Shaz Bennett
Shaz Bennett has written and published numerous short stories for print and online, has written and sold two screenplays and has developed a television pilot based on material she performs. Her essays have been published in Cake Magazine, The Huffington Post, Imaging Ourselves, Salon and Wire. Her essay "Mormons vs. Catholics" is featured in the book "Dirty Laundry: Real Life. Real Stories. Real Funny." by Maggie Rowe and Andersen Gabrych. She has appeared on KCRW's UNFICTIONAL and PRI's THIS AMERICAN LIFE reading original stories.

While living in New York, she studied with Spaulding Grey and wrote and performed four one-woman shows. She now performs regularly with the Heroines of Comedy, The Moth, A Shot and a Beer, Sit n Spin at the Comedy Central Stage and Third Saturdays. Backstage called her "a six foot tall Liza" and the New York Post described her as "the Mormon Dennis Leary."

Bennett wrote and starred in the award-winning short films MARTINI, TOP OF THE CIRCLE and TUNNELS. These films screened at over 50 film festivals, including AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs, Los Angeles Film Festival, True West Festival and traveled the world with the Berkeley Photographic Museum, the International Women's Museum and Lunafest.

Bennett is currently working on THE GLADES on A&E.

Catherine Dent
A native of Baton Rouge, Catherine Dent left home for New York after high school to pursue acting. She immediately took the city by storm...as a waitress. After being fired one too many times for fraternizing with the patrons, she returned to school and received her BFA from North Carolina School of the Arts.

Hollywood eventually took notice and Dent, who realized that being "beat up" by her big brothers was all the classical training she needed, was cast as the "tough but vulnerable cop," Danny Sofer, on the award-winning TV series, THE SHIELD, which ran for seven seasons.

After 20 years in entertainment and hundreds of stage, film and TV jobs, Dent is proficient at crying on cue, kicking in doors and telling opposing counsel, "I'll see you in court." She has learned how to play golf, shoot a Glock-9 and fly a Cessna 150 all for the sake of art and believes that the best professional decision she ever made was not learning how to type.

Having worked with such great directors as Robert Benton, Frank Darabont, Alejandro Inarritu and Paul Schrader, to name only a few, Dent is looking forward to taking all she has experienced and learned and telling compelling stories from the other side of the camera.

Dent lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.

Antoneta Kastrati
Antoneta Kastrati is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker from Kosovo. After surviving the war in the late 1990s, she picked up a camera and began documenting the rapid changes in her society. Her documentary films, many focusing on stories of Kosovar women, have screened throughout Europe and won several awards at festivals in the Balkans.

Since moving to Los Angeles in 2009, she has directed two fictional short films, EMPTY BUCKET and NINULLA, both inspired by experiences from the war in Kosovo.

She is currently creating non-scripted content for a new media channel produced by AFI Conservatory directing alumni Jon Avnet and Rodrigo García.

Kastrati, who holds a Masters in journalism and communications, looks forward to a career that combines narrative and documentary filmmaking, and making films both in Kosovo and the United States.

Lauren Ludwig
Lauren Ludwig is a Los Angeles-based director, screenwriter and educator.

Her directing work has earned a Hollywood Fringe Festival "Best of Comedy" Award, a LA Weekly "Best of the Fringe" Award and a Chicago Reader "Critic's Choice" distinction. She regularly directs the underground comedy show "Lost Moon Radio," turning a number of the sketches into successful Internet shorts. Staged in a Chinatown warehouse, her adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's "Welcome to the Money House" enjoyed a sold-out run in Chicago. Ludwig's original play exploring the life and work of Charlie Chaplin, "15 Tramps," was the recipient of a University of Chicago Summer Lab Residency and was remounted at the National High School Institute "Cherubs" program. Most recently, she directed the 2012 LA Weekly Theater Awards at the Avalon in Hollywood.

Ludwig runs her own business coaching writers and deeply enjoys the process of helping others create more and often. She has taught acting to playwriting in places as diverse as the Centenary Stage Young Performers Workshop, the Chicago public schools and the NHSI "Cherubs" program.

As a director and actor, Ludwig has studied numerous techniques, including Meisner, Stanislavski, Viewpoints, clowning and group devising/community engaged theater. She has studied Shakespeare at the British-American Dramatic Academy and improvisation at Upright Citizens Brigade LA.

Ludwig is a graduate of the Northwestern University theatre program.

Stephanie Martin
Adventure and cross-cultural experiences have marked Stephanie Martin's career in film from the beginning. Born in Sao Paulo and raised mostly in Buenos Aires, Martin discovered her passion for film while at Wellesley College.

Since graduating from AFI Conservatory in 2002, she has worked as a cinematographer on features, shorts, documentaries and commercials all over the world, including Daniel Myrick's THE OBJECTIVE and more recently as a camera operator on Ryan Murphy's EAT PRAY LOVE and on Marc Forster's WORLD WAR Z.

The power of film to move people into action is one of the driving forces behind Martin's work. Her current project focuses on the plight of wild horses in the U.S. Martin is an avid rider and, if she's not behind a camera, you are likely to find on horseback.

Juliana Pernaranda-Loftus
Juliana Pernaranda-Loftus' career began while she was attending college in her home country of Colombia when she started working as a Production Assistant and Second Assistant Director for primetime television shows in Bogota, Colombia. After completing her Bachelor's degree in film and photography, she moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies.

She spent two years learning English, and then completed her Masters in film and video at American University in Washington, DC. During a semester abroad studying film technology and directing at the Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in the Czech Republic, she also shot several short films. After September 11, she traveled to Afghanistan where she directed and produced a documentary about Aid Afghanistan, an organization fighting for the right to educate women.

Pernaranda-Loftus has produced three independent feature films and established her own production company, Hidden Village Films. She has a passion for developing stories with strong social messages and believes a well-told story has the power to influence people's worldview.

Pernaranda-Loftus freelances as a producer and production manager for film and commercial productions.

Lisanne Sartor
Lisanne Sartor began her career in Los Angeles in the DGA Assistant Director Training Program. She quickly discovered that, although assistant directing doesn't necessarily lead to directing, it's good training for any aspect of filmmaking.

She then received an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA, where she won numerous screenwriting awards, including the Samuel Goldwyn Award. Her original screenplay, CLEARVILLE, was produced by Don Enright of Alexander/Enright and aired on Lifetime. She's written a MOW for the DeAngelis Group in Italy, had a script optioned by Hearst Entertainment and has developed projects with Roth-Arnold Productions, among others. She began her return to production by writing and directing webisodes.

Sartor lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two lively sons and an equally energetic puppy. In her spare time, she's board president of the CineStory Foundation, a screenwriting non-profit, and organizes writer retreats.

Sarah Shapiro
After working on a fishing boat in Alaska, graduating from Sarah Lawrence College and interning at Killer Films, Sarah Shapiro's first job in New York was with photographer David LaChapelle. She then moved to Hollywood and began working as a creative screenwriter and producer in reality television.

After three years, she packed it in and drove north to Portland. On arrival, she landed a job at advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy (Levi's, Nike, Old Spice) where she has worked with the likes of Derek Cianfrance, Roman Coppola, Will Ferrell, Todd Haynes, John Hilcoat, Mike Mills and The Smithsonian Institute, producing and directing short narratives and documentaries.

During her seven-year tenure in Portland, Shapiro also wrote a feature (TREMBLE THE GORGEOUS VINE), short (SEQUIN RAZE), pilot (UNREAL), auteured the comedy short, 2ND BEST and founded the W+K Gay Club.

She is also a visual artist and musician whose hand-animated films for her album "I Wish I was an Animal" have garnered acclaim worldwide.

Shapiro lives in Portland and is unshakably devoted to her life-long goal of writing and directing feature films.