Please check back in 2010 for a full list of Geneva Film Festival 2010 workshops. 

Below are the workshops which were featured at the 2008 Geneva Film Festival.

The Business of Being a Hollywood Writer            Gloria Calderon Kellett

Gloria Calderón Kellett was most recently a writer and Co-Producer on the CBS series,   "How I Met Your Mother", for which she won an Alma Award for Outstanding Script.  This season she is working on a pilot with Courtney Cox which was sold to the CBS Network.  She recently shot her first webseries "Get Ripped" and is currently working on a feature film for The Mark Gordon Company.  

Her first short film, "Wounded" premiered at The Palm Springs International Short Fest and she has written several plays to critical success, including the hit monologue show "Skirts & Flirts" which went off-Broadway at the Kraine Theatre last year.  Gloria is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University and received her Masters degree from the University of London.  

Since her return to Los Angeles, Gloria published a book, Accessories which has also been has been translated into Italian, she has been a founding member of the sketch comedy group And Donkey Makes Five, and has written and performed stand-up comedy at The Improv and The Comedy Store.    

 Film Cinematography                                           Scott Rolf

Writer and Filmmaker, Scott Rolf, has spent 20 years working in the Chicago Motion Picture Industry.  He began his career as a Production Assistant, spent time as a Prop Assistant and Grip before settling into the Camera Department nearly 15 years ago.

As a First Camera Assistant, Scott is proficient with Arriflex and Panavision motion picture cameras as well as the new wave of High-Definition digital cameras from Panasonic, Sony and Red.  His experience includes a variety of mediums ranging from feature films - “The Dark Knight”, episodic TV - “Prison Break” and music videos - “The Fray” to a wide array of national television commercials such as “McDonald’s, Nike and Coke”.

His profession has taken him across the country and abroad to exotic locales like Brazil for a documentary film.  Scott is a longtime member of the Cinematographer’s Guild.

Scott has also written and directed a variety of independent projects.  He is currently developing and writing a pilot for an original comedy series.

EFX Makeup Application                                                  Anthony Kosar

J. Anthony Kosar, age 23, is an award-winning artist who recently graduated in May 2008 with highest honors as the Valedictorian of his class from the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Illinois earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Illustration. 

Because his passion for the arts began at a young age while performing on stage and painting on canvas, Kosar's duality of performing art and visual art has led him to the world of Special Effects. In 2002 at age 16, he created his first foam-latex mask, The Zombie.

Since then, he has created make-up, effects, masks, and props for numerous plays, commercials, conventions, feature and short-lengthed films, mask companies, and has held several Make-up and Effects workshops throughout the Chicagoland area. 

During Summer 2007, Kosar interned in Hollywood at Stan Winston Studio (Jurassic Park, Predator, Aliens) working on several commercials, including Xbox’s “Halo 3: Believe” campaign, and the recently released Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and James Cameron’s upcoming major motion picture Avatar.

Also, while in Hollywood, Kosar studied sculpture under acclaimed Hollywood sculptor and creature designer Jordu Schell of Schell Sculpture Studio.  From Fine Art to Special Effects, J. Anthony Kosar takes his art from Saints to Monsters and everything in between.

Story Writing Structure                                                     Dan Portincaso

Dan Portincaso is a writer who lives and works in Chicago.  His work has appeared in local alternative media. 

He received his MFA at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts under the study of acclaimed author, A.J Verdelle. 

He is currently an English professor at Waubonsee Community College. Dan is the Chicago Department of Tourism’s guide to the Little Italy neighborhood of Chicago where he has been interviewed on television and radio about how the stories of the past can inform the present. 

He is currently finishing a short story collection tentatively titled, A Different Kind of Animal, which explores the feral nature of humanity in a Chicago’s urban landscape.

Editing with Final Cut                                                       Dr.  Laura Vazquez

Laura Vazquez is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, where she teaches media theory and production courses. Vazquez completed her Ph.D. in Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University.

Vazquez teaches the introduction to media production and various advanced courses including documentary production.  Last year she taught a course on “short shorts” where students produced videos ranging from 5 minutes to 5 seconds about their experience of Northern Illinois University.  Those videos are now available on nuskietube.niu.edu.

Vazquez has produced several documentaries and is currently working on a feature length project on homeless women and children entitled “On the Edge.”  Working with NIU history scholar, Rosemary Feurer, Vazquez recently completed a short documentary on labor activist, Mother Jones entitled “Mother Jones: America's Most Dangerous Woman.” It has been widely screened and is an Official Selection of the 2007 Independent Filmmaker's Festival.  This documentary also won First Place in the Documentary Division at the Geneva Festival of the Arts in October 2007.

Screen Writing Marketing                                        Jeff Crooks

Jeff Crooks has spent his final two years of high school at Geneva Community High School graduating in 2004.  During his senior year, he won the Kane County Chronicles C.A.P.S. award for a screenplay which he wrote and performed.  Jeff attended Columbia College of Chicago for Film and Video where he received a Bachelors Degree in Arts. 

Between 2005 and 2008 Jeff worked at the Screenwriting Expo in Los Angeles under author/ screenwriter Jeff Kitchen.  This past spring Jeff spent his last semester on the CBS studio lot in LA where he completed a writing fellowship.

Jeff currently lives in Los Angeles, California and works for 2000 ShoWest Producer of the Year Armyan Bernstein, at Beacon Pictures.  Armyan has written and produced over 40 films a few include The Hurricane, Air Force One,  Spy Game, Bring it On, Open Range, and the Commitments.  

Documentary - Passion is not Enough.                       Al Rosho                  

This workshop is designed to give an overall view of what it takes to produce a documentary. We’ll take a look at two proposals and accompanying trailers for future docs that my company is trying to get funded. We’ll also take a look at excerpts from a PBS documentary that I filmed on location in Egypt and Sudan.

Alfred Rasho, has over twenty-five years of film and video production experience. His work through LeMans Films, a production company specializing in sports documentaries was distributed throughout the United States and internationally.

His goal oriented and motivational films were distributed by Oxford Films, an educational branch of Paramount Pictures. His 32 part series on the Human Life Span is distributed in hundreds of colleges, universities and libraries throughout he United States, Australia and China, and is broadcast regularly on many domestic regional PBS stations.

His company, Roxie Media Corporation, has been awarded over twenty national and international awards, including the gold plaque from the Chicago International Film Festival in the category of cinematography, for the National PBS program “Nubia and the Mysteries of Kush.” Roxie Media Corporation also has two Regional Emmy Awards and was a nominee for the 2007 awards.

 Sitcom Writing                                                             Ed Ferrara

ED FERRARA enjoyed a healthy career as a professional television writer/producer for over twelve years.  His various writing credits include a three-season stint on USA Network’s hit comedy “Weird Science” (where he served as Supervising Producer) and Walt Disney Television’s “Honey I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show” (Co-Creator and Co-Executive Producer).  In 1998, Ed took an unorthodox leap and dove into the world of professional wrestling business, where he quickly became one of the most influential creative minds in that industry at the peak of its popularity.  

He has since taught comedy/sitcom writing at The Second City Training Center, Northeastern Illinois University and University of Chicago.  He currently works full-time on the staff of the Television Department at Columbia College Chicago, where he teaches sitcom writing.  He is a lifetime member of the Writers Guild of America.  

Casting a Film                                                             Tony Hix

Producer, Casting Director and Artistic Director Toni Hix Has spent 18 years working for films, TV and live theater.  Toni has worked for Warner Brothers, Samuel Godwin, Daystar, Touchtone, NBC and ABC/Harpo Productions. She has spent 16 years as an acting teacher at professional schools and training centers in Los Angeles, Chicago and Northern Illinois University. Her most famous student is Academy Award winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr.  

She has directed the plays: Lion in the Winter, Complete Works Of Shakespeare, Company of Wayward Saints and Crimes of the Heart. For the past 8 years she has been the artistic director of The Midsummer Theater Troupe.

The Indie Film: From Script to Screen                    Lara Wickes

Lara Wickes is an actress and a producer. A native of Toronto, Canada, Lara studied business at The University of Toronto she then moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the entertainment industry.

Lara studied with The Beverly Hills Playhouse, has acted on stage in Los Angeles and off-Broadway, television credits include guest starring roles on Entourage, Monk and How I Met Your Mother. Stepping behind the camera in 2005, she mentored under producer Kyle Lundberg (50 Dead Men Walking), she then founded The Firefly Film Co.

Producing credits include short films Top Of The First, Wounded (official selection of The Palm Springs Short Festival and The Geneva Film Festival), ‘I’m Gonna Kill You Saturday Night’ (official selection of The LA Shorts Fest), Webisode Get Ripped, a series of educational videos Kidwinks geared to children with speech disorders, and feature film The Fallen Faithful, a psychological thriller due to release in March 2009.