|
|
|
Acclaimed filmmaker Les Blank (Co-producer, Co-director, Camera) has made numerous documentary films since 1960, including Burden of Dreams (1982), Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists, and Gap-Toothed Women (1987). Chulas Fronteras (1976) and Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers (1980) have been selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress National Film Registry.
Retrospectives of his films have taken place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Cinémathèque Française in Paris. In 1990, Blank received the American Film Institute’s Maya Deren Award for outstanding lifetime achievement, and in 2007 he was the 48th recipient of the Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding contributions to the field. Visit www.lesblank.com.
|
|
|
Gina Leibrecht (Co-producer, Co-director, Editor) is a freelance documentary editor and filmmaker in San Francisco. She edited Frank Green’s Counting Sheep, which won a Northern California Emmy Award for Best Documentary in 2006. She co-edited Karina Epperlein’s Phoenix Dance, which won San Francisco International Film Festival’s Golden Gate Award for Best Documentary Short in 2006. Her work has screened on public television and in festivals around the world. In 1998 she began collaborating with Les Blank on several films, including All In This Tea and The Maestro Rides Again! They are currently working on Ricky Leacock: Being There, about the co-founder of Direct Cinema, Ricky Leacock, and Butch Anthony (working title), about the Alabama folk artist. Visit www.ginaleibrecht.com for more info.
|
|
|
Tom Valens (Additional Camera) is a Bay Area freelance video editor, cameraman, and independent documentary film maker. As editor, his films have won local and national Emmy's as well as an Academy Award nomination. As cameraman, he has traveled from China ("All in This Tea", "Leaf and Water") to Finland ("Race Day"). Recent documentary films include "Nuclear Deception" for Helen Caldicott's NPRI. He is currently working on a long form documentary about an elementary school classroom.
|
|
|
Gaetano Kazuo Maida is executive director of Tea Arts Institute, was the publisher of Tea Trade magazine, and edited the classic New Tea Lovers Treasury, by James Norwood Pratt. His forthcoming In Search of Green Gold-Adventures in the Tea World will be published in 2008. He was a founding director of the Buddhist quarterly Tricycle and currently serves as executive director of the International Buddhist Film Festival (www.ibff.org).
|
|
|
James Norwood Pratt Author of The Tea Lover’s Treasury and The Wine Bibber’s Bible, he has been Honorary Director of the first traditional Chinese tea house in America, instrumental in creating the American Premium Tea Institute, and editor-in-chief of Tea Trade — the Magazine of the World Tea Business.
|
|
|
Winnie W. Yu is the owner, Téance Fine Teas in Berkeley, California. She is a life-long student of the high culture of tea, and has traveled extensively to the tea-growing districts of China and Taiwan in search of premium teas. Go to www.teance.com.
|
