Mary Darling, Executive Producer
Mary comes from a stellar career in management and marketing with several large companies in the U.S. including Pillsbury in Minneapolis and Lewis Gilman and Kynett in Philadephia. Since joining WestWind Pictures in 1999, she has helped WestWind evolve from a minor to a major player in Canada's film and television industry (and has had a GREAT time doing so).

Mary conceived of WestWind's hit design show, Designer Guys, and its subsequent relaunch with new hosts. As well as providing overall management, creative and executive producer services to WestWind Pictures proper, Mary heads up WestWind Releasing which develops and distributes most of WestWind properties and Darling Media which handles ancillary development. Mary also acts as the Executive Producer on the award-winning comedic series, Little Mosque on the Prairie. Most important in Mary's life are her six children, whom she loves.

Torill Kove, Director
Torill Kove was born and raised in Norway and moved to Canada, where she continued her education and worked in urban planning for several years. Her childhood hobby of drawing and sketching grew into an interest in animation and she returned to school to study animation at Concordia University in Montreal, winning the Kodak Award for her quirky films: All You Can Eat, Fallen Angel and Squash and Stretch. Torill has worked in a variety of roles on several National Film Board of Canada productions and wrote the script for the animated short Snails, by the Norwegian filmmaker Pjotr Sapegin. She also illustrated three children's books.

Torill's first professional film, My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts, co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada and Studio Magica of Oslo, won numerous international awards and was nominated for an Oscar®. The Danish Poet, Torill's latest Oscar®-winning film, is an animated short about life's peculiar coincidences.

Marcy Page, Producer in Animation
Marcy Page has pursued an interest in animation for nearly 30 years. Prior to joining the NFB in 1990, her personal film Paradisia garnered 15 festival awards internationally. She also animated with over a dozen companies and taught animation courses at San Francisco State University and the California College of Arts & Crafts.

She's helped lead the way in marrying computer technology and artistry at the NFB, as producer on the Oscar®-winning, 3D-generated co-production Ryan and the stereoscopic films Falling in Love Again, June and Moon Man (made with Imax's SANDDE™ technology). Marcy also produced the acclaimed multi-screen shorts The End of the World in Four Seasons and The Boy Who Saw the Iceberg.

She also produced two acclaimed films by Torill Kove, The Danish Poet, an Oscar® winner, and My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts, an Oscar® nominee. Marcy has also been a key participant in the ShowPeace series on conflict resolution.

Helga Stephenson, Former Executive Director of the Toronto International Film Festival
Helga has dedicated her career to leadership, promotion and production in the arts world, particularly film. She is a relentless promoter of Canadian works by independent, international filmmakers.

Helga is best known for her work as long-time Executive Director of the Toronto International Film Festival, overseeing its major growth period from 1986 – 1995 when the cornerstones of the present Toronto International Film Festival Group were established: Cinémathèque Ontario, the Film Reference Library with its Archives, and the (Canadian and International) Film Circuit. When she left the organization to raise her daughter Rachel, she joined the Board of TIFFG and is now a member of its Chairman's Council.

She has been active on many boards, serving for five years as Chair of Viacom Canada. She has also served on the board of National Film Board of Canada, the Gaming Commission of Ontario, Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival, Corporation of Massey Hall & Roy Thomson Hall, and the City of Toronto Mayor's Economic Partnership Council.

She co-founded and co-chaired the Toronto Committee of Human Rights Watch and currently is co-founder and Director of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. She is adviser to international festivals including the Canadian Retrospective of the Lima, Peru Film Festival, is President of the Programming Committee for the Reykjavik International Film Festival.

Throughout her career Helga has seen her role as that of producer and communicator whether for film festivals, charitable endeavours or other events. Film is so much her passion that she has been described as ‘the fairy godmother of film festivals.” Helga continues to produce and communicate as partner, with Kate Alexander Daniels, in Daniels Stephenson.

Thelma Schoonmaker, Editor
Thelma Schoonmaker Powell was born in Algiers, Algeria, where her father worked for the Standard Oil Company. She grew up on the island of Aruba and after returning to the United States, attended Cornell University, where she studied political science and Russian, intending to become a diplomat. While doing graduate work at Columbia University, Thelma answered a New York Times ad that offered on-the-job training as an assistant film editor. The exposure to the field sparked a desire to learn more about film editing, and her career was set.

During a six-week summer course at New York University's film school, she met Martin Scorsese and Michael Wadleigh. Within a few years, she was editing Scorsese's first feature, Who's That Knocking at My Door. She then edited a series of films and commercials before supervising the editing of Wadleigh's 1971 film Woodstock, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1981, she won the Academy Award, the American Cinema Editors Eddie, and the BAFTA Award for her editing of Scorsese's Raging Bull. Since then, she has worked on all of Scorsese's feature films: The King of Comedy; After Hours; The Color of Money; The Last Temptation of Christ; New York Stories (the Life Lessons segment); GoodFellas, which earned her another BAFTA Award and another Academy Award nomination; Cape Fear; The Age of Innocence; Casino; Kundun; A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (Martin Scorsese's documentary on the first 100 years of American film); Bringing Out the Dead; Il Mio Viaggio in Italia (Martin Scorsese's documentary on the Italian Cinema); Gangs of New York, for which she earned another Academy Award nomination; The Aviator, for which she won her second Academy Award and the American Cinema Editor's Eddie; and most recently The Departed, for which she won her third Academy Award and the American Cinema Editors Eddie.

In addition to editing, Thelma works tirelessly to promote the films and writings of her late husband, the English film director Michael Powell.