Mentor

Luke Peters is a creator, producer and director hailing from Toronto. Luke has lectured and performed in cities like Chicago, London, Liverpool and Toronto. A graduate of Ryerson’s media production program Luke has been a creator of content for 6 years and has been teaching media for four.  He presents Back Lane's Smartphone photography program.

Diana Nazareth is a certified teaching artist, professional lifestyle photographer and the founder of Project Kids & Cameras. Her programs are informed by an extensive study of key progressive methods such a Literacy Through Photography, PhotoVoice and Visual Thinking Strategies and she has facilitated several photography workshops for schools, community art centres, libraries and community-engagement initiatives throughout the GTA. She received her B.A. in Communications/Photojournalism from Temple University, and her Teaching Artist Certification from The University of The Arts, Philadelphia, PA. Diana has moved out of the city, but will offer workshops when she is in Toronto.

Writer and comedian Carolyn Bennett has written for television, film, radio, theatre, web, and inanimate objects in her office.

Her debut novel, Please Stand By was released by Vancouver's NON Publishing in October 2019. She is at work on a collection of short stories, for which she received a 2020 writing grant from the City of Toronto. She produces and hosts the literary reading series Bright Lit Big City in Toronto.

She is a freelancer for the Toronto Star, Canadian Immigrant Magazine and the Montreal Gazette. She divides her time between Toronto and Brockville, Ontario. She was never very good at division.

Carolyn will be offering a memoir writing course at Back Lane Studios in

www.carolynbennettwritercomic.com

Bob Sandler admits his professional career can be described as going from the sublime to the ridiculous. He wrote the screenplay for Cannibal Girls, starring Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin, and edited the Governor-General’s Award winning non-fiction book Northrop Frye on Shakespeare. He has written extensively for television, as staff writer on children’s shows (Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street, Sharon Lois and Bram’s The Elephant Show) and adult dramas (Street Legal and Traders). His production company, Creative Anarchy Inc., established in 1997, has made the pioneering documentary/reenactment series on crime called Exhibit A: Secrets of Forensic Science, which aired for five seasons on Discovery Canada and TLC in the U.S. He travelled to time zones around the world to film the martial arts series Deadly Arts, the doc series Extreme Clergy and the one-off Real Voodoo, and most recently the series My Pet’s Gone Viral for Animal Planet Canada, UK, Asia-Pacific. He also produced the volunteer-made short RevueCinema: The Big “100” to mark the Roncesvalles theatre’s centennial.

Jeana McCabe, as a veteran educator, filmmaker, producer, has shared her expertise both here and abroad. She studied psychology at York University and later her B.Ed. from U of T. in music. Her interests in media literacy led her to Concordia University for a graduate diploma in Communications. She has produced over 150 social justice documentaries with her students, designed and implemented new media curriculum and founded the 'Just' Docs Festival. Jeana has taught in Africa, produced documentaries in Nicaragua, Argentina and Thailand and has coordinated workshops on Social Justice teaching through digital technologies in partnership with NFB’s Mediateque and Centennial College.

Michael Goldberg has over 10 years and 3,000 hours of live TV experience. Over the course of his career he's worked as a technical director at CP24, helping teams bring live and breaking news to the largest city in the country. He's been a web producer for Canada's Got Talent where he aided in the design and build of the website, as well as working with contestans to create blogs. And now, as a Producer/Editor at Global News' Multi Market Content program Michael is helping to usher in a new way of doing local news across the country. Outside of the control room Michael is known as a comic book nerd, and an excellent cook.

Luis Garcia, who studied film at York University, has written, directed and produced films and videos in a variety of genres, including documentary, drama, music video and animation. His issue and art-oriented documentaries have taken him to Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua and back to Chile. Since his award winning production Under the Table first brought attention to his work, his films have been featured at film festivals across Canada and internationally. His films have aired on CBC, Bravo!, TVO and PBS.

Geoff Bowie is a documentary filmmaker working in English and French. His most recent work is My Heart is Like a Bomb (Doc Zone on French CBC, 52 minutes, 2014). He wrote and directed Courage (2012 NFB) about the growing gap between the 1% and the majority in Canada focusing on the working poor in Ontario. Other work includes the feature length Waiting for My Real Life about the obesity epidemic in North America; for the CBC’s series The Nature of Things: Ghosts of Futures Past: Tom Berger in the North about the Mackenzie Valley pipeline; The Hospital at the End of the Earth about the Aral Sea environmental disaster; and When is Enough, Enough? about a First Nation trying to slow down the growth of the Alberta oil sands. His feature length The Universal Clock: the Resistance of Peter Watkins is about the commodification of the documentary, and Walk Naked Singing, a documentary musical about marijuana, the state, and idealism. Several of these films have been selected for screenings at national and international film festivals, and have been nominated and won awards. He has also directed, shot and edited several short 5 minute documentaries for the internet including: The People’s Guru for TVOntario’s Why Poverty? Series, as well as Le stress, c’est la vie, Le taxage, ça touche tout le monde, and Fais moi signe for the National Film Board of Canada’s TONDOC website and for the website Ta parole est en jeu.

Shane Azam is a filmmaker committed to the development of creative Canadian content for broadcast. As the co-founder of Toronto's Splinter Unit Film Collective, he has made numerous films, many of which have gone on to screen at the Seattle Independent Film Festival, the NYC Global Revolution Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival. Shane, who studied film at York University, began his career as host and producer of TVOntario's two-time Gemini nominated series VOX.

Onyeka Oduh is a young freelance filmmaker whose work focuses on pop culture, the question of gender identity and race, and telling stories that would otherwise go untold. She is currently completing a media certificate and working towards a bachelor in film + television production at Humber College. She has been featured at the Just Docs Film Festival, winning several awards for editing and direction and has screened at the Maryland Film Festival as a part of a youth film exchange program. She was also a judge at the St. Patricks' Student Film Festival. She is also a published author, freelance illustrator and the co-founder of Black Coffee Zine, an art collective that focuses on the alternatives to typical city life.

Award-winning Canadian film composer Isaias Garcia is fast becoming one of the most sought-after talents in the world of scoring for media, having impressed audiences and producers with his beautifully crafted, story-driven scores. At 25 years of age, he has already amassed a plethora of awards: A 3-time SOCAN Award winner; 8-time Hollywood Music in Media Awards nominee; and winner of the 2014 HMMA “Best Video Game Score” award for Dream Revenant, as well as the 2015 HMMA for “Best Score in an Independent Film” for The Moment I Was Alone. Isaias has also received premieres for his solo, choral, and symphonic works in Canada, US, Poland, Portugal, Argentina, and the UK. From 2009-2014, Isaias served as the composer-in-residence with the Celebrity Symphony Orchestra (Toronto), directed by Dr. Andrzej Rozbicki, and in 2014, he co-founded the film & video game scoring company, MASTR Studios (Media Arts Symphony of Toronto & Recording). The company has already completed projects for Coca-Cola, BRAVO, HBO, CityTV, CANAL+ (Europe), and over 50 films and video games. Most recently, Isaias recorded the soundtrack for the feature film,Quarries, (dir. Nils Taylor) with 5-time Juno winner Liona Boyd on guitar. Isaias is a proud graduate of BMTM's arts program in Toronto.