Director of Programming for the Mill Valley Film Festival, Zoe Elton oversees the content and production of this annual festival of international, independent film and video. Annually, the festival shows films from over 40 countries, and hosts around 200 guests.

She frequently conducts interviews with guests such as Helen Mirren, Forest Whitaker, Laura Linney, and Ram Dass. She has served on numerous panels and juries, including the national nominating committees for the Rockefeller Foundation, the Haas Foundation’s Creative Works Fund and the IFP/Someone to Watch Award.

Born and raised in Hereford, England, she wrote and directed work at the Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival, West Coast Playwrights, Intersection for the Arts, KQED-TV, as well as in her native London.

Writer-Director Will Geiger was born in New York and lived in various parts of the U.S. as the son of an F.B.I. agent. Ocean Tribe, his first feature film, premiered at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and won Geiger the award for Best Director in 1998. Ocean Tribe went on to win the Grand Prize award at the Charleston International Film Festival and Best Drama at the Houston International Film Festival. In 1999, as part of the Seattle International Film Festival’s innovative Fly Filmmaking program, Geiger produced the narrative short Red Man in two days with two rolls of 16mm film. Red Man is currently playing on the Independent Film Channel. Geiger recently finished writing and directing the feature film Elvis and Anabelle. which tells the story of a young mortician and a rebellious beauty queen. The film stars Max Minghella (Art School Confidential), Blake Lively (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), Joe Mantegna, Mary Steenburgen and Keith Carradine and will be released in the early spring of 2008.

The son of Jamaican immigrants, Carl Lumbly started his career as a journalist but soon moved into acting and improvisational comedy.
A veteran of the stage, Lumbly has also appeared in numerous feature films including Escape from Alcatraz, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, The Bedroom Window, Everybody's All American, To Sleep with Anger, PacificHeights, How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Men of Honor.
On television, Lumbly starred in Cagney & Lacey, ABC's Going to Extremes and M.A.N.T.I.S. He played recurring roles on ER and EZ Streets, and guest starred on series including The West Wing and The X-Files. He received critical acclaim for his role as Father in the ABC remake of Sounder, and earned a NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor for his work in Buffalo Soldiers.
Lumbly recently completed filming the lead role in the independent feature, Namibia: The Struggle for LIberation, co-starring Danny Glover.

Jim is a Market Research Practitioner, Marketing Consultant, and Media Adviser. Since 1978 he has been extensively involved in Consumer, Political, Advertising and Entertainment Research. He has completed well over a hundred feature film studies (including Star Wars, Return of The Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Terminator 2) and hundreds of television pilot studies (including 24, Ally McBeal and Dharma and Greg) for major studios, networks and production companies. Currently he is Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Onadime®, a real-time animation and voice recognition lip-sync software company which is presently involved in television and animated features development and production. In the world of music, he was Executive Producer for the legendary “Rockabilly King” Carl Perkins (Blue Suede Shoes) on his last CD "Go Cat Go!”. From 1984 to 1986 McCullough served as Vice President of the San Francisco Rock 'n' Roll Museum. From 1996 to the present he has served as a San Francisco Film Commissioner. For more information go to: jwmccullough.com

Toney W. Merritt, (MFA Film - San Francisco Art Institute, 1979, BA Russian Studies - Syracuse University 1971) Writer/Director.
His films have screened at various venues such as the Paris Cinematheque, The London Coop, Pacific Film Archives, San Francisco Cinematheque, The Oakland and DeYoung Museums to name a few. He teaches Film Production and Digital Editing at City College San Francisco; Screenwriting for San Francisco State University’s Digital Video Intensive Program.
Toney has served on the Board of Directors of Film Arts Foundation; one year as its Chairman. He has been a panelist for the S.F. International and the Mendocino Film Festivals; and for Grant organizations, Independent Television Service, (ITVS) and the Rockefeller and Jerome Foundations. He served as a screenwriting mentor at the 2008 Squaw Valley Community of Writers Conference and will be giving a screenwriting presentation at the July 2011 Mendocino Coast Writers Conference.
He is co-director on Kathleen Hanna’s documentary, Wood smith: The Life and Times of Arthur Espenet Carpenter, and is adapting A Dreadful Day, a short story by award winning writer, Dan Warthman, for the screen.

The Mendocino Film Festival was honored to have Sydney as our inaugural year special guest and advisor for two years.

Acclaimed film director Sydney Pollack, whose distinguished career included an Academy Award as best director for Out of Africa (1985), and two best director nominations, for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, and Tootsie, began his career as an actor. Pollack became one of the worlds most versatile and fascinating film directors, producers, and actors, whose oeuvre includes The Way We Were (1973) director, The Electric Horseman (1979) director/actor, Three Days of the Condor (1975) director, Absence of Malice (1981) director/producer, and The Firm (1993) director, producer. He collaborated with director Anthony Minghella on well-received projects like The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) executive producer, and Cold Mountain (2003) producer. As a character actor, Mr. Pollack worked with a variety of directors, including Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and Woody Allen, Husbands and Wives (1992). In his own film, The Interpreter (2005), he was executive producer, director, and actor, managing to reinvent the intelligent suspense thriller 30 years after Three Days of the Condor, to critical accolades in all categories. Pollack was never an artist to rest on his laurels. He realized that as movies were targeted to a narrower audience, there was a greater importance in encouraging film directors, actors, and producers to make independent films—a precious necessity for creative artists who must constantly reinvent the art form every time they make a movie. His first documentary, a study of his friend and famed architect, Sketches of Frank Gehry, was completed in 2005. We were honored to have him as our Special Guest for our inaugural festival in 2006 and as an Advisor to the Board of Directors of the Mendocino Film Festival.

Mike’s current board of director roles at DVD rental market leader Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and The Sonoma Film Society provide a strong indication of his love of independent movies. Mike has more than 35 years of experience in the software industry, including four technology start-ups. Twice in his career, Mike has created market-leading enterprise software companies: Computervision in the CAD/CAM market and Cadence in EDA (Electronic Design Automation). There are very few operational challenges Mike hasn't faced and tackled successfully somewhere along the line. Before joining Foundation Capital in 1998, Mike was CEO, co-founder, and chairman of the board of Intrinsa Corporation, a software applications company that was acquired by Microsoft. Mike currently serves on the boards of Netflix (NFLX), Responsys, Boardvantage, ONStor, Jasper Design Automation, VaST and Vivecon. Mike has been a passionate runner for more than 30 years, and has successfully completed 20 marathons. Mike has an affinity for California wines. Mike received a BSEE from the University of Maryland.

Gail Silva was the primary force behind Film Arts Foundation for over twenty-five years, first as co-director, then executive director and finally president. In 2002, her years of dedication to artistic excellence and advocacy were recognized by the presentation of the California Arts Council’s “Directors Award.”
Gail has assisted hundreds of independent filmmakers develop and complete their projects, by advising them on conceptual project development, effective fundraising strategies and connecting them with potential donors, institutions and foundations. She continues this work by consulting on financial strategies and on the marketing and distribution side: analysis of target markets, including selecting the most appropriate festivals and recommending effective distributors. Gail also advises arts organizations on financial management, organizational effectiveness, and donor and board development.

Pat Ferrero is an award winning filmmaker, curator and teacher. She taught film production, screenwriting and other production courses in the Cinema department at San Francisco State University for over thirty years until her full time move to Mendocino this year. In recent years she has taught classes on Bay Area Filmmakers and International Contemporary filmmakers at the SF International Film Festival. As a filmmaker her documentary films have screened nationally on PBS, been invited to screen at film festivals all over the world including Sundance, New York, San Francisco, Hawaii and the London International Film Festivals. Honors have included funding for her films from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and Humanities (NEH) as well as Rockefeller and Guggenheim Fellowships. She is an active member of the independent social issue documentary film distribution collective New Day Films.

She has been commissioned to make films for exhibits by the Oakland Museum, the African Museum at the Smithsonian Museum, the SFMOMA and most recently for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh where she has nine films on American Indian culture and environment issues on permanent display.

She was the Program Director of the 2007 Mendocino Film Festival, curated the Films on Art category and was an advisor in 2008 and has put on the Program Director’s hat again for 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Betsy Ford comes to the Mendocino Film Festival with a background in non-profit management, deaf education, TV production, theatre and writing. Two things stand out as the most enjoyable work of her career—co-creating & producing a national PBS series for deaf and hearing children for which she won an Emmy® Award, and working on “Big River,” the Tony®-nominated Broadway musical created in ASL. As a consultant and contractor, she has worked with Ray Stark, Andrew Fogelson, Nova, KRON News, WGBH, and many others. In recent years, she has been working with screenwriters and producers doing editing and project development. She is currently writing a book about health and healing and outlining a screenplay in the fantasy genre. Honors include two regional Emmy® Awards, an Ovation® Award nomination and a special award from Gallaudet University.

Vice President, Operations/Executive Director.
Ann manages projects for a computer company that brings moviemaking power to everyone. She is eager to showcase great independent films at our festival. Ann served as the Volunteer Coordinator and Assistant Production Manager for the Inaugural Mendocino Film Festival and then VP of Operations in 2007. As Location Manager for the 2004 independent film "Life at Bay" she discovered the rich history of films made on the Northern California coast. She lives in Mendocino near a street James Dean walked in “East of Eden."