Douglas Gordon (UK)

Douglas Gordon was born in Glasgow in 1966. After receiving a B.A. at the Glasgow School of Art, Gordon undertook a graduate program at the Slade School of Art in London from 1988 to 1990. Through his work in video, photography, and sculpture, he addresses and explores universal dualities such as life and death, good and evil. Gordon has had major solo exhibitions at Tate Liverpool (2000), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001), The Hayward Gallery, London (2002) and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2003). In 2005, he curated The Vanity of Allegory, an exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, and released the film Zidane - Un portrait du 21e siècle (Zidane - A 21st Century Portrait). Further solo exhibitions include Superhumanatural  at the National Gallery of Scotland (2007), Between Darkness and Light  at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg (2007), and Timeline  at MoMA, New York (2006). Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at the Lambert Collection, and the Palais des Papes, Avignon (July 2008). Gordon was the 1996 recipient of the British Turner Prize; in 1997 he was awarded the Premio 2000 at the 54th Venice Film Festival; in 1998 he was presented with the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, and in May 2008 he won the Roswitha Haftmann Prize. Gordon lives and works in Glasgow, Berlin and New York.

John Landis (USA)

John Landis began his career in the mailroom of 20th Century Fox Studios. With enduring comedies such as Kentucky Fried Movie  (1977), National Lampoon’s Animal House  (1978), The Blues Brothers  (1980), Trading Places  (1983), Spies Like Us  (1985), Three Amigos!  (1987) and Coming to America  (1988), Landis has directed some of the most popular blockbusters of all time. His horror film An American Werewolf in London  (1981) enjoys a multigenerational fan following. In 1983, John Landis reinvented the concept of music videos with Michael Jackson’s Thriller. He has been the executive producer and director of many television series such as Dream On  and, more recently, Masters of Horror. In 2004, Landis produced and directed Slasher, a feature documentary following a veteran used car salesman, and in 2007, Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project, honoring the career of the comedian Don Rickles. The film premiered at the New York Film Festival and subsequently aired on HBO. After career retrospective tributes held in Turin and Edinburgh, the Cinemathéque Française in Paris will honor Landis in February 2009. He is married to Academy Award nominated costume designer Deborah Nadoolman.

Lucrecia Martel (Argentina)

Born in 1966, Lucrecia Martel studied animation at Avellaneda Experimental (AVEX), attended the National Experimentation Filmmaking School (ENERC) for several years, and studied Communication Science. She directed a number of short films between 1988 and 1994, including Rey muerto  (1995), which was part of Historias breves I.  In 2001 Lucrecia Martel directed the film La ciénaga  (The Swamp), which won various awards in Berlin, Habana, Toulouse and Sundance, among other festivals. In 2004, Martel wrote and directed La niña santa  (The Holy Girl) which was in competition at the Cannes Film Festival that year. She was a member of the Cannes Film Festival Feature Films Jury in 2006. She participated once again in the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 with her film La mujer sin cabeza.