MU XIN
Born Sun Pu, Mu Xin was the pen name of a renowned Chinese diasporan writer and artist. He was born in Wuzhen, China into a wealthy aristocratic family with business interests in Shanghai. He was among the last generation to receive a classical education in the literati tradition, but he was also exposed through voluminous reading to the highest achievements of Western art and culture. From 1947-1949, Mu Xin attended Shanghai Institute of the Arts. Although from 1949-1982 he wrote profusely, all of his earlier manuscripts were confiscated and destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. When he moved to New York in 1982, Mu Xin published books of fiction, prose and poetry, and contributed to literary columns in Chinese journals and newspapers outside the PRC. Among the Chinese diaspora, MuXin’s works have attracted an intense following. In addition to his literary accomplishments, Mu Xin is also a well recognized artist whose paintings are preserved, among other places, at the Yale Art Gallery in the United States and the Mu Xin Museum in Wuzhen.
CHEN DANQING
Born Sun Pu, Mu Xin was the pen name of a renowned Chinese diasporan writer and artist. He was born in Wuzhen, China into a wealthy aristocratic family with business interests in Shanghai. He was among the last generation to receive a classical education in the literati tradition, but he was also exposed through voluminous reading to the highest achievements of Western art and culture. From 1947-1949, Mu Xin attended Shanghai Institute of the Arts. Although from 1949-1982 he wrote profusely, all of his earlier manuscripts were confiscated and destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. When he moved to New York in 1982, Mu Xin published books of fiction, prose and poetry, and contributed to literary columns in Chinese journals and newspapers outside the PRC. Among the Chinese diaspora, MuXin’s works have attracted an intense following. In addition to his literary accomplishments, Mu Xin is also a well recognized artist whose paintings are preserved, among other places, at the Yale Art Gallery in the United States and the Mu Xin Museum in Wuzhen.
FRANCISCO BELLO
Francisco Bello is an OSCAR® and three time Emmy nominee. He shot and produced “Salim Baba,” a 2008 Best Short Documentary Oscar and 2009 Emmy Nominee. Francisco produced and edited “War Don Don,” the winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival, for which he was also given the inaugural Karen Schmeer Documentary Editing Award and two Emmy nominations. Additional highlights include editing the Peabody winning “Best Kept Secret,” the Cine Golden Eagle winning “Code of the West,” and the Karen Schmeer Award winning “Our Nixon.” Most recently he co-directed “Dreaming Against the World,” seen at the 2015 Telluride Film Festival, New York's Asia Society, the Museum of the Fine Arts in Boston and China Institute.
TIMOTHY STERNBERG
Timothy Sternberg is the OSCAR® and EMMY® nominated co-director, co-producer and editor on “Dreaming Against the World”. He started his career working in the editing rooms of Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope Studios in San Francisco while still in high school. After moving to New York, Tim has worked in positions as diverse as sound effects recorder on Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle and Robert Benton’s “The Human Stain”, re-editing the 1992 OSCAR® winning “Mediterraneo” for US release, script consultant for IFP and American Zoetrope, and music editing for Milos Forman’s “Goya’s Ghosts” and the OSCAR® winning “The Blood of Yingzhou District” directed by Ruby Yang. In 2008, his directorial debut “Salim Baba” was nominated for an OSCAR® for Best Short Documentary and played in over 100 festivals worldwide including Sundance, Telluride, IDFA Tribeca and Woodstock. After airing on HBO, Canal+ and EBS (Korea), it received an Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Culture Programming. With Francisco Bello he co-directed HBO’s”El Espiritu de Salsa”, which premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. Under Supervising Editor Walter Murch he worked as an editor and music supervisor on Mark Levinson’s “Particle Fever” iin 2013 and recently adapted Hanif Kureishi’s novella Gabriel’s Gift into a feature script as well as editing director Brendan Toller’s feature documentary “Danny Says” that premiered at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival.
SCOTT MOSIER
Scott Mosier has produced all of Kevin Smith’s movies: “Clerks,” “Mallrats,” “Chasing Amy,” “Dogma,” “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” “Jersey Girl,” the recently released “Clerks 2” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.” Mosier has co-edited five of his seven collaborations with Kevin Smith. In addition he was the editor of the documentary, “Small Town Gay Bar,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He co-produced the OSCAR® and EMMY Nominated Documentary Short "Salim Baba," and has a number of projects in various stages development.
JOANNE WANG, Associate Producer, Narrator
Insert bio here
MAX AVERY LICHTENSTEIN, Composer
Max Avery Lichtenstein is a New York-based film composer whose melodic sensibilities, understated arrangements and creative recording techniques infuse a special character into the movies his music accompanies. Max has written scores and songs for critically-acclaimed narrative features such as “The King”, ”Jesus’ Son”, and ”Far From Heaven”. His scores can be heard in documentaries such as the Academy Award-nominated short “Mondays at Racine”, the Emmy-winning feature ”Very Semi-Serious: A Partially Thorough Portrait of New Yorker Cartoonists”, and Jonathan Caouette’s groundbreaking autobiographical film “Tarnation”. In addition to composing for film, Max writes and performs his own songs under the name Camphor.
CHRISTOPHER WALTERS, Cinematographer
(Recreations Footage)
Christopher Walters began making his own movies when he was seven, had a public access show by the time he was ten and a profitable industrial-video production company when he was twelve. At the age of eighteen he moved from his home town in Canada, to New York City, where he became established as a cinematographer during the internet boom through directorial and photographic collaborations with Heavy.com and Warner Brothers online. Commercial mogul Bob Giraldi noticed this early, online work and decided to take Walters into his fold as a commercial cinematographer-in-training. Concurrently, Walters shot and edited over a dozen video projects at Dr Dre’s production company, for such artists as Fifty Cent, Snoop Dogg and Dre himself. Fifteen years into his career as a cinematographer, Walters has lensed hundreds of commercials and five feature films. He is a partner in a production company, pirate/shark/dinosaur and is founder of a virtual-reality content endeavor, Time Traveler, LLC. Walters is thirty-nine years old and lives in New York City.
JACOB RIBICOFF, Sound Editor & Mixer
Jacob Ribicoff is a New York based sound designer, editor and mixer. His work in sound started in the early 1990s as a Foley Supervisor on the acclaimed documentary, "Brother's Keeper". His early work includes Foley Editor on "The Cider House Rules", Sound Editor on "Startup.com", Foley Editor on "Gangs of New York", Sound Editor on "Kissing Jessica Stein", and Supervising Sound Editor on "The Hours". Jacob’s further projects and roles in sound include: Sound Designer on "The Darjeeling Limited", Music Editor on the Emmy winning "The War", as well as "The Wrestler", and "Margaret", and Supervising Sound Editor on "Revolutionary Road", "Fantastic Mr. Fox", and the documentary "Buck". He has more recently worked on the documentaries, "Leviathan" and "Where To Invade Next", and the acclaimed features, "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl", "The Light Between Oceans", and "Manchester By The Sea".
DREAMING AGAINST THE WORLD was made with the generous support of:
慷慨支持, Chen Xianghong, Moving Picture Institute, The Mu Xin Foundation
Queens Council on the Arts, The Rosenkranz Foundation, Tribeca Film Institute
Vital Projects Fund, The Wuzhen Tourism Development Corporation
