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Hayao Miyazaki
Biography
Hayao Miyazaki (Miyazaki Hayao, born January 5, 1941) is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly five decades, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli, an animation studio and production company. The success of Miyazaki's films has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney, British animator Nick Park as well as Robert Zemeckis, who pioneered Motion Capture animation, and he has been named one of the most influential people by Time Magazine.
Miyazaki began his career at Toei Animation as an in-between artist for Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon where he pitched his own ideas that eventually became the movie's ending. He continued to work in various roles in the animation industry over the decade until he was able to direct his first feature film Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro which was published in 1979. After the success of his next film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, he co-founded Studio Ghibli where he continued to produce many feature films until Princess Mononoke whereafter he temporarily retired.
While Miyazaki's films have long enjoyed both commercial and critical success in Japan, he remained largely unknown to the West until Miramax released his 1997 film, Princess Mononoke. Princess Mononoke was the highest-grossing film in Japan—until it was eclipsed by another 1997 film, Titanic—and the first animated film to win Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards. Miyazaki returned to animation with Spirited Away. The film topped Titanic's sales at the Japanese box office, also won Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards and was the first anime film to win an American Academy Award.
Miyazaki's films often incorporate recurrent themes, such as humanity's relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. Reflecting Miyazaki's feminism, the protagonists of his films are often strong, independent girls or young women. Miyazaki is a vocal critic of capitalism and globalization. While two of his films, The Castle of Cagliostro and Castle in the Sky, involve traditional villains, his other films such as Nausicaa or Princess Mononoke present morally ambiguous antagonists with redeeming qualities.
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Chiara Lüssow
Biography
Chiara Lüssow (born 1995 in Elmshorn) is a German actress.
Chiara Lüssow lives in Hamburg and has appeared in various film and television productions. She is known, among other things, for her roles in *Performaniax*, *Bleib doch noch*, and *Nord Nord Mord – Sievers und die stillen Austern*.
Her other productions include *Tränen des Krieges*, *Der Schweissjäger*, *Blue Moon of Kentucky*, and *F60 Kamikaze*.
Lüssow possesses an athletic build, speaks German, English, and Spanish, and has a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Furthermore, she is skilled in musical theater singing as well as various dance styles, including hip-hop, jazz dance, ballet, and video-clip dancing.
Her athletic skills include boxing, kickboxing, stage combat, and yoga. She is also a certified yoga instructor.
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Thomas Dulac
Biography
Thomas Dulac, born May 25, 1969, is a French climbing instructor and mountain guide. He also works as a lecturer, journalist, and author of hiking guides.
It all began when, at the age of 17, he read Frison-Roche's "Premier de cordée." He then decided to become a guide. His first climb took place on the cliffs of Notre-Dame du Cros in the Aude department with his high school sports teacher. He then learned mountaineering in the Pyrenees with Dominique Sauvage of the French Alpine Club of Carcassonne: bivouacs in the snow, pitonnage, and ski touring. He went to study in Grenoble in the Alps and returned with his mid-mountain guide diploma in hand. He went on to become a climbing instructor, ski patroller, and aspiring mountain guide. Wanting to share his passion with others, he opened and equipped routes, and published his first climbing guidebook on the Pyrénées Orientales massif, then another on the Aiguilles Rouges with his friend Godefroy Perroux, which was a great success with climbers.
The Sahara, in Algeria, would become his playground, where he lived for nearly nine months and opened numerous climbing routes. In 2005, he published the guidebook Climbing in the Sahara: Hoggar Massif, which precisely lists the routes he had climbed over seventy years of vertical exploration. Filled with numerous sketches and photos, it provides technical descriptions, access conditions, and more general practical information relating to southern Algeria, the desert, and local culture.
After the birth of his daughter, Thomas became a caretaker at the Refuge des Cortalets, in the heart of Catalan country and the Canigou massif in the Pyrenees.
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Vicente Juarbe
Biography
Vicente was born in the mountains of Utuado, Puerto Rico in 1951 and soon after, his family moved to New York City, where he grew up. Studied film directing in the New York School of Visual Arts in the 1970's, and later moved to Philadelphia to work for ABC television. After (5) years of producing public affairs programing for the Hispanic community, he returns to Puerto Rico in 1983. He worked as an independent producer/director/editor in the advertising and industrial markets. At the same time, he collaborated on numerous documentaries relating to the history and culture of Puerto Rico. Throughout the 1980's & 90's he worked in the film industry in various capacities. As assistant director, he worked on more than (15) films produced in Puerto Rico and the United States. In 2003, he directed Cayo, his first feature film. Cayo, provided the opportunity to work with the best theater actors in Puerto Rico, and with Roslyn Sanchez, who came from Hollywood to work on the project. Since then he has directed award winning films such as: Hay Hombres para Todas (2008), Il Viaggio: Una DocuMedia Surrealista (2011), El Rey del Bar (2012). In addition, he has directed various documentaries and two stage productions; Voces Contra el Poder (Spanish version of Speak Truth to Power written by Ariel Dorfman) and Julia Íntima (based on the writings of the Puerto Rican poet, Julia de Burgos). From 2006-2013, along with actress and professor, Idalia Pérez Garay, taught Actuando para la Cámara; workshops designed to teach film acting techniques. He is in post-production for (2) feature length documentaries: La Verdadera Historia de Teatro del Sesenta (Puerto Rico's oldest theater company) and El Sueño de Andy (The life and times of singer Andy Montañez).
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Valeriya Force
Biography
Valeriya Force is an Ukrainian-American singer. She began her musical journey as a contestant on X-Factor Ukraine and later gained international recognition with her hit “I Am a Fire”, which has surpassed 260 million streams worldwide. Her songs “Rainbow” and “People in My Head” have been featured on global stages and included in Billboard playlists, while “Randajon” and “I Need Your Love” were highlighted in official Grammy playlists. Today, Valeriya Force is the leading artist of FORCEMUSIC INC, creating music that inspires women and resonates with audiences around the world.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer. He won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award. Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On October 31, 2020, Connery died at the age of 90.
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Danupha Khanatheerakul
Biography
Danupha Khanatheerakul (Thai: ดนุภา คณาธีรกุล; RTGS: danupha khanathirakun, born 13 November 2002), better known by her stage name, Milli, is a Thai female rapper and singer. She rose to prominence nationally with her debut single "Phak Kon" (พักก่อน), which was released in February 2020. It was followed by another successful single "Sud Pang" (สุดปัง) later in the year. In April 2022, she performed at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, becoming the second Thai artist to perform there.
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Zoénie Liwen Deng
Biography
Zoénie Liwen DENG is an art writer, researcher, poet, curator, and translator. She obtained her PhD degree from the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ACSA), University of Amsterdam. Being part of the European Research Council (ERC) funded research project, her PhD project focused on non-oppositional criticality of socially engaged art in contemporary China. She was the Secondary grantee of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Greater China Research Grant 2019-2020 in Asian Art Archive, and she conducted a project about self-organisation of cultural practitioners in Southern China, in relation to practices in southeast Asia. Her research and artistic interests cover social practices, feminism, the decolonial, otherwise ways of living together, and non-western epistemologies and cosmologies. She is a contributor to Leap and Artforum China.
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Peter Friedman
Biography
Peter Friedman studied film at Hampshire College, where he was a student and protégé of Tom Joslin. They maintained a close friendship long after Friedman graduated and established himself as a documentary filmmaker in New York City. Friedman received an Academy Award® nomination for directing “The Wizard of the String,” a documentary portrait of vaudeville era musician Roy Smeck, and an Emmy® nomination for editing “Flamingo Odyssey” for National Geographic. In 1990, he produced and directed “I Talk to Animals,” a portrait of an animal therapist, which was broadcast in 10 different countries. In 1993, Friedman completed “Silverlake Life: The View From Here” for his mentor Joslin, who passed away during the course of filming. “Silverlake Life” was called “the most honest depiction of AIDS on screen” and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. He died on April 3, 2025, in Paris.
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Ahmed El Sobky
Biography
Ahmed Al Sabbky is an Egyptian producer, most of his films have been quite successful at the box office despite being subject to attacks from critics. Al Sabbky states that his works seek to engage the working classes from which he originates, thus he adds that he knows how to connect with normal moviegoers. Nonetheless Al Sabbky is constantly attacked by critics who describe his works as base and unsubstantial. Despite the views of critics Al Sabbky’s works are nonetheless very successful at the box office.
Al Sabbky’s career in cinema began when he opened a video club in the 1980s atop a family owned butcher shop in the district of Al Dokki. Al Sabbky’s video club specialized in distributing and promoting foreign films in Egypt. The video club met with a high level of success and led to him and his brother owning one of the most successful film distribution houses in the Middle East.
Thereafter Al Sabbky began his run as a producer and collaborated with his brother Mohamed Al Sabbky to found a producing label in the early ‘90s – “Al Sabbky for Artistic Production”. Al Sabbky’s first work was “E’youn Al Saqr” (“Eagle’s Eye”) which featured the performance of Nour El Shereef. Subsequently Al Sabbky produced “Master Karateh” (“Karate Master”), “Sawwaq Al Hannim” (“Lady’s Driver”) and “Al Ragol al Thalith” (“The Third Man”) which starred Ahmed Zaky. The Al Sabbky brothers also produced other works, their most successful endeavors being “Al Lemby” and “El Bally Ballak” which featured the performance of Mohamed Sa’ad. Those two titles achieved a particularly high level of success at the box office.
Ahmed Al Sabbky has recently separated his activities from those of his brother so that both brothers now run independent production labels. His first production works following the split were “Cabaret” and “Al Farah” (“The Wedding”) which achieved commercial success in addition to being well received by audiences
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