Best Director:
NOAH COWAN

Noah Cowan returned to the Toronto International Film Festival Group in January of 2004 to become Festival Co-Director, a position he shares with Piers Handling. Cowan was most recently Founding Executive Director of The Global Film Initiative (2002- 2003), a charitable educational organization devoted to the promotion of developing world cinema, and President of Code Red Films (2000-2004) and Cowboy Pictures (1995-2002), both New York-based film distribution companies specializing in foreign language films and documentaries. Cowan had various programming and administrative roles at the Toronto International Film Festival from the late-1980s through

Animation:
MANDY KEANE

As cinema programmer for the Electric Cinema in Notting Hill Gate and Soho House’s private members’ clubs, Mandy programmes a diverse selection of films. Her selection has included Brendan Muldowney’s Innocence, winner of Kerry Short Film Competition 2002 which played to great success before the feature at the Electric Cinema. Mandy’s passion for film and Soho House’s multi-media clientele has proven to be a successful relationship for highlighting new talent. As well as working full time for Soho House UK, Mandy is also on the screening panel for the British Independent Film Awards.

Documentary:
ALAN GILSENAN

Award-winning film-maker, writer, and theatre director, Alan Gilsenan's films include ‘The Road to God Knows Where’, ‘Prophet Songs’, Stories form the Silence’, ‘God Bless America’, ‘The Green Fields of France’, ‘All Souls’ Day’, ‘Private Dancer’, ‘Zulu 9’, ‘The Irish Empire’, ‘Road II’, ‘The Ghost of Roger Casement’, ‘Sing on Forever’ and ‘Timbuktu’.

For the theatre, Gilsenan has directed Tom Murphy’s ‘The Patriot Game’ and ‘On the Outside/On the Inside’; Tom MacIntyre’s ‘What Happened Bridgie Cleary’ for the Abbey Theatre; Jean Genet’s ‘The Balcony’ and Tennessee Williams’ ‘Small Craft Warnings’ for the Focus Theatre; ‘Hamlet’ and Stephen Berkoff’s ‘Decadence’ for the Naked Theatre; as well as his own adaptation of John Banville’s‘The Book of Evidence’ for Kilkenny Arts Festival and the Gate Theatre. His latest production ‘The Asylum’was recently screened on RTE.

Irish:
DONALD CLARKE

Before becoming a full-time writer,Donald Clarke tried everything from cleaning the lavatory in the Project Arts Centre to managing a major West End box-office. He has since written for both stage and screen and had particular success with the award-winning shorts ‘My Dinner with Oswald’ and ‘Pitch ‘n’ Putt With Beckett ‘n’ Joyce’. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Donald now writes about film for several publications, most notably The Irish Times, where his reviews appear weekly. He has also appeared regularly on television and radio and was for two years co-host of the Arts and Entertainment Show on Newstalk 106. Born in Belfast, he has lived in Dublin for the past decade.

International:
ROD STONEMAN

Rod Stoneman became Director of the Huston School of Film and Digital Media at the National University of Ireland, Galway in September 2003.

He was Chief Executive of Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board and Deputy Commissioning Editor in Independent Film and Video Department at Channel Four in London. He has made a number of documentaries for television and written on film in various magazines including: Screen, Sight and Sound, Kinema and Film Ireland

Experimental:
GABRIEL SOUCHEYRE

Director of VIDEOFORMES, International New media and Video art Festival, Clermont-Ferrand, France since its creation in 1986. Gabriel runs an alternative gallery, Galerie de l'art du temps/ Chapelle de l'oratoire, and a quarterly magazine : Turbulences Video.

Since 1999, Videoformes has been developing a web TV: zzaZzooTiVi (young video artists : videos and video-portraits). In 2003, Videoformes started a digitilizing programme in order to save a number of self produced videos or ‘independant’ videos.

Videoformes has become a reference in new media and video