Dikayl Rimmasch
Director/Cinematographer

Dikayl Rimmasch began his career in the commercial art industry as an illustrator and designer working for an architecture firm. He eventually specialized in vintage print aesthetics, designing for such clients as HARLEY DAVIDSON and RALPH LAUREN, although the scope of his work nearly always included a photographic aspect. After being asked to design title animations and poster concepts for the Emmy Award-winning film FREE TO DANCE, Rimmasch was brought in as cinematographer for subsequent dance projects. Since then he has continued to draw upon his art direction background while shooting and directing many different styles of film, including Dance films, Music videos, commercials, time lapse, and stop motion animation. His film work has been recognized in numerous venues: A SUN DANCE (1997) and ALONZO KING GOES TO VENICE (2004), both shot and directed by Rimmasch, have been featured at the Dance on Camera Festival at Lincoln Center. Having lived and worked in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, Rimmasch is currently building “Golden Street” in New London, Connecticut with Polish music video director and cinematographer Ted Ciesielski. This media studio will be used for film, photography, and music recording.

Andy Garcia
Producer

Andy Garcia has been honored for his work not only as an actor, but also as a producer, director and composer/musician. In 2006, he made his feature film directorial debut with “The Lost City,” a project he had been developing for 17 years. It was produced in association with Garcia’s production company, CineSon Productions. Garcia composed the original score for the film and also produced the soundtrack, which features several legends from the Cuban music world.

“The Lost City” earned Garcia Best Director and Best Film Awards at the 2006 Imagen Awards. He also just received a Best Director Award nomination at the 2007 Alma Awards.

Garcia earlier garnered Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather: Part III” in 1990. He later received an Emmy Award nomination and his second Golden Globe Award nomination for his portrayal of legendary Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval in HBO’s 2000 biopic “For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story.” As the executive producer of the telefilm, Garcia also earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Made for Television Movie. The film was Golden Globe-nominated for Best Miniseries or Made for Television Movie. In addition, Garcia produced the movie’s soundtrack and the Emmy-winning score, featuring the music of Arturo Sandoval. The film won two ALMA Awards as Best Made For TV Movie or Miniseries and as Outstanding Latin Cast in a Made for TV Movie or Miniseries.

Garcia formed the production company CineSon Productions in 1991. Under the CineSon banner, he made his directorial debut with the documentary concert film “Cachao…ComoSu Ritmo No Hay Dos (Like His Rhythm There Is No Other),” about the legendary co-creator of the Mambo, Israel López ‘Cachao’.

On the music side, Garcia produced and performed on Volumes I and II of “Cachao–Master Sessions” (Crescent Moon/Sony), the first a 1994 Grammy Award winner, and the latter a 1995 Grammy Award nominee. The CD “Cachao–Cuba Linda” (EMI Latin), produced by Garcia’s CineSon record label, was nominated for a 2001 Grammy and a 2000 Latin Grammy Award. Garcia won both Grammy and Latin Grammy awards for his latest collaboration with Israel López “Cachao,” “¡Ahora Sí!” (Univision), their fourth record on the CineSon label, released in 2004. Additionally, Garcia composed four songs for the soundtrack of the film “Steal Big, Steal Little,” in which he also starred. He produced and performed several songs for the soundtrack of “Just The Ticket,” a film he starred in and produced.

Born in Havana, Garcia was only 5 when his family fled to Florida after Fidel Castro’s takeover of Cuba. He began acting in regional theatre before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a film career. He first gained attention in Hal Ashby’s “8 Million Ways to Die” and later appeared in such films as Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables,” Ridley Scott’s “Black Rain,” Mike Figgis’ “Internal Affairs,” Kenneth Branagh’s “Dead Again,” Stephen Frears’ “Hero,” Luis Mandoki’s “When A Man Loves A Woman,” Gary Fleder’s “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead,” Sidney Lumet’s “Night Falls on Manhattan” and Barbet Schroeder’s “Desperate Measures.”

Garcia has been honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a Star of the Year Award from the National Association of Theater Owners, a PRISM Award, a Harvard University Foundation Award and Hispanic Heritage Award for the Arts. He is also the recipient of an Oscar de la Hoya Foundation Champion Award, Father’s Day Council Father of the Year Award and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts Degree from St. John’s University.

In 2005, the UCLA Johnson Cancer Center Foundation honored Garcia with the Gil Nickel Humanitarian Award. Garcia also received the Indie Producer’s highest honor for “Outstanding Contribution to Film,” and the ALMA Awards honored him with the “Anthony Quinn Award for Excellence in Motion Pictures.” In June 2006, the Karlovy Vary Film Festival honored Garcia with the Crystal Globe award for artistic contribution. Garcia received the Moet-Hennessey Privilege Award at the Imagen Awards in Beverly Hills. The Covenant House honored him with the prestigious Dove Award which recognizes role models who have found the time to give back to their communities and to at-risk youth. In June 2007, Garcia was honored as “Entertainer of the Year” at the Vision Awards, and served as an honorary co-chair and host opening night at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Tom Luddy
Producer

While a student at Berkeley, Tom Luddy operated several film societies. Later in his career, he worked on restoring films which led to a producing career. Luddy began his professional career working for the NYC-based Brandon Films distributing foreign films. He returned to Berkeley in 1972 and spent the next five years as program director of the Pacific Film Archives. In 1979, he moved over to Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios as director of special projects. In this capacity, he supervised the restoration of Abel Gance’s 1927 silent masterpiece “Napoleon” as well as the presentation of Hans-Jurgen Syberberg’s seven-hour documentary “Our Hitler—A Film From Germany.” He also collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard on two projects, “Every Man For Himself” (1980) and “Passion” (1982). Joined with director Paul Schrader, his brother Leonard Schrader and the latter’s wife, Luddy helped to bring to the screen “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985), the first film about Japan by an American director. It helped to establish Luddy as a producer of art-house projects, although that was not his full intent. Luddy also worked on several films for Cannon Films, which in the 80s varied its fare between low-budget quick flash, quick buck entertainment and more ambitious substantive projects. For Cannon, he joined his Zoetrope cohort, Fred Roos in producing “Barfly” (1987), based on the life of writer and avowed drunk Charles Bukowski. Luddy served as executive producer of Norman Mailer’s uneven “Tough Guys Don’t Dance” (1987) and produced “Wait Until Spring, Bandini” (1989), about an Italian immigrant family in Colorado during the bitter winter of 1925.

Into the 90s, Luddy remained involved with quality films. Agnieszka Holland’s “The Secret Garden” (1993) was a remake of the 1949 Margaret O’Brien vehicle which was more faithful to the original novel and handsomely filmed. Luddy also produced the modestly-budgeted “My Family/Mi Familia” (1995), one of the first English-language films to delve into the multi-generational Sturm und Drang lives of Latinos in Los Angeles.

Luddy is one of the founders of the prestigious Telluride Film Festival and serves as its co-director, as well as West Coast programming consultant for the New York Film Festival.

Stephen Ujlaki
Producer

Stephen Ujlaki, Cinema Department Chair at San Francisco State University (SFSU), brings his wealth of working experience as an independent producer, writer, director and educator to his position as Director of SFSU’s Documentary Film Institute (DFI).

Ujlaki fell in love with European films while at Harvard and pursued his studies at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques in Paris. While living in Europe he started to make documentaries and had the good fortune to observe Godard and Bergman on the set during internships in France and Sweden. Back in the U.S. in the early seventies after six years abroad he made twelve documentaries, mostly concerned with social and political issues. These include “Patriotism Inc.,” an anti-Vietnam War film, as well as “With Intent to Harm” and “Three Thousand Years and Life,” which were among the first films to document the prisoners’ rights movement in the Massachusetts penal system. After moving to Los Angeles, where he worked as a screenwriter for several years, Ujlaki joined HBO in the early 1980’s and, as Vice President of Development and Production for HBO Pictures, he developed and supervised production of over 25 cable features. He then was hired to work for Michael Douglas as head of his overseas production arm, Stone Pictures at the Victorine Studios in Nice, France, where he produced the feature “Courage Mountain,” starring Leslie Caron and Charlie Sheen. Following that he produced a number of cable films for HBO, in particular a sci-fi film “Xchange” starring Kyle MacLachlan. He has also produced the following feature films, “Hot Spot” (1990) directed by Dennis Hopper, “Loch Ness” (1996), starring Ted Danson, “Ripley Underground” (2005), directed by Roger Spottiswoode and “Cry of the Owl” (2008), currently in post-production and directed by Jamie Thraves. In 2001 he became Chair of the Cinema Department at San Francisco State. In 2004 he became Director of the DOC Film Institute, dedicated to the promotion and advancement of the documentary. His prior teaching experience includes posts with the American Film Institute, Brandeis University and Franconia College.

George Marcus
Executive Producer

George M. Marcus is the Co-Founder and Chairman of The Marcus & Millichap Company. Founded in 1971, The Marcus & Millichap Company is the parent company of a diversified group of real estate service, investment and development firms, including Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Brokerage Company, the largest commercial investment real estate brokerage firm in the nation with over 1200 brokers in markets throughout the U.S.; and SummerHill Homes, one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s largest home builders. Also falling under The Marcus & Millichap family of companies are Pacific Property Company, Hanover Financial Company, Meridian Property Company, Sovereign Investment Company, Highland Development Company and Urban Housing Group. He is also Chairman of Essex Property Trust, a publicly traded company. Essex was recently inducted into the Real Estate Investment Trust Hall of Fame for having the highest return to shareholders of all multifamily Real Estate Investment Trusts over the last 5 years. His professional memberships include the Board of Regents of The University of California, as well as numerous other professional and community organizations. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from San Francisco State University in 1965; he was honored as Alumnus of the Millennium in 1999. Mr. Marcus is also a graduate of the Harvard Business School of Owners/Presidents Management Program and the Georgetown University Leadership Program. In the fall of 2004 George and Judy Marcus established the International Center for the Arts with a generous gift to San Francisco State University.

Robert A. Corrigan
Executive Producer

Robert A. Corrigan has served as the 12th president of San Francisco State University since September 1988. He previously served nine years as chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Boston. At both universities, he has made civic engagement and the application of university expertise to community issues a campus hallmark.

Among his current national activities, Dr. Corrigan is a member of the National Cancer Institute’s Comprehensive Minority Biomedical Branch Task Force and the National Advisory Council for Campus Compact. He is immediate past chair of the Board of Directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and past chair of the American Council on Education (ACE) Commission for Lifelong Learning.

In San Francisco, Dr. Corrigan recently completed two terms as chair of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce and serves on the Mayor’s Biotechnology Advisory Council and the Mayor’s Children, Youth, and Families Policy Council.

His awards include the Distinguished Community Service Award from the Anti-Defamation League, “in recognition of outstanding commitment to diversity, fairness, and social justice,” selection by the John Templeton Foundation as one of 50 Outstanding Leaders of American Colleges and selection as a Distinguished Urban Fellow by the Association of Urban Universities.

He received his A.B. from Brown University and both his master’s and doctoral degrees in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania.

Anay Tarnekar
Co-Producer/Editor

A mechanical engineer turned filmmaker, Anay Tarnekar began his career in Bombay as a graphic designer. His first break in films came right after he developed an award winning graphic presentation for a multinational corporation in India. Over the next four years Tarnekar worked on several feature and commercial films as an assistant director and post-production supervisor. His directorial debut was a short film, “Paricahy” (Introduction), which gave him exposure on national television. He moved to San Francisco in 2002 and completed an MFA degree in Cinema from San Francisco State in 2006. His other films include an award winning short, “The Book”. Tarnekar has been working as the Manager of the DOC Film Institute since January 2007.

John Santos
Historian/Percussionist

Four-time Grammy nominee and USA Fontanals Fellow, John Santos is one of the foremost exponents of Afro-Latin music in the world today. He is known for his innovative use of traditional forms and instruments in combination with contemporary music, and has earned much respect and recognition as a record and event producer. He has performed, recorded and studied with acknowledged masters of the Afro-Latin and Jazz idioms such as Cachao, Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Lazaro Ros, Armando Peraza, Eddie Palmieri, Patato Valdés, Francisco Aguabella, Orestes Vilató, Rene López, Max Roach, Batacumbele, Steve Turre, John Faddis and Chocolate Armenteros.

This experience has provided a solid foundation for Mr. Santos’ current ground-breaking work in bringing together styles, rhythms, concepts and artists from different generations. Born in San Francisco, California, November 1, 1955, he was raised in the Puerto Rican and Cape Verdean traditions of his family, surrounded by music. The fertile musical environment of the San Francisco Bay Area shaped his career in a unique way. His studies of Afro-Latin music have included several trips to New York, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil and Colombia. Mr. Santos is widely respected as one of the top writers, teachers and historians in the field and is currently a member of the Latin Jazz Advisory Committee of the Smithsonian Institution. He has conducted lectures, workshops and clinics in the Americas and Europe since 1972. He has contributed to the international magazines Percussive Notes, Modern Drummer, Modern Percussionist, and Latin Percussionist. The San Francisco Bay Area community in which he still lives and works has presented him with numerous awards and honors for artistic excellence and social dedication.

Mr. Santos is also a distinguished and creative multi-percussionist and recording artist. His diverse credits (in addition to those listed above) include: Bobby Hutcherson, Grupo Mezcla (Havana, Cuba), Lalo Schifrin, Irakere West, Santana, Yma Sumac, Linda Tillery, Cal Tjader, Danilo Perez, Ignacio Berroa, Omar Sosa, Jon Jang and Charlie Hunter. He was the director of the Orquesta Tipica Cienfuegos (l976-1980) and the Orquesta Batachanga (1981-1985). Mr. Santos founded and directed the GRAMMY-nominated Machete Ensemble from 1985 to 2006, a world-class Latin Jazz band of international renown. They recorded and released nine CDs during that time, mostly on Mr. Santos’ Machete Records label. He is currently performing and recording extensively with an exciting Latin Jazz Quintet under his own name.

DOC FILM INSTITUTE
A project of the International Center for the Arts (ICA) at San Francisco State, the DOC Film Institute was created to support innovative nonfiction filmmaking by both established and emerging filmmakers. With Stephen Ujlaki, Chair of the Cinema Department, as Director and Tom Luddy, co-founder of the prestigious Telluride Film Festival, as Program Curator, the Institute supports documentary filmmakers and presents year-round screenings and thematic festivals of internationally significant documentary films.

The Institute’s goal, carried out through festivals and other related documentary film programs and initiatives, is to encourage greater recognition for this vibrant, richly diverse and powerful genre of artistic expression. “CACHAO: Uno Mas” is the first production of the DOC Film Institute.

• In September 2007, the DOC Film Institute presented Ken Burns’ seven-part epic documentary, THE WAR, at the Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio. Ken Burns presented the films and answered audience questions.

• In March 2007, the Institute showcased WITNESS TO WAR: Documentary Perspectives from WWII to Iraq, a four-day film event that honored the great legacy of war documentaries.

• In 2006, the Institute presented LEACOCK-PENNEBAKER, a four-day tribute to the master documentary filmmakers, and FREDERICK WISEMAN on Visual Literacy and Film.

• In 2005, the Institute sponsored the week-long GREEN SCREEN UNITED NATIONS WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY FILM FESTIVAL at the Castro Theatre in conjunction with San Francisco’s celebration of World Environment Day. Green Screen featured films by such internationally renowned filmmakers as Werner Herzog, Adam Curtis, Hubert Sauper, Stefan Jarl and Les Blank, including the West Coast premieres of Sauper’s “Darwin’s Nightmare” and Herzog’s “Grizzly Man,” two of the most acclaimed documentaries of that year.

Established with a generous gift from SFSU alumni George and Judy Marcus, the ICA produces innovative programs in the visual, media and performing arts. This fall, the ICA is inaugurating a series of Fellowship Residencies in jazz and string quartet for gifted post-graduate artists. Periodically the ICA presents Marcus Lifetime Achievement Awards to distinguished artists who have made important contributions to their fields. Past recipients include legendary Afro-Cuban jazz artist Israel ‘Cachao’ López, master filmmakers Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker, and dancer/choreographer/artistic luminary Mikhail Baryshnikov.