social issues.

TRACY McDONALD. Specialist in Russian and Soviet history. Teaches at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario). Her areas of interest include social and cultural history, micro-history, agrarian studies, film history, and the history of Soviet Central Asia. She has written on peasant rebellion and banditry in Riazan. Her book, Face to the Village: Peasant and State in Soviet Russia 1921-1930, is forthcoming from University of Toronto Press. The documentary short The Uprising, which she has recently written and directed, is part of her ongoing activity in documentary filmmaking.

SERGEI KAPTEREV. Film scholar, producer. Senior researcher at Moscow’s Institute on Cinema Art. Specializes in Soviet and American cinemas, focusing on the intellectual and political aspects of their interaction. Other interests: Soviet cultural politics in the sphere of cinema; cinema of the late Stalin period and the post-Stalin “thaw”; Soviet expansion in Asia, Russian and Soviet films about Asia; the theory and practice of film editing and film sound.

LILIA TOPOUZOVA. Writer, director, and producer. PhD candidate in history at the University of Toronto, specializing in the history of the Bulgarian gulag. Lilia Topouzova is the scriptwriter of the documentary The Mosquito Problem & Other Stories (dir. A. Paounov, Agitprop) screened in Cannes 2007, TIFF 2007, and other festivals. She is currently directing and producing, together with Ferdinando Dell’Omo, an OMNI TV feature-length documentary Saturnia.

GERDA CAMMAER. Filmmaker and scholar. Teaches film at Ryerson University (Toronto). Areas of interest: film history, orphan films and other cinephemera, world cinema, documentary, experimental and found-footage films. Her work played at various festivals in Canada and abroad. For her Masters thesis she traveled to Mozambique where she shot 1000 Feet (16 mm, 30 min) and a video documentary about the National Film Institute in Maputo. Her Ph.D. thesis is a research creation project about the so-called “death of film,” including several found-footage films.

FERDINANDO DELL’OMO . Director and producer. He has worked as a reporter, director and editor in Italy and Canada. His work has been represented in various broadcasts and publications, including Italy’s leading web-based television and online newspapers. A filmmaker and a journalist, Ferdinando’s work is always a bold take on social issues. In Canada, he works as a broadcast journalist for OMNI Television and CHIN Radio. He is currently directing and producing, together with Lilia Topouzova, a feature- length documentary Saturnia, for OMNI TV with the support of the Mariano Elia Chair at York University.

ALEXANDER GERSHTEIN. Director, cinematographer. Resides and works in Toronto as an independent journalist and cinematographer. His father, Izia Gershtein, was one of the Soviet Union’s most renowned documentary filmmakers. Alexander Gershtein has over 30 years of experience as a TV journalist, with extensive knowledge of all the facets of TV and documentaries planning, development and broadcasting. He worked for the Kyrgyz State Television as chief director of news and political broadcasting; for the Israeli Broadcasting Authority, Channel 1, where he directed weekly magazines and daily news programs. “