Nollywood Babylon Filmmakers
FILMMAKER BIOS
BEN ADDELMAN & SAMIR MALLAL
Co Directors/Producers
Addelman and Mallal are graduates of the Communications Studies program at Concordia University in Montreal. An internship at the National Film Board of Canada led to their first documentary, Discordia, which won several awards and screened at numerous international festivals including Leeds, Durban and the Human Rights Watch Touring Festival. Bombay Calling, their second film with the Nation Film Board of Canada, was nominated for a 2007 Gemini award (Canada’s Emmy) for Best Socio-Political Documentary. It premiered at the Hot Docs International Documentary Festival and won the Grand Jury prize at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. After a successful festival and repertory theatre run it was broadcast worldwide by National Geographic. Both filmmakers were selected to attend the Berlinale Talent Campus (2006) and Toronto International Film Festival Talent Lab (2007). In 2007, they launched AM Pictures.
GALILÉ MARION-GAUVIN
Executive Producer
Galilé Marion-Gauvin has been working in film and television since graduating from Concordia University with a degree in film production. In 2004 he founded Ottoblix, a post-production company that specializes in animation (2D/3D), motion design and colourization. He served as a production director on a number of advertising and film projects, including Normal McLaren: the Master’s Edition DVD box set of work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). Recently, Galilé Marion-Gauvin produced six short fiction films, among them, an award-winning Le Petit Oiseau Va Sortir (Before the Wind Blows), directed by Samer Najari. He also produced two feature documentaries, Revolucion and Nollywood Babylon , which has been selected for official competition at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Currently, he is working on a Quebec/France co-production of a short animation, due for completion in the summer of 2009.
ADAM SYMANSKY
Producer NFB
With Nollywood Babylon, Oscar-winner Adam Symansky has now produced all three NFB documentaries by the award-winning directorial team of Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal, including their first film, Discordia (2004), as well as Bombay Calling (2006).
Ben and Samir are in good company. For in a distinguished NFB career spanning more than 30 years, Adam Symansky has produced works by many of Canada’s most talented directors.
His long association with the legendary Donald Brittain resulted in such classics as Canada’s Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C. Banks (1985); the final installment in Britain’s three-part mini-series on the political rivalry of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and René Lévesque, The Champions – The Final Battle (1986); and The King Chronicles (1988), the definitive series on the life of Canada’s longest-serving prime minister.
Adam won an Academy Award with director Cynthia Scott for the 1983 short documentary Flamenco at 5:15, and produced one of the most highly acclaimed NFB feature documentaries of all time: Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick’s 1992 co-production Manufacturing Consent, exploring the political life and ideas of Noam Chomsky. He also served as NFB producer on Laurence Green’s Alter Egos (2004), exploring the relationship between animators Ryan Larkin and Chris Landreth in the creation of yet another NFB Oscar winner, Ryan.
He continued chronicling Canada’s political giants with the 1986 Gemini Award-winning documentary Tommy Douglas: Keeper of the Flame. And when Quebec and Canadian political history was being made in 1995, with Quebecers going to the polls for a second referendum on independence, Adam was a producer on the Gemeaux Award-winning Referendum Take 2/Prise 2. He also produced the four-part series True North: an NFB/PBS co-production that attempts to define Canada for Americans.
Adam’s recent credits include Paul Cowan’s 2005 NFB co-production The Peacekeepers, an unprecedented inside look at UN peacekeeping, winner of the Vaclav Havel Special Award at Prague’s One World International Human Rights Film Festival.
RAVIDA DIN
Executive Producer NFB
Executive producer of Nollywood Babylon, Ravida Din is head of NFB English Program’s Quebec Centre, where her recent credits include the high profile feature documentaries RiP: A remix manifesto (2008), winner of the Dioraphte Audience Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and Up the Yangtze (2007), winner of the Golden Gate Award for Best Documentary Feature from the San Francisco International Film Festival.
Ravida is also executive producer of the 2008 documentary Roadsworth: Crossing the Line, about a stencil artist’s clandestine campaign to make his mark on the streets, as well as the 2007 NFB co-produced alternative drama Family Motel, exploring the complex interplay between poverty, housing and immigration.
She is currently developing three feature-length documentaries: The Socalled Movie, looking at how Josh Dolgin is turning the heads of musicians and audiences alike with his mix of hip-hop, funk, salsa and klezmer; Pink Inc., based on Samantha King’s book Pink Ribbons Inc. – Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy, showing how the devastating reality of breast cancer has been labeled a dream cause by marketing experts; and Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution, based on the book by Judy Rebick, a moving chronicle of Canadian women who organized, protested and fought for change.
Prior to becoming Quebec Centre Executive Producer in 2006, Ravida served as Assistant Director General for English Program Production, responsible for overall operations and administration, and instrumental in the production of close to 100 films.
Upon joining the NFB in 1991, Ravida worked in a range of capacities relating to both production and marketing. As the National Marketing Coordinator for the Women’s Development Group, and later as Head of Marketing, she helped develop the NFB’s unique approach to social marketing. She also chaired the Cultural Diversity Program where she designed initiatives such as Reel Diversity and a national skills training program to promote equality of access and opportunities for under-represented filmmakers.
MARCEL JEAN
Executive Producer
A film and literature graduate of Université de Montréal, Marcel Jean is the author of several books on Quebec cinema and animated films. He was curator of animation at the Cinémathèque québécoise from 1996 to 1998 and in 1999 he became head of the animation studio for French Program at the National Film Board of Canada. While working there he produced or co-produced several internationally acclaimed films, including Black Soul (Martine Chartrand, 2001), Aria (Pjotr Sapegin, 2001), Accordion (Michèle Cournoyer, 2004) and Sleeping Betty (Claude Cloutier, 2007). Marcel Jean left the NFB in 2005 and is now a producer at Central Unity Productions. He has taught history and film aesthetics at Université de Montréal since 1986. He has also directed two fiction shorts (Le rendez-vous perpétuel, 1989; Vacheries, 1990) and three documentaries (among them, État critique, 1992).
DON LOBEL
Associate Producer
Lobel has worked in the film business for the past two decades. He was the owner and programmer of Montreal’s two most famous art houses: the Rialto (1988-1993), which also served as a concert venue for the likes of the Ramones, the Pixies, Public Enemy, Nick Cave and Jane’s Addiction, as well as Cinéma du Parc (1998-2006).
Lobel programmed the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (Montreal Festival of New Cinema), Canada’s longest running film fest, between 2002 and 2006. He also served as director of programming for Comedia, the film component of the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival.
OLIVIER ALARY
Original Music
A native of Toulouse, France, Alary is a Montreal-based musician and composer who writes and records music for films and exhibitions as well as independently.
A former student of architecture, Alary created Ensemble in 1998 as a musical persona to explore the encounter between melodic noise and disjointed pop. He moved to London, England, and in 2000 he released his first album with Rephlex Records, Sketch Proposals, under the name Ensemble.
Sketch Proposals caught the attention of Bjork, and Alary’s remixes of two of her songs, “Sun In My Mouth” and “Cocoon,” were released as b-sides. He went on to co-write the song “Desired Constellation” with Bjork on her 2004 album, Medulla.
Alary’s follow-up album, the self-titled Ensemble, blends a symphonic wall of sound with intimate folk-pop vocals and was released in 2006. It features vocal performances by Chan Marshall (of Cat Power fame), Lou Barlow and Mileece; drums by Adam Pierce; and orchestral arrangements by Johannes Malfatti, performed by Germany’s Babelsberg Film Orchestra.
Alary has also composed music for several exhibitions at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, contributed to an installation by Doug Aitken at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and received an honorary mention at the Ars Electronica Festival for his project Chlorgeschlecht. He has also collaborated with photographer Nick Knight.
He composed the original music for Nollywood Babylon.
