Writer/Director/Producer – Jason DaSilva

Jason’s first collaborative feature film was Cuba Dreams, shot in Havana in 1999 and screened at the Latin America Film Festival in Cuba later that year. His next film, Olivia’s Puzzle, screened at more than 30 festivals including Sundance, received an Oscar qualification in the summer of 2003 and was broadcasted on HBO and PBS in 2004. His third film the feature documentary, Lest We Forget, premiered at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam in 2004 and his film A Song for Daniel screened at the Tribeca Film Festival 2005 and screened on PBS in 2005. Currently, DaSilva is residing in New York City and the Project: Involve Filmmaker Fellowship award from IFP/New York. His most recent short film Twins Of Mankala premiered at Tribeca Film Festival 2006 and aired on PBS in 2006. More info: www.infacefilms.com More recently, DaSilva returned to his passion of interdisciplinary art, showing at galleries internationally and at the Whitney Biennial.

Writer/Director/Producer – Colleen O’Halloran

Colleen is a multi-media artist and started her career as a poet. She organized multi-media arts shows and music events: Poets for Peace, Artists for Peace, Poetry by the Homeless, and weekly open Mic-Nights. She also wrote and performed poetry gaining the Lannan Fellowship in Washington, D.C. In 2005, she founded her own Production Company No Place Productions and created an original NYC based on-line magazine: localMAG. The magazine featured local artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers and focused on themes of gentrification and its negative and positive relationship to local art-making. ‘From The Mouthpiece On Back’ is O’Halloran’s debut as feature documentary director and cinematographer. She now continues working collaboratively with New York artists by shooting and directing experimental short films; her latest work Todo Y Nada explores improv acting and home grown film filters. Colleen currently resides in NYC and runs a video/web program for Bronx High School Youth at SoBRO. More info: www.localmagnyc.com

Todd Tiberi – Producer

Todd made his first film as a teenager using a super-8 camera and cut and taped back together the splices in the days before Final Cut Pro.  Todd’s producer credits also include Full Grown Men (Judah Friedlander, Alan Cumming, Amy Sedaris), which won the Audience Award in the indieWIRE/NYTimes contest and recently was theatrically distributed nationwide, and horror-documentary Cropsey directed by Josh Zeman (Station Agent, Choking Man), which premiered at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.  VARIETY called Cropsey “profound, intelligent, . . . a thriller and doctoral dissertation in one fell swoop.”

Todd also served as a script analyst for Ira Deutchman’s Emerging Pictures, and as a judge for the Alfred P. Sloan Screenwriting Competition.  He served on a film screening committee for a New York-based film festival.   Todd has law degrees from Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh and a B.S. degree from Carnegie Mellon University.

Kerry Washington – Narrator

Winner for “Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture” for Ray at the NAACP Image Awards in 2005 and Nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for “Best Actress” in the film Lift in 2002, Kerry Washington is proving to be one of the busiest actresses in Hollywood. She garnered critical acclaim for her latest roles in The Last King of Scotland opposite Forest Whitaker for which she was nominated for “Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture” at the NAACP Image Awards in 2007, and in The Dead Girl opposite Marcia Gay Harden and Brittany Murphy. Most recently, Washington was seen on the big screen in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer reprising her role as Alicia Masters, as well as in I Think I Love My Wife opposite Chris Rock and in the Wayans Brothers’ comedy Little Man. She was next seen on the big screen in Lakeview Terrace opposite Samuel L. Jackson, in theatres 2008.

Prior to these films, Washington starred in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Fantastic Four, directed by Tim Story and Ray, the inspirational life story of Ray Charles, opposite Jamie Foxx. Previous to Ray, she played the lead role opposite Anthony Mackie in Spike Lee’s She Hate Me, as well as starred in Sidney Lumet’s HBO film Strip Search and the independent film Sexual Life.

Other film credits for Washington include Against the Ropes, The United States of Leland, The Human Stain, Bad Company, Lift, Save the Last Dance for which she received a Teen Choice Award for Best Breakout Performance, and the highly acclaimed independent film, Our Song.

During her free time, Washington is an active member on the Board of Directors for The Creative Coalition, a group dedicated to raising awareness of First Amendment Rights and support of arts in education. She is also a member of the V-Counsel, an esteemed group of advisors to V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls (vday.org)

The Roots

Grammy-Award winning, legendary hip-hop group The Roots are pioneers of hip-hop and live rap, building on Stetsasonic’s “hip-hop band” philosophy of the mid-’80s by focusing on live instrumentation at their concerts and in the studio. The Roots’ live shows are among the best in the business.

The Roots’ focus on live music began back in 1987 when rapper Black Thought (Tariq Trotter) and drummer ?uestlove (Ahmir Khalib Thompson) became friends at the Philadelphia High School for Creative Performing Arts. Since the duo had no money for the DJ essentials — two turntables and a microphone, plus a mixer and plenty of vinyl — they recreated classic hip-hop tracks with ?uestlove’s drum kit backing Black Thought’s rhymes.  The Roots currently serve as the house band on the Jimmy Fallon Show.