Lev Manovich, an associate professor in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California at San Diego, is the author of The Language of New Media (The MIT Press, 2000), the editor of Tekstura: Russian Essays on Visual Culture (Chicago University Press, 1993), and a regional editor for www.rhizome.org. Born in Moscow where he studied fine arts, architecture and computer science, Manovich earned an M.A. in cognitive science from New York University and a Ph.D. in visual and cultural studies from the University of Rochester. His projects include Little Movies, an important early prototype for web-based distribution of digital cinema.

Evan Mather uses a Power Mac and off-the-shelf software to write, produce, animate and direct original short films, which he distributes through his website Evanmather.com. His films, Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars, Buena Vista Fight Club, Les Pantless Menace, and The Qui-Gon Show, have been featured in RES, New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and Wired as well as on NPR, CNN, E! and the Sci-Fi Channel. Mather is a landscape architect who practices in the Seattle area.Ê

Angela Northington is director of acquisitions and production for Urban Entertainment . The company recently sold the film rights to its Undercover Brother Web series to Imagine Entertainment and Universal Studios. Prior to joining Urban Media, Northington held development positions at Cineville, Sony Pictures and Disney. She has produced three award-winning independent features, commercials for such houses as GME, House Films and E.U.E. Screen Gems, and music videos for Qwest Records and Warner Bros. Northington is a graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television.

James Root is the business development manager at Microsoft's Digital Media Division where he is responsible for managing the Microsoft Windows Media relationship with the film industry. In 1992, Root began working on commercials, music videos and feature films while independently writing screenplays and producing and directing short films. In 1995, he joined the web development team at Twentieth Century Fox and helped to produce some of Fox's first generation Web sites including those for The X Files and Fox Sports. Root was the director of production and later creative director for Hollywood.com. He earned a B.A. in fine art and humanities from the University of Colorado.

Todd Rosenberg is the director of business development for Atom Films. His responsibilities include developing relationships with broadband partners, gaining exposure for Atom Films in the wireless world, and pursuing syndication opportunities in both the online and offline environments. Previously, he worked at Barnes & Noble.com where he helped develop their Business-to-Business program. He also developed and launched their B&N.com electronic greeting card site. Rosenberg spent four years at the Hearst Book Group managing their Special Markets Department.

Richard Rowley is co-founder of Big Noise Films, a media collective devoted to political documentary. His first film, Zapatista, documents the Mayan peasant uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. Black & Gold is the story of the Latin King and Queen Nation, the largest street gang in New York, and its membersâ attempts to transform themselves into a Black Panther-style street political organization. His latest film, This Is What Democracy Looks Like, is an account from the WTO protests in Seattle. Rowley and the Big Noise collective have been instrumental in the new Independent Media Center movement, producing segments of the Showdown in Seattle and Breaking the Bank satellite broadcasts.

Kevin Rubio.wrote, directed and produced the Star Wars parody TROOPS with his partner Shant Jordan. Rubio currently is a writer-producer with the Walt Disney Company, and has several projects in development with MTV, SONY On line and Showtime. From 1984 to1988, Rubio apprenticed in the fields of lighting, set design and directing under George Costa, director of the San Jose Civic Light Opera House. Rubio is a native Californian who was raised in Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world, and who attended Long Beach State University.

Sean Schur is creative head of 3D at The Moving Picture Company in London. He was previously at Industrial Light & Magic where he worked on special effects for such films as Twister, Mars Attacks, Speed 2, Mercury Rising, Small Soldiers, Star Wars: Episode I, Sleepy Hollow and Mission To Mars. Prior to that, Schur worked at Cinesite where his film credits include Outbreak, LawnmowerMan II, Free Willy II and Waterworld. Schur attended the USC School of Cinema-Television and CalARTS, where he earned his degree.

Anthony Soohoo is vice president of business development and strategy at ALWAYSi.com. He previously worked at Inktomi Corp., where he was responsible for their e-commerce business, and as a product line manager at NEC Computer Systems responsible for marketing. Soohoo holds a B.A. from the University of California, Davis and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.

Christa Starr, a co-founder of Can-Do-Home Productions, is a second-year Masters candidate in MIT's Comparative Media Studies program. Before returning to graduate school, she worked for George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic, where she created special effects for such films as Saving Private Ryan, Starship Troopers, and Star Wars: Episode I. She has also produced a website for the 50th anniversary of humanities at MIT and a thirty-minute video documentary on the history of computer games. Starr has a joint degree in computer science and film and media studies from MIT.

Hans Uhlig is a technical director at Industrial Light & Magic where his credits include Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition, Star Wars: Episode I and The Perfect Storm. As part of ILM's Independent Projects program, Uhlig wrote and directed a short called Synchronicity, featured in the Electronic Theater and animation festival at SIGGRAPH 2000. He began his career in animation design while working as a racing engineer for Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart, Germany, and went on to found Design & Motion, a Munich company focusing on 3D animation design. Uhlig attended Mercedes Benzâ Wilhelm Maybach School for Engineering in Stuttgart, his hometown, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering.

Jason Wishnow is the director of Tatooine or Bust, a documentary shot on mini-DV about fans camping out for the re-release of Star Wars. In 1996, he founded NewVenue.com, an online showcase for movies made specifically for the Internet. Wishnow has directed documentaries for British television, worked for Woody Allen's production office, and designed music Web sites for Polygram, Universal and BMG records. Wishnow received his B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University.

Patricia Zimmermann, a professor in the Department of Cinema and Photography at Ithaca College, is the author of Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (Indiana, 1995) and States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies (Minnesota, 2000) as well as the co-editor (with Erik Barnouw) of The Flaherty: Four Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema (Wide Angle, 1996). Her forthcoming book, co-edited with Karen Ishizuka, is Mining the Home Movie: Excavations Into Histories and Memories (University of California). She serves on the editorial boards of Wide Angle and The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, and serves on the board of Women Make Movies , a non-profit media arts organization that facilitates the production, promotion, distribution, and exhibition of independent films by and about women. With Erik Barnouw, Ruth Bradley and Scott McDonald, Zimmermann edits the Wide Angle Books series for Temple University Press, a series dedicated to tracing the history of the international non-profit media arts sector.