Katrina Elias

Katrina Olivia Elias was born in Barranquilla, Colombia from parents of Lebanese, Spanish decent. Her parents immigrated to 
Cleveland, Ohio when she turned a year old. At the age of twelve, the small family relocated to Miami, Florida experiencing for the first time, life among a Hispanic majority, a development which would influence her writing works.

During most of her teens she wrote for the school newspaper and yearbook, and told original stories through modern dance and music-mixing, set and costume design. She began acting during her two-year attendance at the University of Tampa, and her studies at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, where she received an AA in Fashion and Design.

For the next ten years, along with designing and running her own leather furniture factory in the Miami Design District, she continued her acting studies; since appearing in many stage plays, short films, TV guest-star appearances, and full-length feature films. Some of her credits include, "Boston Public," "MD's," "Orleans," "Black Noir," "Stealth," "Night Out," "A Girls' Guide to Chaos," "Play On," and many national commercials.

Acting provided her with the onset experience to write and produce her first short film titled "Dreamkeeper," a story about a vigilante Native American woman who could foresee violent events, and her moral struggle with altering the future. It was shot in 16MM on her farm in rural Mississippi, just outside of New Orleans in 1998 where she began to write full length features, one of which was selected and honored at the New York International Hispanic Film and MTV Film Festival of 2001.

In her continued writing efforts, she wrote and sold "Bel & Ricky" a family situational comedy pilot, and three option episodes. She is the writer of the award-winning, comedy of errors stage play, "Abuelo's Legacy" (starring Liz Torres) which was produced by Nosotros, The Jude Shaw Theatre Company, The 5th Annual Hispanic Playwrights Festival of Fort Worth, and the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts.

Ms. Elias wrote "Red Colombian Sky" a one-act stage-play in early 2004. It was immediately selected for production by the 6th Annual Hispanic Playwright's Festival of Fort Worth, and soon after adapted for short film and renamed "Madam Marina," marking her directorial debut.

Besides writing, she fully enjoys being involved in every aspect of stage and film production, from set and costume design, to picture and sound editing.

"Madam Marina's" World Premiere took place in the beautiful Victorian City of Port Townsend, Washington along the Olympic Peninsula, September 2005. And since has been shown at the Ohio Independent Film Festival and the Queens International Festival.

Katrina is an alumnus of the Writers Boot Camp two-year television and film writing program, a member of Nosotros, NALIP, WIF, IFP and the Screen Actors Guild.

She happily resides in the Los Angeles area, enjoys yoga, hiking and pampering her 15-year-old toy-poodle, "Shadow."

Gerald G. Massimei

Gerald G. Massimei, Jr. was born and raised in Long Island, New York where he began making movies at the tender age of eight, hence the name of his production company, Age8Produxions. 

When Gerald was ten he wrote, produced, directed and acted in a short take-off of The Greatest American Hero television series. It was his first planned production complete with an actual script and schedule, wardrobe, lights, rehearsals and the latest in VHS camera technology; it was 1980. 

By the time the college years arrived, Gerald had produced and directed dozens of short films and several feature-length movies, including, Killer Instinct: Parts I and II, Passage, and City of Night, to which he won several awards. Armed with clips from these projects on an extensive demo reel, Gerald was granted acceptance into the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. 

But it wasn't long, about a year, before one unnamed Tisch Film teacher hinted that perhaps, with the body of work he already had, Gerald should just go to work. So he hopped on a plane to Hollywood. 

With a new feature-length movie, A Night with Sunshine, tucked under his arm, and not a single connection to utilize, Gerald hit the pavement. Within three weeks, he landed his first professional directing job on a small dramatic television show called US Customs Classified. From there he went on to direct many other dramatic programs like Arrest and Trail, The Enforcers and Unsolved Mysteries, becoming a member of the D.G. A. in 2000. 

Gerald has produced and directed hundreds of hours in drama. He is set to direct A Christmas Cop starring Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper and Daniel Baldwin. 

Blain Brown

After studying design at MIT and Harvard Graduate School of design, Blain Brown moved to New York, working as a commercial 
photographer with a sideline in theater, eventually running a small off-off Broadway repertory theater company.

At that time, he was also working his way up in the motion picture industry as a cameraman, writer and director. He directed his first feature film in 1986.

Now residing in Los Angeles, his projects have included directing three feature films and having four screenplays produced. Blain has also served as director of photography on 14 features and many commercials, music videos and documentaries.

As a theater director, he has staged both small productions and shows as large and complex as "Marat/Sade." He studied acting with Mira Rostova at HB Studios in New York.

He has also served as the line producer on feature films, as an assistant director and second unit director. In all these capacities, he has established a reputation for bringing films in "on time and on budget."

As a cinematographer, he has worked in India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Italy, Mexico, Canada and the Philippines.

Blain's book Cinematography: Theory and Practice is used as a textbook at many film schools throughout the US. Focal Press has identified it as the fastest selling film making book in history. It is written for directors and editors as well as cinematographers.

His previous books "Motion Picture and Video Lighting" and "Film maker's Pocket Reference" are also used as textbooks at many film schools in the US, Canada, Britain and Korea. The lighting book has also been published in Korean and Spanish.

He is now a senior faculty member of the Los Angeles Film School in Hollywood, where he teaches advanced cinematography and film making. He has also taught film making and "The Language of Cinema" at UCLA and screen writing at Woodbury University. He has also taught screen writing and film making seminars in New York and Los Angeles.

Alexander Pascui Rivas was born in New York City in 1977. He grew up by his father, who was a superintendent in a Manhattan condominium corporation, and his mother, a hard working ballerina advocated to join the American Ballet Theatre, both Argentinean. Their divorce made him join his mother in her return to her natal country, where he finished primary and secondary school in Villa María, a small city in the province of Cordoba. In this stage of his life Pascui devotes himself to music composition. 
By the age of nineteen, and having assimilated different forms of creative expressions on his mother’s behalf, Pascui relegates his musical incline in pursuit of a visual performing art that would allow him not only to portray the experiences of eradication suffered as a child, but also the “Argentinean localisms” which have always been a recurrent theme in his work. Pascui moves to Cordoba City and studies Cinematography at the Cordoba National University (UNC). His bilingual condition allowed him to find economic support as both, English Instructor and Interpreter (in June 2001 he is honored to escort Canada’s Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson as her Private Interpreter, on her visit to Argentina). 

However, his strong commitment to the cinema field brought him recognition not only within academic boundaries but beyond as well (he was recently awarded at the UNCIPAR Film Festival (Argentina) for “Best Sound Designing” of the short film “The City of the Suckling Men”, a film which won “Best Short Film” at the same festival, “General Recognition” at the TOKIO Film Festival (Japan), among others. In 1998 the Argentine Film and Audiovisual Arts Institute (INCAA), grants him a fellowship to attend the festival in representation of Cordoba University’s film students. “A Country Doctor” (16mm short film) won “Best Black & White Photography” at the GIRONA Film Festival (Spain) and also counted on his participation as “Sound Director”.

In year 2002, by winning a screenwriting award Pascui is granted “seed-funding” for his short film “El Sereno” (The Night Watchman) by the Porvince of San Luis, Argentina, as well as financial support from Argentine Film and Audiovisual Arts Institute (INCAA) and a film stock grant from Kodak Motion Picture.