Daniel Cross
Daniel Cross is co-founder of EYESTEELFILM in Montreal, named by RealScreen Magazine as one of the top 100 non-fiction production companies in the world. He is also an Assistant Professor at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University. He is a multi-disciplined, award-winning documentary filmmaker who has made his mark with films concerning the issues of homelessness in Canada. His feature length films, THE STREET: a film with the homeless and S.P.I.T: Squeegee Punks In Traffic received theatrical distribution and critical acclaim. Along with the groundbreaking website HomelessNation.Org, these projects are reflective of his artistic philosophy that film is a medium for affecting social and political change. Daniel also has experience in TV broadcast, having directed and produced the Gemini nominated Too Colourful for the League , Chairman George (CTV, BBC Storyville and TV2 Denmark) and Inuuvunga: I am Inuk I am Alive . He was the Executive Producer of the internationally acclaimed Up the Yangtze , and producer on the Genie award winning film Last Train Home . Daniel is active in the film community having won a Trailblazer award at MIPDOC, Mentor of the Year from the CMPA and serves as board member of HOT DOCS, Documentary Organization of Canada, Quebec Chapter and The Concordia Documentary Centre.
Mila Aung-Thwin
Mila Aung‐Thwin is co-founder of EyeSteelFilm. After completing his studies at McGill University in 1998, he began working with maverick filmmaker Daniel Cross on the feature documentary S.P.I.T: Squeegee Punks in Traffic, learning the ins and outs of documentary filmmaking on the streets of Montreal with a squeegee punk named Roach. In order to take advantage of Canadian tax incentives, they founded a production company and called it "EyeSteelFilm" because it seemed like a good idea at the time. After flirting with other titles such as "cinematographer" (Too Colourful for the League), "co-director" (Chairman George), "director" (Bone, Music for a Blue Train) and "Office Drywall Consultant" (various walls), he has decided to just go with "Producer" and stop worrying about it. Most recently, Aung-Thwin produced the feature documentaries Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, Rip: A Remix Manifesto (IDFA audience Choice Award Winner), Up the Yangtze (Genie award winner) and Last Train Home (IDFA Feature Documentary Winner). In addition, he serves as the President of the Rencontres International du Documentaire (RIDM), Montreal's international documentary festival.
Bob Moore
Bob Moore is an award-winning film producer based in Montreal. He joined Eyesteelfilm in 2008 fresh out of law school to work on fair dealing arguments for Rip: A Remix Manifesto, a film about copyright law and mash-up music culture. He has since had the opportunity to produce some great feature docs, among them Last Train Home, Taqwacore: the Birth of Punk Islam, Inside Lara Roxx, Fortunate Son, and most recently, China Heavyweight. Prior to exploring his passion for film, Bob completed degrees in law, philosophy and print making, managed musicians, consulted for record labels, founded a web design collective and threw parties for a skateboard company. This wild grab bag of experience allows Bob to maintain an inventive and open approach to producing social interest documentary films.
Yung Chang
Internationally award-winning filmmaker, Yung Chang, is a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker based in Montreal, Canada. He graduated in Cinema at Concordia University and the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. Up The Yangtze, was his first feature documentary, in which China's highly contested Three Gorges Dam forms a dramatic backdrop for a moving and richly detailed narrative of a peasant family negotiating unprecedented historic changes. "Up The Yangtze" has played at numerous festivals, including Sundance, and was one of the top-grossing documentary box office releases in 2008. Chang is currently in production on two feature documentaries: "China Heavyweight" about Chinese country-side boys and girls in the up-and-coming world of amateur and professional boxing; and The Fruit Hunters about nature, commerce and obsession in the fruit underworld.
Omar Majeed
Omar Majeed is a filmmaker, a Gemini-Award winning editor, a motion graphics artist and celebrated raconteur par excellence. He is also a devoted husband, friend, armchair-therapist, bookbinder, soda-pop mixer, punk provocateur, sensitive poet, insufferable gadfly, cinephile snob, and can play three-chord rock very well on his accoustic guitar. Omar also excels in writing about himself in the third person. His latest film, produced by EyeSteelFilm is TAQWACORE: The Birth of Punk Islam. Omar really wants you to see it.
Lixin Fan
Lixin Fan worked as a producer/journalist at China’s state broadcaster CCTV before he became a filmmaker to live in Montreal, Canada. Born and raised in the period of China’s integration into the world, Lixin had engaged himself in social political filmmaking to document and interpret the vast changes took place in a time of changes. Lixin recently finished his debut feature documentary Last Train Home, which is the opening film at RIDM. The film deals with the world’s largest human migration in the ear of globalization. The film is also in the feature length documentary competition at IDFA 09. Lixin worked as associate producer on the acclaimed feature documentary Up the Yangtze, a film about the world’s largest hydroelectric project, the Three Gorges Dam. The film was a best Canadian documentary film at TIFF in 2007, a finalist at IDFA and Sundance 2007. In 2003, Lixin edited the Peabody and Grierson award-wining documentary To Live Is Better Than To Die. The film, recognized as one of the most shocking documentary on the topic, reveals China’s AIDS epidemic and was featured in Sundance Film Festival and was broadcasted on BBC, CBC and PBS.
Halima Ouardiri
Born in Geneva to a Swiss mother and a Moroccan father, Halima grew up enjoying pursuits as diverse as training horses and being a bodyguard for visiting Saudi princesses. She moved to Montreal in 1998 to study political science and film production at Concordia University. Joining EyeSteelFilm in 2005, she rapidly gained all sorts of indie filmmaking credits, including: Guerrilla Event Co-ordinator (Rip: A Remix Manifesto, 2008), Chief Political Strategist (Punk the Vote, 2006), grassroots theatrical distributor (Up the Yangtze, 2007; Last Train Home, 2009) and producer (Les Tickets, 2010). The only credit eluding her was the coveted "Writer/Director". So in 2008, she entered a scriptwriting contest. Winning the contest allowed her to write, produce and direct her first film: Mokhtar. The film was shot on super-16 in the remote countryside of Morocco near Agadir, starring local villagers, many goats, and an owl. Of all the cast, only the owl was trained as an actor. Halima is currently recovering, and pondering her next move.
Eric "Roach" Denis
Eric "Roach" Denis, 30 ans, a eu un parcours pour le moins chaotique. À 14 ans, il s'enfuie d'un centre d'accueil et vit dans la rue pendant 5 ans. Punk engagé, il a trouvé dans le cinéma une nouvelle manière de s'exprimer. Depuis le tournage de S.P.I.T.: Squeegee Punks in Traffic, sa vie a changée. Le réalisateur et mentor Daniel Cross lui a appris à se servir d'une caméra pendant les trois ans de tournage, montrant l'évolution de Roach qui surmonte sa dépendance à la drogue et qui devient cinéaste. Cette passion pour le cinéma qui l'anime désormais a redonné un sens à son existence et lui permet de donner une voix à ceux qui sont encore dans la rue. Dans ce but, il a réalisé trois longs métrages documentaires avec EyeSteelFilm. Le parcours de Roach est un exemple pour ceux qui ont envie de s'en sortir. Il travaille actuellement sur Les Tickets, un documentaire dans lequel il dénonce la persécution des itinérants à Montréal.
Edmund Duff
Edmund’s circuitous route into documentary film came via cutting sheet metal, driving tractors and creating the perfect caffe latte. Upon completing an Environmental Planning degree in his hometown of Melbourne, he departed the sunny shores of Oz for Montreal. One of the newest additions to the Eyesteel team, Edmund works in production/post-production, and helps move heavy objects around the office. He is passionate about documentary as a tool for cultural and inter-generational exchange.
Mia Donovan
Mia Donovan is a filmmaker and award-winning photographer. She moved to Montreal at age seventeen to escape her hometown of Moncton, New Brunswick. She holds a BFA from Concordia University. As an artist Mia’s work often focuses on issues surrounding female sexual identity. Her most recent photographic work, Stripped and Peepshow, documents Montreal area sex workers. After a few years of photographing strippers, escorts and porn stars she would meet Lara Roxx and film her over the next five-years. The result is Inside Lara Roxx, Mia’s first documentary.
Peter Wintonick
A career spanning 35 years and involvement in more than 100 films and transmedia projects. Among several other incarnations he is a filmmaker, producer, director, writer, and advisor on all manner of film, multi-media and ‘now’ media. Laureate of the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, Canada’s highest such honour. 2005 Thinker in Residence” for the Premier of South Australia, writing recommendations on Media Literacy, Film Policy, Community and Aboriginal Media. Winner of the Ontario Premier’s Prize. Co-founder of the DocAgora on new forms, new platforms and new ways of funding socially-engaged docmedia. Creator of theatrical feature documentaries, educational films, TV docs and internet sites. Co-founder of the Greencode for the Media Industries. He has worked with major movers, shakers (and snakes) in the Motion Picture Jungle. Has taken the involuntary “documentary vow of poverty.” He's working with EyesteelFilm as mentor and international producer, working to develop and produce international coproductions. He's currently producing China Heavyweight and In the Key of David Lai.
Tony Asimakopoulos
Tony Asimakopoulos is a filmmaker and freelance editor currently based in Montreal, where he earned a degree in film production in 1993 from Concordia University. His short films Jimmy Fingers was awarded the "Prix de le Rélève", for most promising Quebec filmmaker, at the 1991 Festival de Jeune Cinema in Montreal. The following year, Mama's Boy, another 16mm short, was invited to the Toronto International Film Festival, as well as Montreal, Locarno, Göteburg & Melbourne. After a few diffcult years exploring what Montreal's underbelly had to offer, Asimakopoulos moved to Ottawa in 1995 to enter treatment for drug addiction & alcoholism. Soon after, he was featured in the documentary Confessions of a Rabid Dog, by fellow recovering addict & ex-Montrealer John L'Ecuyer. Asimakopoulos worked with Ottawa's SAW Video from 1997-2001, where he helped develop a groundbreaking video production apprenticeship program for youth-at-risk. His wrote & directed the dramatic feature Horsie's Retreat (2004) at the Canadian Film Centre, and the docudrama seriesCanadian Casefiles (2005/2006) for Global Television. His work as an editor includes the experimental drama Family Motel (2007), and the feature doc Rip: A Remix Manifesto for EyesteelFilm. Fortunate Son is his first documentary.
Robin Dianoux
Robin Dianoux is a filmmaker, editor and award-winning photographer. After dedicated himself to social and cultural anthropology, including hunting deep in the Amazonian forest, he came back with many strong opinions about intercultural relationships and some video footage. He enrolled in a documentary filmmaking course in his hometown of Paris, a city he both loves and hates equally. After completing a short documentary about the ambiguous relationship he had with his local neighborhood, it was once again time to leave. Following the Seine River to the sea and beyond, he was soon able to see the shores of Montreal, where he started an internship at Eyesteelfilm. Unable to find his way back home, he became the editor on the documentary film Les Tickets, directed by Eric “Roach” Denis.
Ryan Mullins
Ryan Mullins is a Montreal-based director, editor and cinematographer. He arrived at Eyesteelfilm a seasoned intern and substitute gym teacher, via LA, NewYork, Accra and the South Shore. Ryan’s early days at ESF led him on many adventures, most notably in Harlem and HoMa. He has since produced and directed a short documentary film, Volta, about a derelict cinema in rural Ghana, which premiered at the 2009 Toronto International film festival and South by Southwest in the US. He was awarded the Scholarship for International Development Journalism by the IDRC and nominated for the Bell Fund’s ‘Ten to Watch’ in new media. So please, watch out for him. Ryan recently completed co-directing "The Frog Princes", a feature documentary about the story of a Montreal-based theatre troupe with intellectual and developmental disabilities as they work tirelessly towards mounting an ambitious play.
