Speakers
KIM AKASS
Film Scholar
Kim Akass is Research Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has co-edited and contributed to "Reading Sex and the City", "Reading Six Feet Under: TV To Die For", "Reading The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television", "Reading Desperate Housewives: Beyond the White Picket Fence" and "Quality TV: Contemporary American TV and Beyond". She is one of the co-founding editors of the journal "Critical Studies in Television", web-mistress of "CST online", as well as (with McCabe) series editor of "Reading Contemporary Television". Current research interests include the representation of mothers and mothering in television and popular culture.
JANET MCCABE
Film Scholar
Janet McCabe is Research Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is author of "Feminist Film Studies: Writing the Woman into Cinema", and is co-editor of "Reading Sex and the City", "Reading Six Feet Under: TV To Die For", "Reading The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television", "Reading Desperate Housewives: Beyond the White Picket Fence" and "Quality TV: Contemporary American TV and Beyond". She is one of the co-founding editors as well as the managing editor of the journal "Critical Studies in Television". Along with Akass, she is series editor of "Reading Contemporary Television". She is writing a book on "The West Wing", and her current research interests include policing femininities and cultural memory, 9/11 and contemporary US television drama.
DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN
Cultural Scholar
In the 80s Diedrich Diederichsen was editor and publisher of the magazine “Spex” and has worked internationally since the 90s as university lecturer, visiting and associate professor. From 1998 to 2006 Diederichsen taught at the Merz Akademie Stuttgart as a Professor of Aesthetic Theory and Cultural Studies and has been a Professor of Theory, Practice and Conveying Contemporary Art at the Institute of Art and Cultural Studies at the Fine Arts Academy in Vienna since 2006. He has published numerous books, his latest being "Eigenblutdoping" (2008).
HELMUT DRAXLER
Art historian and critic and lives in Berlin. He was director of the Kunstverein Munich between 1992 and 1995, and has been professor of aesthetic theory at the Merz Academy.
CHRISTOPH DREHER
Filmmaker, Author, Musician
Christoph Dreher studied directing at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin as well as political science and philosophy at the Free University of Berlin. Since 1980 he has realized numerous film, video and television productions (author, direction, camera, editing, production), the latest being "No Wave" (2008). As co-founder of the band "Die Haut" (1979-1999) he released various records and cooperated with international musicians like Nick Cave and Lydia Lunch. Since 2001 he has taught at the Merz Akademie Stuttgart as Professor of Film and Video.
TOM FONTANA
Series Creator and Producer
Tom Fontana has written and produced such groundbreaking television series as "St. Elsewhere", "Homicide: Life On The Street", "Oz" and "The Philanthropist". He has received, among others, three Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, three Writers’ Guild Awards, four Television Critics Association Awards, the Humanitas Prize and first prize at the Cinema Tout Ecran Festival in Geneva. Fontana wrote the film "Strip Search" as well as contributing two pieces to the September 11th special "America: A Tribute to Heroes". He was the executive producer of "American Tragedy", "Shot in the Heart", the documentary "The Press Secretary" and several independent films.
DAVID LAVERY
Film Scholar
David Lavery is professor of English and Popular Culture at Middle Tennessee State University and the author, editor and co-editor of numerous essays, books and volumes on such television series as "Twin Peaks", "The X-Files", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "The Sopranos", "Lost", "Deadwood", "Seinfeld", "My So Called Life", "Heroes", and "Battlestar Galactica". He co-edits the e-journal "Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies" and is one of the founding editors of Critical Studies in "Television: Scholarly Studies of Small Screen Fictions". He has lectured around the world on the subject of television.
TED MANN
Series Author and Producer
Ted Mann was involved in starting a publishing company in Vancouver, but left to become a magazine editor in New York, working at National Lampoon from the 70s to 1980. Seeing the print and literary world was passing away, he began working in filmed entertainment. TV shows include: "The Street", "Miami Vice", "Wiseguy", "NYPD Blue", "Deadwood" and "Slimer" and the "New Ghost Busters". Mann recently completed a mini-series on the subject of the post civil war feud between the Appalachian backwoods clans, the Hatfields and the McCoys on which filming is set to start the spring of 2010. He is working on a feature film tentatively entitled "The Sunflower Boys" about the nine weeks Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh spent together at Arles, and which culminated in Vincent presenting his severed ear to Rachel, a whore, on Christmas Eve, 1888.
THOMAS MORSCH
Film Scholar
Thomas Morsch took theater, film and television studies as well as studies in German philology and philosophy in Bochum and has worked since 1999 as a research assistant and since 2009 as Junior Professor in the Film Studies Department at the Free University of Berlin. In 2008 he completed a doctorate on the topic of "Embodied Perception. Physical and Aesthetic Experience in Film" ("Verkörperte Wahrnehmung. Körperliche und ästhetische Erfahrung im Film") and has published numerous texts on film theory and the aesthetics of contemporary cinema. A research project on the aesthetics of serials is under preparation.
BERT REBHANDL
Film Critic
Bert Rebhandl studied German philology, philosophy and Catholic theology in Vienna and Berlin. He works as a freelance journalist, author and translator and is co-founder and co-editor of the magazine "Cargo Film Medien Kultur".
KAREN L. THORSON
Executive Producer
Karen Thorson post-supervised and associate produced several feature films. After the death of her husband Robert F. Colesberry, who was executive producing a pilot for the HBO-series "The Wire", she was promoted to producer and retained that role through the fifth season and finale of the series. Together with the producing team of “The Wire” she earned a Peabody Award and three American Film Institute Awards for television program of the year. After “The Wire”, Karen was offered the position of Co-Producer for the Sony Television series “The Unusuals”, which aired on ABC for one season. She has recently signed on as Consulting Producer for “Treme”, a new HBO drama created by David Simon and Eric Overmyer.
