Savannah College of Art and Design > Film Festival

Novelist, screenwriter and producer Amy Ephron began her career as a studio executive, working on Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning films such as Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Out of Africa (1985). She also was executive producer on Alfonso Cuaron’s Academy Award-nominated version of A Little Princess (1995).

Ephron occasionally contributes to The Huffington Post, and is owner and publisher of One for the Table, an online magazine about food, politics and love. She is the author of Cool Shades (1984), Bruised Fruit (1987), Biodegradable Soap (1991), White Rose: Una Rosa Blanca (2000), A Cup of Tea: A Novel of 1917 (2005), for which she adapted a screenplay, and One Sunday Morning (2006) from her bestselling novel. She most recently completed aka, a hard-edged political thriller about a woman who may or may not have amnesia.

Ephron is the daughter of stage writers and screenwriters Henry and Phoebe Ephron, and sister of writers/producers/actors Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Alan Rader, and their five children.

Born in Houston, and raised in Alice, Texas, Lois Chiles was educated at Saint Mary's Hall and the University of Texas at Austin. After convincing her parents to let her go to New York City for her senior year, she was discovered by Glamour magazine and asked to model. A friend suggested acting lessons and, soon after, Chiles was cast in Academy Award-winning films The Way We Were (1973) and The Great Gatsby (1974).

Other film credits include Academy Award-winning and Golden Globe-nominated film Death on the Nile (1978), Sweet Liberty (1986), Academy Award- and Golden Globe-nominated Broadcast News (1987), Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) and Kettle of Fish (2006). Television credits include appearances on Dallas, L.A. Law and Emmy Award-winning CSI: Las Vegas.

Chiles studied acting with some of the greats such as Sanford Meisner, José Quintero, Milton Katselas and Roy London. She worked off-Broadway in The Incredibly Famous Willy Rivers, and José Ferrer directed her on stage in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Best Man. Chiles is best known for her portrayal of Dr. Holly Goodhead in the Academy Award-nominated James Bond film Moonraker (1979).

Writer, filmmaker and cultural critic Nelson George has been working in the industry for more than 25 years. His career began in the late 1970s while attending St. John's University in New York. As an undergraduate student, George contributed to the Amsterdam News and Billboard magazine. After graduation he was named black music editor of Billboard, where he worked from 1982 to 1989. During that time, George published several influential books, including Where Did Our Love Go: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound”(1986) and The Death of Rhythm & Blues (1988).

Involved with the black indie film scene since the late ’70s, George took on a more active role when he moved to Fort Greene in Brooklyn in the mid-1980s and invested in Spike Lee's landmark film, She's Gotta Have It (1986). He was associate producer for Just Another Girl on the IRT (1992) and co-wrote the screenplays for Strictly Business (1991) starring Halle Berry and CB4 (1993) starring Chris Rock. George later served as consulting producer on HBO's The Chris Rock Show in the late 1990s.

He wrote a column for the Village Voice titled Native Son from 1988-92. In the 1990s he published several nonfiction books: Elevating the Game: Black Men in Basketball (1999), Buppies, B-Boys, Baps & Bohos: Notes on Post-Soul Black Culture (1993), Blackface: African Americans in the Movies (1994) and Hip Hop America (1999). George also co-wrote Russell Simmons' autobiography Life and Def: Sex, Drugs, Money and God (2001).

George expanded into fiction, publishing Urban Romance (1993), Seduced (1996), One Woman Short (2000), Show & Tell (2001), “Night Work” (2003) and The Accidental Hunter (2005).

His short film, To Be a Black Man (1996), starring Samuel L. Jackson, has played in film festivals in New York, London and Amsterdam, as has his documentary, A Great Day in Hip Hop (2000). George also completed an online film project titled Blacker, a look at racial identity through poetic short films.

Classically trained in theater at the National Youth Theater and The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Timothy Dalton has had an illustrious career in theater, film and television with famous roles such as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1970) and James Bond in The Living Daylights (1987) and License to Kill (1989).

In between on-screen roles, Dalton has remained faithful to the stage, appearing in His Dark Materials, A Touch of the Poet, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Henry IV, Love's Labours Lost, King Lear, The Game Called Arthur, Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs, The Taming of the Shrew and Antony and Cleopatra.

Dalton also appeared on European and American television in productions such as Framed (1992), Scarlett (1994), The Informant (1997), Passion’s Way (1999), Cleopatra (1999), Made Men (1999), Possessed (2000), Hercules (2005) and Marple: The Sittaford Mystery (2006).

Other film credits include roles as noble and military men in Academy- and Golden Globe-winner The Lion in Winter (1968), Academy Award-winning film Cromwell (1970), Academy- and Golden Globe-nominated Mary Queen Of Scots (1972), Sextette (1978), Oscar-nominated Agatha (1979) and Flash Gordon (1980), as well as roles in The Doctor and The Devils (1985), The Living Daylights (1987), Hawks (1988), The King's Whore (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), Naked in New York (1993), Beautician and the Beast (1997), Time Share (2000), American Outlaws (2001), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) and, most recently, Hot Fuzz (2007).