Avey Tare, Deakin, and Geologist are members of Animal Collective. Active since 1999, the group has released some of the most acclaimed albums of the last decade, including Sung Tongs (2004), Feels (2005), Strawberry Jam (2007), and Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009). Their horror-tinged visual album ODDSAC, created in collaboration with director Danny Perez, premiered at Sundance 2010.

The interview with Harry Belafonte after the film will be conducted by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Belafonte friend Taylor Branch, author of the acclaimed trilogy America in the King Years.

Alloy Orchestra, comprised of Roger Miller, Terry Donahue, and Ken Winokur, have performed numerous times under MFF sponsorship, including the world premiere of their score for Phantom of the Opera, last December’s remarkable screening of the restored Metropolis, and the first U.S. performance of the restored Man With a Movie Camera.  They continue to write new scores, and revise their existing scores as new versions of films become available.

Joe Swanberg has screened  films at MFF 2006-2009 (LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs, Nights and Weekends, Alexander the Last), and screened his web series, “Young American Bodies,” as a single narrative for the first time at MICA.  An early practitioner and fervent champion of a loose group of filmmakers who choose to work on their own terms, Joe relishes his friends’ and collaborators’ success. Joe is co-hosting the Filmmakers Taking Charge gathering at this year’s MFF with filmmaker Craig Zobel.

Dustin Guy Defa has been making movies since he was eleven.  His latest short film Family Nightmare will premiere this summer at BAMcinemaFEST.  He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Jon Moses and Albert Birney were living simple quiet lives in upstate New York until a howling beast covered in dirt and blood dragged them to a muddy field of old tires and broken televisions. He handed them a map and burst into flames. Thus began their quest.  Their debut feature, The Beast Pageant, premiered at the 2011 Slamdance Film Festival.  Previously, they both have made several short films, together or separately, many of which have screened at the Maryland Film Festival.

Producer Mike Nicholson is a founding partner of the Austin-based production house Picturebox. An accomplished graphic designer and motion graphics editor, Mike has produced numerous political and advocacy films over the past decade, including feature Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah (2010) and the PBS documentary Teaching Austin (2006) which he also directed. Bradley Crowder is one of the subjects of Better This World.

Richard Chisolm is a national Emmy-award-winning cinematographer and documentary filmmaker based in Baltimore.  Working abroad and in the U.S. over a period of three decades, Richard has worked for PBS, BBC, National Geographic, Discovery, HBO and many other broadcast venues. He was Director of Photography and a field producer for both of ABC's "Hopkins" prime time documentary series (2000 and 2008.) He has also been a camera operator on several major feature films. He is the recipient of a Peabody award, a duPont-Columbia Journalism award, two Kodak Vision awards, three Cine Golden Eagles and was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of Maryland.

Todd Rohal wrote and directed The Guatemalan Handshake in 2006, which he theatrically self-distributed around the world with a single 35mm print. He participated in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s lab in 2009 and has collaborated on music videos and DVD projects with filmmakers Cory McAbee, Jeff Krulik and the band Ola Podrida. Steve Little and Robert Longstreet are the truly amazing stars of The Catechism Cataclysm!

Alex Ross Perry was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1984. He graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2006. But really, he got his education working at the legendary video store Kim’s Video in Manhattan. His first feature film, Impolex, premiered at the CineVegas Film Festival in 2009, and played at nearly a dozen festivals worldwide, winning the award for Best Foreign Film and Best Foreign Actor at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival in Australia. The Color Wheel is his second feature film.

Jarred Alterman’s first doc/art film, Mott Music, the story of a piano factory in The Bronx, premiered at SXSW 2005, and was later distributed on Sundance Channel.  Over the past ten years, he has collaborated with the artist and filmmaker Charles Atlas (Hail The New Puritan, The Legend of Leigh Bowery) on several films for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. He is currently a cinematographer for the television series, ART:21 (Artists in twenty first century, PBS) and lives in New York City. Jimmy Joe Roche is one of Baltimore's best!

Alison Bagnall made a number of short films in the United States and abroad before directing her first feature film Piggie (2003). She also co-wrote Buffalo ’66 (1998) with Vincent Gallo. Alison is a graduate of Yale University, and was a directing fellow at the American Film Institute.

John Waters is not only the world-renowned director of such films as Female Trouble, Serial Mom, Pink Flamingos, and Polyester, but also a celebrated visual artist and author. Waters has presented a film at each Maryland Film Festival. He is a member of the MFF Board of Trustees, and his memoir, Role Models, was released May 1^st in paperback by Farrar Straus & Giroux.

Co-director/co-producer Lev Anderson graduated from Beloit College and worked in urban planning for five years before jumping into filmmaking.  He is a fine art photographer with works exhibited in San Francisco, Japan, and Mexico City. Co-director/co-producer Chris Metzler graduated from USC with a degree in business and cinema.  His 2004 feature length directorial debut was the multi-award winning documentary, Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea, narrated by John Waters, which screened at many festivals, including Slamdance and the Maryland Film Festival, was released theatrically in the U.S., and broadcast nationally on the Sundance Channel.

Robert Greene is the director of three feature documentaries: Owning the Weather (2009), Kati With An I (2010), and Fake It So Real, which screened as a sneak preview at the 2011 True/False Festival before officially premiering at the Sarasota Film Festival. Cinematographer Sean Price Williams has shot such films as Frownland (MFF 2007), Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (MFF 2009), and The Color Wheel (also screening within MFF 2011).

Kwame Kwei-Armah was born and raised in London, the child of Grenadian immigrants who traced their roots to Ghana. A multi-talented performer as well as a writer and director, Kwame’s play Elmina’s Kitchen, played on the West End to great acclaim and had its US premiere at CENTERSTAGE.  Kwame was Artistic Director of the third World Festival of Black Arts and Cultures, a 21-day, multi-disciplinary celebration in Senegal, and he has recently toured with the great Senegalese musician Baaba Maal.  A board member of the Tricycle and the National Theatres in London, Kwame Kwei-Armah has been appointed Artistic Director of CENTERSTAGE beginning July 1.

Director, Editor, and Director of Photography Skizz Cyzyk has made over 50 short and feature-length films, including 1998’s formstone documentary Little Castles. He also has made numerous music videos for bands as diverse as Beach House and Meatjack. Skizz has been involved in many film festivals, including founding the Baltimore-based underground festival MicroCineFest (1997-2006). He is a sought-after juror and advisor for film festivals, and was the Programming Manager for the Maryland Film Festival from 2000-2009. Among other projects, he is currently working on a documentary about outsider musician, The Reverend Fred Lane. Director and Producer David Koslowski is a Durham, NC based musician, designer, artist & filmmaker. Born in Baltimore, David cut his teeth on punk rock and eventually formed the grunge-punk band Liquor Bike in 1991. Currently, he plays guitar in the noise rock band Free Electric State.

A stunning new force came in to the Baltimore community when Marin Alsop was appointed the 12^th Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2005, the first woman to head a major orchestra.  Marin is the first conductor to win both Gramophone's "Artist of the Year" award and the Royal Philharmonic Society's Conductor's Award in the same season, and be selected for a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2006, she was the only classical musician to be invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos. In addition to extending her BSO contract through 2015, Marin will be the Chief Conductor of Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra beginning 2012.

Sophia Takal produced, edited and starred in the feature film Gabi on the Roof in July (MFF 2010) which played numerous festivals won a number of awards and was released theatrically in New York City in early 2011. Green, her first feature as writer-director, premiered at SXSW 2011 and won the SXSW/Chicken & Egg Emergent Woman Director award.

Marshall Curry was nominated for an Academy Award for his first film, Street Fight, that chronicled Cory Booker’s first and failed campaign for Mayor of Newark, NJ. Racing Dreams, about middle-school students learning to be race-car drivers, played numerous film festivals, winning Best Documentary at Tribeca 2009. Both films screened at previous MFFs, and Marshall was part of the recent MFF fundraiser “Are Documentary Filmmakers the New Journalists?” hosted by Meredith Vieira.

Alex Kotlowitz’s first book, There Are No Children Here, won universal praise, was a bestseller, and was turned into a television movie starring Oprah Winfrey. He writes for The New Yorker, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and Rolling Stone, among others. He has written two other books, worked on documentaries for Frontline and Media Matters, won numerous writing awards, and received a Peabody Award for his work for Chicago Public Radio. Cobe Williams is one of the central violence “Interrupters” of CeaseFire depicted in this documentary.

Director and cinematographer Don Argott is the director of such documentaries as Rock School, Two Days in April, and The Art of The Steal. Director, editor and cinematographer Demian Fenton is the editor of Rock School, Two Days in April, and The Art of The Steal.

Ramona Diaz is a filmmaker whose credits include the ITVS, NAATA and Sundance-funded Imelda (Sundance, IDFA, LAFF, True/False, IDA Award), a full-length documentary about the former First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos. Imelda screened in over thirty film festivals around the world (including MFF 2005), was broadcast on Independent Lens, and grossed more than Superman 2 in Manilla its opening weekend. Diaz recently finished Don't Stop Believin: Everyman's Journey, a feature-length documentary film about the iconic ‘80s band, Journey, and their new, Filipino lead singer, Arnel Pineda, whom they discovered through YouTube.

Alison Ellwood has worked as a producer and editor with Alex Gibney on numerous projects, including previous MFF films such as the Oscar-nominated Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room, Gonzo: the Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, and Casino Jack and the United States of Money.  She has produced numerous television series such as the Emmy-winning “American High,” “The Residents,” and “Brick City.”

Michael Sragow joined the staff of the Baltimore Sun in March, 2001. In the course of his career, he has been a first-string movie critic for major West Coast dailies (The Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 1978-81, and The San Francisco Examiner, 1985-92), the movie critic for Rolling Stone (1981-83), and the writer of "The Current Cinema" column in The New Yorker. (1992). His movie criticism and features have appeared in a variety of publications, including The Atlantic Monthly and the "Arts & Leisure" section of The Sunday New York Times. He has also been a regular contributor to several alternative weeklies: Boston's The Real Paper (1976-77), The Boston Phoenix (1977-78, then 1983-85 as lead movie critic and Film Editor), and Seattle Weekly (1995-96) and SF Weekly (1996-99). Before joining the Sun he spent two years as a weekly movie columnist for Salon.com.  Mr. Sragow was born on June 26, 1952, and raised and educated in Roosevelt, New York and Cherry Hill, New Jersey. After completing his freshman year at NYU's Institute of Film, he transferred to Harvard College, where, in 1973, he received his A.B. (cum laude) in History and Literature. He was elected to the National Society of Film Critics in 1980. In 1990 he edited (and contributed essays for) the book Produced and Abandoned: The National Society of Film Critics Write on the Best Films You've Never Seen (Mercury House). The first National Society of Film Critics collection to appear in over a decade, it sparked a series of critical anthologies. He edited a two- volume collection of James Agee's writings for the Library of America (2005), and wrote Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master, co-winner of the 2009 National Arts Writing Award. He contributes liner notes to the Criterion Collection, most recently for Louie Bluie, The Night of the Hunter, and Blow Out.

Matt Porterfield is the director of two of the most acclaimed independent films made in Baltimore: Hamilton (MFF 2006), and Putty Hill (MFF 2010). Putty Hill premiered at the 2010 Berlin International Film Forum and is currently in nationwide theatrical release from Cinema Guild. Matt studied film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, teaches screenwriting and production in the Film & Media Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University, and cites Pedro Costa as a major influence on his work.

Cara Marcous is the co-founder of the Hub Project, a development initiative for emerging theater and film artists from New York and Sydney, Australia.  She produced both Sikumi and On the Ice, as well as MacLean’s documentary, When the Season is Good. Marcous graduated with a B.A. in theater arts from Brown University.

Calvin Lee Reeder has made a name for himself on the film festival circuit with his unique short films The Snake Mountain Colada, The Rambler, Little Farm, Piledriver, and Jerkbeast.  He was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in 2007. The Oregonian premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.  Reeder also co-starred in Lynn Shelton’s My Effortless Brilliance (MFF 2008). Star Lindsay Pulsipher is "The Oregonian," and is perhaps best-known for her portrayal of Crystal Norris on "True Blood." Robert Longstreet is the busiest man at MFF 2011, also playing lead roles in Septien and The Catechism Cataclysm.

Director Chad Freidrichs will host our Friday screening of his film. Chad has worked for four years to complete The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History, his third feature film. The historical nature of this film allowed Chad to spend hours digging around in archives and finding ways to transfer old 16mm films, experiences that he hopes he can apply to future films. His previous feature-length documentaries are Jandek on Corwood, a film tracing the cult following of the underground musician Jandek, and First Impersonator, a look at the world of presidential look-alikes and the troubled life of JFK impersonator Vaughn Meader. Chad’s documentaries have played at film festivals around the world, including South By Southwest, SilverDocs, and Full Frame.

Raised and educated in Nigeria, Andrew Dosunmu began his career in design and fashion photography. His images have appeared in a variety of international magazines. Today Dosunmu is active in film and television. His documentary Hot Irons (1999) won an award for best African film at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO). He is currently working on The African Game, which documents the fans and spirit of soccer in Africa. Photographs from his documentary have already been published in a coffee-table edition by PowerHouse Books.

Co-director/Co-producer Brian Ashby studied Political Science at the University of Chicago, and has conducted research in India and Cambodia. Having taken notice of informal recycling abroad, he was interested to meet scrappers less far afield. Brian currently assists the photographer Laura Letinsky and works in freelance photography and videography. This is his first film.

After his directorial debut Cocaine Angel world-premiered at the 2006 International Film Festival Rotterdam, Michael Tully was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” His follow-up, the documentary Silver Jew, world-premiered at the 2007 South By Southwest Film Festival, and is now available on DVD through legendary independent music label Drag City. Currently, Tully is the head writer/editor of HammerToNail.com, a website devoted to championing ambitious cinema. He played all of his own sports in Septien and lives on Tennis Court in Brooklyn, NY. MFF 2011 brings together Rawlings Brothers Tully, Robert Longstreet, and Onur Tukel for the first time since Sundance 2011.

CJ Gardella was born in Boulder, Colorado in 1981. He graduated from The School of Visual Arts in New York. He has worked as a producer’s assistant at Robert Altman’s Sandcastle 5 production company for Prairie Home Companion and as a director’s assistant for Noah Baumbach on his Margot at the Wedding. In addition, CJ has been a manager/projectionist at the SVA Theater in New York.

Joe Swanberg is the director of many feature films, including LOL (MFF 2006), Hannah Takes the Stairs (MFF 2007), Nights and Weekends (MFF 2008, co-directed with Greta Gerwig), Alexander the Last (MFF 2009), Silver Bullets (MFF 2011), and Art History (MFF 2011). He also directed and starred in the web series “Young American Bodies,” which he produced with his wife, Kris.

Writer/director/producer Josh Slates is the writer and director of innumerable short films and videos; Small Pond is his feature directorial debut.  His most recent short, "89 Gator Mine," had its world premiere in competition at Sitges in 2007.  His 35mm short film “Ponkutsu Park” premiered at the Maryland Film Festival in 2006 and would later screen in the Short Film Corner at the 59th Cannes Film Festival.  He is also a film critic and field producer for WYPR's "The Signal," as well as the editor of the magazine "Travels Through Elsewhere Cinema."

As the Maryland Film Festival's resident expert on 3-D movies, this marks Baltimore native Chris Kaltenbach's tenth year hosting the festival's annual 3-D screening, having previously handled multi-dimensional introductions and spirited discussions for '50s 3-D classics Jesse James vs. The Daltons, Inferno, Miss Sadie Thompson, Man In The Dark, Dial M For Murder, The Mad Magician, Gorilla At Large, Fort Ti, Creature From The Black Lagoon, House of Wax, and even the X-rated Hot Skin. He has been a Baltimore Sun writer for the past 29 years, including 15 as a movie critic and feature writer (and 14 years covering the Academy Awards from Hollywood), and teaches film-studies courses at Harford and Anne Arundel community colleges. He finds it amusing that Hollywood is rediscovering 3-D with films like Avatar, but has yet to top the singular thrill of having Charles Bronson jump onscreen from the audience in House of Wax. His singled-minded mission: Bringing the Jane Russell 1954 3-D extravaganza The French Line to Baltimore. Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?

Azazel Jacobs grew up in Manhattan, the son of artists. He studied at Purchase College, and received his MFA from the American Film Institute in 2002. His first three feature films, Nobody Needs to Know, The GoodTimesKid, and Momma’s Man, premiered at Rotterdam, AFI Film Fest, and Sundance respectively, and each earned critical acclaim. He got to see Joe Strummer in person twice.

Joe Swanberg is the director of many feature films, including LOL (MFF 2006), Hannah Takes the Stairs (MFF 2007), Nights and Weekends (MFF 2008, co-directed with Greta Gerwig), Alexander the Last (MFF 2009), Silver Bullets (MFF 2011), and Art History (MFF 2011). He also directed and starred in the web series “Young American Bodies,” which he produced with his wife, Kris.

Djo Tunda Wa Munga was born and raised in the Congo. He studied filmmaking at INSAS in Belgium, where he took inspiration from European and American films before returning to his homeland.  Today, he puts his knowledge to the service of building up a new Congolese Cinema, where everything has yet to be invented. He has directed several medium-length documentaries, including Horizon en Transition (2005) and State of Mind (2010); Viva Riva! is his feature-film debut.

Director David Weissman has been active in San Francisco’s indie film scene since the mid-1980s, David is best known as the producer/co-director of the feature-length documentary, The Cockettes. Recipient of the LA Film Critics Award as Best Documentary of 2002, The Cockettes premiered at Sundance, was released theatrically, and was licensed for broadcast by The Sundance Channel, Logo, and the BBC. David was the first recipient in 1990 of the Sundance Institute/Mark Silverman Fellowship for New Producers.

Mark Jackson was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. He graduated magna cum laude with a degree in literature from the University of California and went on to pursue graduate studies in cinematography at Rome’s Cinecitta Studios. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Clay Liford is the director of several prior films, including the sci-fi feature Earthling and the comedy short My Mom Smokes Weed, both of which screened within MFF 2010. His filmography as cinematographer includes St. Nick (MFF 2009). Nate Rubin has appeared in a number of films, including his starring role in My Mom Smokes Weed.