WILLIAM CRAN
Director/Producer and Writer
William Cran began his career at the BBC, where he spent eight years, including two as a producer for Panorama. He left the BBC to work with CBC in Toronto, where he became a Senior Producer at 5th Estate. Cran then moved to the United States, where he embarked on a long professional relationship with WGBH in Boston. Since then he has made some 50 full-length documentaries and won more than two dozen awards, including 4 Emmys, 2 duPont-Columbias, Peabody's, Overseas Press Clubs, New York Film Festival Awards, Cine Eagles together with many nominations in the US, UK and Canada.

Among his more notable projects are Chachaji My Poor Relation (WGBH), 88 Seconds in Greensboro(WGBH), The Search for Missing Marcos Millions (WGBH/BBC), The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover (WGBH/BBC), The Mysterious Career of Lee Harvey Oswald (WGBH/BBC), Pablo Escobar the Godfather of Cocaine (WGBH/BBC), Ambush in Mogadishu (WGBH/BBC) and Nelson's Trafalgar (Channel 4 UK). In April 2007 PBS used his most recent production Jihad: The Men and Ideas Behind Al Qaeda (WETA & Channel 4 UK) to launch a week of special programming called America at a Crossroads.

SHAMIR ALLIBHAI
Producer/Director
Shamir Allibhai was previously part of the founding team and the Commercial Director of the Channel 4 British Documentary Film Foundation which launched with £2.6 Million in 2005. The non-profit organization funds filmmakers looking to make cinematic documentaries and runs BRITDOC, the UK's first documentary feature film festival, which Shamir was instrumental in launching. Shamir worked in Marketing & Customer Relations for the BBC until September 2003, when he joined Linx Productions as an Associate Producer focusing on documentary, corporate, and new media projects and travelling to the Middle East, East Africa and India on shoots. Shamir is a candidate for a Master's of Theological Studies in Islamic Studies in 2009 from Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University and is a graduate of the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario and has previously attended the Gulf Islands Film and Television School.

His blog can be read here.

JANE CHABLANI
Director
Jane Chablani has been producing and directing award-winning documentaries for the past 10 years. She has made a wide range of films from historical to arthouse for the BBC, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and Channel 4 in the UK. Originally from Canada she now lives in London.

 

 

CLIVE SYDDALL
Executive Producer
Clive Syddall is an award-winning producer of many notable documentary films. His recent credits as executive producer include the PBS specials: JIHAD: The Men and Ideas behind Al Qaeda, 1421 - The Year China Discovered America? (PBS); Do You Speak American? (PBS) and Plague Wars - The New Threat (PBS/BBC) reviewed by the Times as "Important TV.a chilling investigation into the new threat of biological warfare";

He has recently executive produced Sinatra: Dark Star a ninety-minute special shown on BBC ONE and Worldwide (A&E/BBC/ARTE-France/ZDF-Germany) and previously he was London producer for MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour and producer of BBC's Panorama where he covered the Middle East Wars, Southern Africa and the troubles in Northern Ireland.

ANDREA NEMTIN
Executive Producer
In 1994 began working as a producer of documentaries, first in Vancouver and then in Toronto and Montreal. After working as a freelancer for two years Andrea became the President and CEO of Toronto's PTV Productions Inc., in 1997.

Under her guidance, PTV Productions has produced over 50 hours of television. Andrea has produced and executive-produced one-offs, limited series and series. She has worked closely with a wide range of broadcasters, including Life Network, History Television, Discovery Health Canada, CBC, Discovery Canada, WTN, TVO, Discovery Health USA, PBS and BBC. Andrea has worked on international co-productions with Europe and the UK.

Andrea's Productions have received numerous awards and nominations including three Gemini Awards, five Gemini Nominations, three Golden Sheaf Nominations, and one award. Her films have been invited to many festivals including Hot Docs, Vancouver Film Festival, the Roncontres International du Documentaire de Montreal, St John's International Women's Film and Video Festival, and Santa Fe Film Festival.

Andrea is the chair of the Abilities Arts Festival Board of Directors, an executive board member of Hot Docs, the past National Chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada, a member of the CFTPA, WIFT and the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. She has been a guest speaker at SIFT for the last three years, and has repeatedly acted as jurist for Hot Docs and the Gemini Awards.

BILL NEMTIN
Executive Producer
Bill Nemtin began his career at the National Film Board of Canada over 40 years ago. As an Independent Canadian Producer, he was Executive Producer for the Award Winning International Co-productions, Canada: True North (4xhrs)for PBS and NFB, Hand of Stalin (3xhrs) for BBC, PBS, and TV Ontario, and a Special for PBS and UK's Channel 4, Maya Angelou: Rainbow in the Clouds.

He worked within the US Public Television system for over 22 years specializing in the setting up of foreign co-productions and acquisitions, first from Canada, and subsequently from London, where he headed for 12 years the operations of Lark International, a consortium of PBS stations. He was instrumental in bringing over $40million worth of programs to the PBS system from Europe and Canada. In 2002, he began acting as Special Advisor to the Government Film Commissioner on the setting up of the World Documentary Fund with the BBC and UK Film Council and the NFB- NHK Japan Agreement on High Definition Co-Production.

In 2005 he returned to producing feature documentaries with Diameter of the Bomb, which premiered at The Toronto Film Festival in 2006. He is currently executive producing 2 films and an event,- History Makers: The International Summit of History and Current Affairs Producers.

Dr. Ali Asani
Consultant
Ali S. Asani is currently Professor of the Practice of Indo-Muslim Languages and Culture at Harvard University. After completing his high school education in Kenya, he attended Harvard College, with a concentration in the Comparative Study of Religion, graduating summa cum laude in 1977. He continued his graduate work at Harvard in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, receiving his Ph.D. in 1984. Prof. Asani holds a joint appointment between NELC and the Study of Religion. He also serves on the faculty of the Dept. of Sanskrit and Indian Studies. He has taught at Harvard since 1983, offering instruction in a variety of languages such as Urdu/Hindi, Sindhi, Gujarati and Swahili as well as courses on various aspects of the Islamic tradition.

Dr. Ruthven
Consultant
Malise Ruthven is the author of Islam in the World, now in its third edition, A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America, Fundamentalism: The Search for Meaning and several other books. A former scriptwriter with the BBC World Service, he has taught at universities in Britain and the United States. He is currently working on Children of Time: The Aga Khan and the Ismailis which will be published in London in 2008.