The 2008 Screenwriters' Lab mentors are:

MARIA MAGGENTI (filmmaker/screenwriter): Maria Maggenti began her career in 1995 as writer/director of THE INCREDIBLY TRUE ADVENTURE OF TWO GIRLS IN LOVE. Her second feature film, PUCCINI FOR BEGINNERS, produced by InDigEnt premiered in competition at Sundance in January 2006 and was released by Strand Releasing in February 2007. In January 2007 she was one of five filmmakers selected for the Sundance Global Short Film Project for the GSM Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Maggenti recently sold “The Beard”, a half-hour single camera comedy series to Showtime. She has also adapted Jane Green’s bestseller “Jemima J.” for Lifetime Television, and spent three seasons as a writer on the hit CBS/Bruckheimer drama “Without A Trace”. Maggenti received her MFA in filmmaking from the NYU Graduate Film Institute and received her undergraduate degree in Philosophy & Classics from Smith College. In 2001-02 she was an adjunct professor of feature screenwriting at the NYU Graduate Film Institute.

IRA SACHS: Ira Sachs is a filmmaker living in New York City. His most recent film, MARRIED LIFE, starring Rachel McAdams, Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan and Patricia Clarkson was produced by Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and Anonymous Content and was released by Sony Pictures Classics in March 2008. MARRIED LIFE screened at the 2007 Toronto and New York Film Festivals. His previous film, FORTY SHADES OF BLUE, starring Rip Torn, received the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. In 1999, Sachs was given a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. His first feature, THE DELTA, was released theatrically in 1997 by Strand Releasing, after screening at the Sundance, Toronto, and Rotterdam Film Festivals.

JEFFREY SHARP (producer): Jeffrey Sharp, President and CEO of Sharp Independent, has produced numerous feature films, including BOYS DON’T CRY (1999), YOU CAN COUNT ON ME (2000), and PROOF (2005). Those adapted from books include NICHOLAS NICKLEBY (2002) adapted from the novel by Charles Dickens, A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD (2003) adapted by Michael Cunningham from his novel, THE NIGHT LISTENER (2006) adapted by Armistead Maupin from his novel, and EVENING (2007) adapted from Susan Minot's novel by Michael Cunningham and Susan Minot. Sharp Independent recently partnered with HarperCollins to develop and produce feature films from the publishers’ vast list of book titles. This partnership is called Sharp Independent at HarperCollins. Jeff holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Colgate University.

WHIT STILLMAN (writer/director/producer): Whit Stillman is a former journalist and fiction writer who in the 90s came out with three films on “doomed” bourgeois youth – METROPOLITAN, BARCELONA and THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO. Taking the characters from the latter and extending their story, he wrote the S.F. Chronicle bestselling novel “The Last Days of Disco, with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards” (Farrar, Straus), winner of the first and last “Nightlife Literature Award.” Since 1998 he’s lived in Europe writing the scripts for a cycle of films on foreign subjects.

The 2008 Screenwriters' Lab Participants are as follows:

ALEX R. JOHNSON - LA SOBRINA
Cookie Rodriguez had just started driving the night shift for a Brooklyn car service when her niece turns up dead in the Williamsburg waterfront. Frustrated with the police investigation, she starts one of her own and finds that her niece was caught up in a corrupt world of gentrification, bribery, and Brooklyn real estate.

Alex R. Johnson is a Brooklyn, NY based filmmaker. Johnson studied film theory and writing at the University of Vermont before moving to New York City in 1993. Since that time, he has worked steadily in the film and commercial industry, working his way up from Production Assistant to Executive Producer in only six years. Directors he has worked with and produced for include: Joe Berlinger, Steve Buscemi, Henry Corra, Susan Froemke, Albert Maysles, Pete Sillen and Harvey Wang. His collaboration with Henry Corra, SAME SEX AMERICA, a feature length documentary about the battle for gay marriage in Massachusetts, premiered on SHOWTIME in June of 2005 and was called ”(A) heartfelt and moving documentary” (CHICAGO TRIBUNE) that “…sets a standard that will be hard to match” (VARIETY). His short film, THANKSGIVING, screened at over 35 festivals worldwide and won ten awards. THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL said it was “a bittersweet and darkly funny tale of urban isolation” while the FLORIDA FILM FESTIVAL called it “hilariously melancholy”. He’s just finished post-production on his new short film, PICKUP AND RETURN, and will start sending out to festivals this month. Currently he is producing THE JESSE BERNSTEIN PROJECT, a new documentary for director Pete Sillen, as well as continuing to produce commercials to pay the rent.. He lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn with his wife, Anne, and a very excitable dog named Lenny Lou.

JAMES PONSOLDT - REFRESH, REFRESH
Three teenaged sons of Marine reservists fighting a distant war must prove to themselves their worth as men. In measures of heartbreak, brutality, and humor, REFRESH, REFRESH takes an honest, unflinching look at the unforeseen repercussions of violence and how we inherit a war at home.

James Ponsoldt was born and raised in Athens, Georgia. He received a BA in English from Yale and an MFA in directing from Columbia University's Graduate Film Program where his thesis film, JUNEBUG AND HURRICANE (starring Janeane Garofalo), won the Student Choice Award for Best Film. Ponsoldt's short films and debut feature, OFF THE BLACK (starring Nick Nolte, Timothy Hutton, Trevor Morgan, and theatrically distributed by THINKFilm), have played at more than 100 festivals worldwide, including Sundance, Tribeca, Stockholm, Clermont-Ferrand, Edinburgh, Aspen, Florida, Seattle, Cork, Atlanta, Florida, Mill Valley, Nashville, Woodstock, Nantucket, and Hamptons. Ponsoldt's new short documentary, WE SAW SUCH THINGS, recently premiered at the 2008 Sarasota Film Festival.

Ponsoldt has worked as an actor in PORN ‘N CHICKEN (2002), JUNEBUG AND HURRICANE (2004), and OFF THE BLACK (2006). He also wrote and directed the 2004 short COMING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN.

BRADFORD TATUM - BOOK OF WATER
BOOK OF WATER combines historical fact with a vibrant magical realist style to tell the story of the life of Leonardo da Vinci. An Alfred P. Sloan supported script.

Bradford Tatum is a native of Corona del Mar, California, and has worked in Hollywood for almost seventeen years. A graduate of New York's Neighborhood Playhouse and Sanford Meisner, he spent most of that time engaged as an actor playing lead roles in such films as "Down Periscope" and " Powder". In the last five years he has segued into writing and directing, landing a staff position on NBC's Dick Wolf show "Deadline" starring Oliver Platt.

Tatum has been commissioned to write screenplays and had development deals at both MGM television and National Geographic, the latter resulting in a very funny and compelling movie about the controversial parents of paleoanthropology, the Leakey Family.

He has written two features that have been produced: STANDING ON FISHES and SALT. STANDING ON FISHES won both the Sonoma and Texas Film Festivals and was chosen to premiere at the prestigious SXSW Festival in Austin and to open the San Francisco Film Festival. After a well received run in California and New York, it is currently available in most video stores. SALT is his second full length feature and is currently on the festival circuit, having won the Best Actor award at the 2006 FYLMZ Festival in Nashville..

Tatum has numerous television acting credits since 1990 including NYPD Blue, Melrose Place, Providence, and Without a Trace.

AVI WEIDER - ZEROES AND ONES
In creating an intelligent machine out of discarded computer parts, a young woman uncovers her grandmother's long-buried secret of her survival from Auschwitz and finds a release from her own haunting memories. An Alfred P. Sloan supported script.

Avi Weider teamed up with novelist Paul Auster in 1997 to create the short film, I REMEMBER. This film, starring John Cameron Mitchell, premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. Director Atom Egoyan said of it, "I couldn't imagine a more perfect total representation of this quirky literary masterpiece."

In 1998, Avi opened the production company Loop Filmworks. As Executive Producer, Avi wrote and produced over fifty award-winning spots for clients such as HBO, The American Red Cross, Bravo, Disney and IFC. Avi also has producing credits on the award-winning documentary films CINEMANIA and SCOTT WALKER 30TH CENTRUTY MAN.

Currently, Avi is also at work on WELCOME TO THE MACHINE, a feature length documentary about our human relationship to technology.