Agustín Acevedo Kanopa (Uruguay) psychoanalyst, writer and critic. He writes weekly about films and music on La diaria. He is one of the founders of the virtual magazine Fósforo and has written on websites like Roumovie,com, La voz joven (Argentina), 33 Cines and Tiempo de crítica. He published the book of poems Caja Negra (2007) and the novel Antes del crepúsculo (2010), winner of the Fondos Concursables of the MEC, and Eucaliptus, a book about to be published by the editorial Estuario. He has been jury on diferent events, including the International Film Festival of Cinemateca and the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, on 2013.

Aldo Garay (Uruguay) is a director. He is currently working as a film maker at the Uruguayan channel Tevé Ciudad. He has made dozens of one-off reports, series of reports and feature-length films for the cinema including The wait (2002), Near the clouds (2006), The circle (2008) and The wedding (2011). In 2006, the Bafici Festival mounted a retrospective of all his work in the Foco space. He began his studies in the audiovisual field in 1990, and in 1996 he was awarded a scholarship by Televisión Española for a course in production and direction of TV fiction in Madrid.

Alexander Knetig (France) is responsible for web projects at the European cultural channel ARTE France. In the last five years he has been involved in some of the channel’s web projects that have won the most prizes including Alma, Barcode, Prison-Valley and Gaza-Sderot. Before joining ARTE he was an independent journalist for various online publications in France, Austria and Spain, and for producers like the web agency Upian. He teaches interactive narrative at several French and German institutions, and he is a member of the Austrian Ministry of Culture’s jury for new audiovisual formats.

Alfonso Gastiaburo (Argentina) Screenwriter and director. He founded La Conjura TV. He has participated in several projects of counter-information, making documentary films about human rights and social movements. Some of his work has been used as evidence of human rights violations on trials against the State. He works as an independent filmmaker for diferent media.

Bruni Burres in Senior Consultant for the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Program, a mentor and media expert with Greenhouse Film Centre and a freelance film producer and media consultant. Previously, she was the director of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which she also co-founded. In partnership with the International Center for Transitional Justice she produced the documentary The Siege (2011), which explores the lasting cultural and political impact of the 1985 siege of the Palace of Justice in Colombia. For the past 20 years she has been working at the intersection between human rights and arts and culture as a curator, producer, and consultant.

Dominique Willieme (France) is a producer of interactive projects at the National Film Board of Canada. She has been working on producing interactive contents since 2007. Prior to that she was a consultant for communications enterprises and an editor on various online pop culture projects. She was involved in the creation of the new formation of the publishers Fresh Media (Paris, France), and she subsequently joined the French channel ARTE as editor in chief of online contents and new platforms.

Emma Davie (Scotland). Documentary filmmaker. She runs the Film Department at Edinburgh College of Art. She has co-directed a feature documentary I am Breathing for Film 4 which is travelling to festivals all over the world. Previous work includes many documentaries for BBC, Ch 4 and various international broadcasters. She was on the board of the European Documentary Network (EDN) and writes for DOX magazine. She taught at the European Film College and has worked as tutor or consultant with EDN, European Film College, Storydoc, Discovery Campus, East European Forum, Docs Barcelona, IDFA Summer School, Norwegian Film School and many others.

Guzmán García (Uruguay) Film maker. He directed Love still (2012), a film that was premiered at IDFA. He co-wrote documentary film Maracaná (2012) and edited Mundialito (2010) and Cachila (2008), both of which where directed by Sebastián Bednarik. He has a degree in Communication Sciences. Through his career he has fulfill several roles, always favoring the nearness with social issues, with a marked interest for daily stories that have an impact on society.

Hugues Sweeney (Canada) has been an executive producer of interactive productions at the National Film Board of Canada since 2009. Previously he was head of the Bande à Part multimedia project and programming chief at Espace Musique. His interactive projects at the NFB have been awarded numerous international prizes including the SXSW, Japan Media Arts, Boomerang and d’o FIPA, and have won nominations for the IDFA Digital Emmy, Géminis and Gémeaux. Mr. Sweeney studied philosophy at the Dominican College of Philosophy and Theology in Ottawa, and multimedia at the University of Quebec.

Jean Garner (United States) is in charge of co-productions and acquisitions for the program Witness on the Al Jazeera channel in English, which since it started in 2006 has shown more than 500 documentaries all over the World. Garner is regional head for the whole area from the Arctic Circle down to Argentina. She has worked for several broadcasters including ABC News, World News Tonight and Nightline.

José Rodríguez (Puerto Rico). He is the Manager for Documentary Programming at the Tribeca Film Institute. A native of Puerto Rico, he grew up with a passion for movies that led him to Syracuse University (NY), where he wrote a feature script and directed two shorts. After interning as an assistant to producer Amy Hobby, he settled in New York City and became a script/book reader for Overture Films while also working on Tze Chun’s Children of Invention and the documentary Poor Consuelo Conquers the World. He also maintains a blog about daily NYC life & film.

Lech Kowalski (England). Film director. Born in London to Polish parents who were displaced from their country during the Second World War, Kowalski’s family moved to the USA. He has directed 12 feature documentaries and developed web projects including D.O.A. (1980), Story of a Junkie (1987), Hey! Is Dee Dee Home? (2002), On Hitler’s Higway (2002) and The End of the World Begins with One Lie (2011). He won several prizes in film festivals such as IDFA, San Francisco International Film Festival and Venice Film Festival. Kowalski has taught at the French film academy La FEMIS and at HEAD school of art in Geneva.

Luis Ospina (Colombia). Director, producer, scriptwriter, film editor, writer, university teacher, and movie critic. He made 9 feature films, 4 series and over 18 short films, including Agarrando pueblo (1977), Ojo y vista: peligra la vida del artista (1988), Cali: ayer, hoy y mañana (1995) and Un tigre de papel (2007). His films were awarded at film festivals such as Oberhausen, Cadiz, Toulouse, Bilbao, Sitges, Havana, Biarritz, Lima, Caracas, Bogotá and Cartagena. In 2010 the Ministry of Culture awarded him with the “A lifetime dedicated to film” Prize and the InVitro Visual Festival gives him the Santa Lucía Prize.

Mariana Oliva (Brazil) is a filmmaker and coordinator for co-productions and new international projects at TAL. She was one of the creators of the series Mi país, nuestro mundo, a co-production among nine Latin American countries. In the last year she coordinated four international co-productions. Her last short film,Humanoids, was shown at major international festivals. She has a master’s degree in documentary direction from the Edinburgh College of Art, and she qualified in journalism at PUC-SP.

After studying Cinema and Advertising at the Pontificia Universidade Católica in Rio de Janeiro, Marília started her career as trailer editor in 2006 and soon after moved onto cinema editing. Marília has edited short films, video art, internet and TV content, musical DVDs, feature documentaries and fiction films. Her most important works are: Feliz Natal (December) (Best film edition award at the Goiania Festival, 2008), Construção (Construction) by Carolina Sá, A Curva da Cintura (The Hip Curve), directed by Dora Jobim, with Arnaldo Antunes e Toumani Daiabaté, and O Palhaço (The Clown), feature films directed by Selton Mello. The documentary series Vozes do Araguaia (Araguaia Voices), directed by Deby Mendes (indicated for the Digital Emmy Awards in 2011), and also the movies Disparos (Hot Cold Blood) by Juliana Reis, Brennand by Mariana Fortes, currently being finalized.

Marta Andreu (Spain) is the academic coordinator of DocMontevideo. She is the academic coordinator of the master’s in creation documentary course at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She teaches port-graduate documentary film courses at the Universidad Rovira y Virgili in Tarragona. In 2004-2005 she coordinated a Spanish documentary cinema retrospective for Cinéma du Réel. She analyses documentary scripts for the Centre de Desenvolupament Audiovisual. In 2004 she founded Estudi Playtime in order to devote her time to producing creation documentaries. She has a degree in audiovisual communication and a master’s in creation documentary from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

Martin Viau (Canada) is head of technology and head of projects in the interactive production area at the NFB. He started there in 2006 as a DVD designer. In 2009 he joined the interactive production team and returned to one of his first loves: the Internet. In the last fourteen years he has been working passionately in new spheres of activity in the media. He is known for his dynamism, capacity to work under pressure, sense of resources, team spirit and for his ongoing interest in emerging technologies. He has worked on web development, post-production, special effects design and the creation of DVDs.

Monique Simard (Canada) has been the general director of the NFB French program since 2008. She set up and developed the interactive productions unit. From 1998 to 2008 she was a member of the team at Producciones Virage, a production enterprise specialized in documentaries about social and international subjects. She was responsible for developing and producing nearly 60 documentaries. Since 1998 she has represented the documentary industry in Quebec. She is known for her support for producing films that are socially relevant, for her vision in the development of documentaries and for producing interactive and animation contents.

Nicolás Prividera (Argentina) He graduated in Communication Sciences at Buenos Aires University (UBA) and in the National Film School (ENERC). His first movie was M (2007). It won the Best Latin American Film Award, the FIPRESCI Prize at Mar del Plata International Film Festival (Argentine), as well as the Runner Up Prize at the Yamagata Film Festival (Japan), the award for Best Documentary Film at the Mostra de Lleida and a Special Jury Mention at the Gijón Film Festival (Spain).

Noe Mendelle co-founded and manages the SDI, a research and production centre based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She directed more than 30 films, and ten years ago she concentrated her efforts on production. She works with French and Portuguese producers at AfricaDoc, an initiative to strengthen African documentary production. The SDI invests in training new directors and in producing and distributing films. Its products have been shown on British TV and at major international festivals including Sundance, IDFA and Visions du Réel. Since 1980 it has worked on documentaries for various media. She is tutor in distance of DocMontevideo.

Orlando Senna (Brazil) is the president of TAL and a member of the Higher Council of the Foundation of New Latin American Cinema. He is one of the most outstanding theoreticians in the Brazilian cinema world. He has been general director of TV Brazil, Audiovisual Secretary of Brazil and general director of EICTV in Cuba. He has directed a number of feature films including Iracema, Gitirana and Diamante bruto; he wrote the scripts for several more including El rey de la noche, Abrigo Nuclear and Iremos a Beirut; and his films have won prizes at important international festivals. He has written nearly 30 plays and has published several books.

Patricia Boero (Uruguay) Is an international media consultant. She works executive producer of the Viewfinder Latin America series developed and broadcast by Al Jazeera English. Until 2011 she worked as director of International Programs at the Sundance Institute, created by Robert Redford in support of independent film. She also supported Latin American filmmakers through her work at the Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations, and as Executive Director of Latino Public Broadcasting, funding and producing documentaries that aired on PBS. Boero studied cinema in Australia, where she worked for Film Australia and SBS TV, directing documentaries about human rights.

Priscila Pereira is a projects coordinator on Canal Futura’s Community Mobilization and Coordination scheme. She studied literature and Portuguese at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and specialized in anthropology and cognitive development at the FluminenseFederalUniversity. For the last 12 years she has been working on training educators and on the production and implementation of Canal Futura material.

Ryan Harrington (United States). Director of Documentary Programming at the Tribeca Film Institute, where he oversees year-round documentary funding and filmmaker support initiatives. Previously, he managed production at A&E IndieFilms, where he championed the films Murderball, Jesus Camp, American Teen and My Kid Could Paint That, among others. With Participant Media, he recently produced the feature documentary A Place at the Table, which will be released in theaters in early 2013.
Distance mentoring

Sergio De Cola (Uruguay) is a director on the National Telecommunications Board of the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining. He is an industrial engineer in the electronics field and is certified by the PMI as a project management professional (PMP). He has been in charge of projects for consultation and the implementation of telecommunications systems in Uruguay and abroad. Since 1984 he has held a number of positions as an adviser, consultant and manager in computer enterprises and infrastructure and communications firms. Since 1982 he has also been a teacher at the engineering faculty at the University of the Republic and has given courses at other public and private institutions.

Simon Kilmurry (Scotland). Executive Director of POV in United States. He served as chief operating officer of American Documentary for six years before assuming as executive director in 2006. He has played a key role in setting strategic direction for the organization and implementing new initiatives, including the Diverse Voices Project, POV’s co-production initiative in support of emerging filmmakers; POV’s Borders, PBS’ Webby Award-winning online series; and True Lives, a second-run series for independent documentaries on public TV. He worked to secure partnerships with both Netflix and Docurama to expand the distribution opportunities for POV filmmakers.
Distance Mentoring

Vincent Brown (United States). Gallery director of The Resonance Center, a non for profit artist co-op. Greatly influenced by early experimental cinema of the European Avante Garde from the 1920’s, Vincent’s first films were non-linear shorts made without the use of a camera, utilizing collage technique and direct manipulation of 8mm film that he found at garage sales and thrift stores. Educated as a Graphic artist, at Mohawk Valley Community College, and later as a Fine Artist at Munson Williams Proctor Institute, Vincent’s main focus is sculpture, assemblages and collage. He has exhibited in several shows throughout New York state.