Featured Speakers

Featured Speakers

Bill Grundfest

via LIVE Webcast from the US

Bill Grundfest is a Golden Globe Award winning writer and producer who has also been nominated for three Emmy Awards. While he has worked in all genres of American network television series and films for the past 17 years, his greatest success has been in comedy, with the series "Mad About You" (which is syndicated around the world). In addition, Bill has written major award shows including the Academy Awards, Emmy Awards and Grammy Awards. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife who claims to love him, two sons, three dogs, two cockatiels, a hen and a rooster.

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Terrence Masson

via LIVE Webcast from the US

Terrence Masson is Director of Creative Industries at Northeastern University. He's author of "CG101: A Computer Graphics Industry Reference" (now in its second edition) which received rave reviews from people in the film and animation industry in the US and Japan (www.cg101.com), and a Hollywood veteran with 20+ years of production experience under his belt (www.visualfx.com).

Terrence’s work includes feature film (Star Wars, Fantastic Four), interactive (SimCity4) and award-winning short animated films (Bunkie & Booboo). He also single-handedly developed the CG pipeline for SouthPark. Terrence consults with major production studios on creative development and pipeline efficiency, is a member of the Producers Guild of America, the Visual Effects Society and active in SIGGRAPH since 1988, including 2006 Computer Animation Festival Chair and currently as SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference Chair.

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Lian Pek

Lian Pek is an award-winning documentary director with a reputation for tackling sensitive, difficult topics with an unflinching yet compassionate eye. In 2004, her debut documentary film, Sayonara Changi, gave the world an unprecedented and exclusive look inside Singapore’s former Changi prison, one of Asia’s most notorious jails during World War Two and the Guantanamo of its time. Tracing the emotional return of now elderly Allied Prisoners of War to their wartime incarceration months before the prison was demolished, the film was lauded for contemporising staid approaches to history documentary-making and commended for its sympathetic but restrained tone.

Since then, Lian’s films have won numerous international film and directorial accolades. Born Again Buddhists, an extraordinary exploration into the little known phenomenon of a rising number of child reincarnates in the kingdom of Bhutan was the most nominated programme at the 12th Asian Television Awards in 2007, sweeping three of the four nominated categories including Best Director and Best Cinematography. It also won the Best International Documentary prize at the Rome International Film Festival (2007), Best of Discovery Channel Asia (2006) and Finalist prize at the New York Festivals (2007). Lian’s latest directorial effort Mad About English! a documentary feature about China’s mad rush to master the English language ahead of the Olympics became the top grossing Singaporean documentary film of all time in the Singapore cinemas, winning the South East Asian Awards for Best Documentary at the Yogyakarta Film Festival Dokumenter 2008, the Elle Award for Film the Year.

Before documentary-making, Lian was one of Asia’s most recognisable news anchors as CNN International’s Anchor and Correspondent. Prior to CNN, Lian was TV team leader at Bloomberg Financial News. She started her broadcast career at Media Corp where, as its youngest business editor, she launched and anchored the station’s first daily business news bulletin. Lian has also penned numerous plays for the stage including Between Chinas, most recently staged at Action Theatre as well as Mail Order Brides and Other Oriental Takeaways which made the Top Ten List at the 1998 New York Drama Festival.

Lian graduated with an M.A. in Theatre Arts from the University of London, Goldsmith’s College and a B.A. (Hons.) in English Literature from the National University of Singapore.

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Pearlly Chua

Celebrated actress Pearlly Chua has played the part of Emily, in one of Singapore's most loved creations, "Emily of Emerald Hill", more than 60 times since 1990.

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