Matt Brunson
Matt Brunson is the Film Editor & Movie Critic for Creative Loafing in Charlotte, NC. He's been with the alternative newsweekly since 1988, initially as a freelance film critic before joining the paper full-time as a staff member in 1996. His articles have appeared in a handful of publications around the South, and he's the recipient of several awards from both the North Carolina Press Association and the North Carolina Working Press. In addition to his film duties, Brunson also holds positions at Creative Loafing as Arts & Entertainment Editor and Special Sections Editor. He currently serves as Vice President of the Southeastern Film Critics Association (SEFCA).

Ken Hanke
Mountain Xpress film critic Ken Hanke is a self-confessed monument to a life misspent watching movies. He traces his interest in film back to 1963 and the horror picture publication Famous Monsters of Filmland (which is perhaps why he’s a little more sympathetic to horror movies than most reviewers). It took nearly 20 years for a friend to talk him into actually writing about movies himself -- resulting in the book Ken Russell’s Films (Scarecrow Press, 1984). He followed this with articles for Films in Review, Scarlet Street (for which he’s also an associate editor), Video Watchdog, Alternative Cinema, etc. He’s also written the books Charlie Chan at the Movies (McFarland Publishing, 1989; reissued in paperback this year), A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series (Garland Publishing, 1991) and Tim Burton: An Unauthorized Biography of the Filmmaker (Renaissance Books, 1999), along with contributing essays to such books as The Fearmakers (St. Martin’s Press, 1994) and the deliciously titled The Sleaze Merchants (St, Martin’s Press, 1995). In between reviewing about 160 movies a year -- and dodging brickbats hurled by occasionally dissenting readers -- he’s working on Hollywood’s Other Horrors: a Studio Tour and a full-scale biography of Ken Russell, Nymphomaniacs, Nuns and Messiahs.

Kristin Hondros
Kristin Hondros is a producer and filmmaker based in Chapel Hill, NC. Her work as an independent producer and experimental filmmaker has screened in various national and international festivals. After receiving an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, she spent 7 years working in independent feature film and the visual arts in New York City. She is on the selection committee for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and is currently producing stories about Open Source technology as a digital media producer and editor at Red Hat.

Tim Kirkman
A N.C. Native, Tim Kirkman made his feature film debut in 1997 with the highly acclaimed documentary Dear Jesse. The film earned an Emmy Award Nomination after airing on the HBO/Cinemax Reel Life series and was nominated for GLAAD, Gotham and Independent Spirit Awards and also named Best Documentary of the Year (alongside Michael Moore¹s ³The Big One²) by the Boston Society of Film Critics. His most recent film, LOGGERHEADS, had its premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival where it was an Official Selection in the Dramatic Competition. The film went on to win prizes at several film festivals across the United States, including the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest and Audience Awards at the Nashville and Florida film festivals. Starring Tess Harper, Bonnie Hunt, Michael Learned, Kip Pardue, Chris Sarandon and Robin Weigert, LOGGERHEADS was released into theaters across the country by Strand Releasing in October 2005. Tim is currently writing a feature film adaptation of three short stories by the singer/songwriter Rosanne Cash and co-writing Lee Smith’s novel Family Linen, both of which he will direct. He is also writing a biopic of gay professional baseball player Billy Bean for Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (producers of CHICAGO) and Alan Poul (SIX FEET UNDER). Tim Kirkman lives in Brooklyn and Los Angeles with his partner, theater director Drew Barr.

Betsy Pickle
Betsy Pickle has been the film critic at The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee for 21 years. A Knoxville native, Pickle earned a bachelor of science in communications from the University of Tennessee, where she began her career as a critic at the student paper, The Daily Beacon. She became the film critic at the News Sentinel in May 1985. Since then, her reviews and film features have appeared in newspapers throughout the United States and Canada through the Scripps Howard News Service.

Pickle has been a guest programmer and has served as a judge at the Nashville Film Festival several times and was a juror on the panel that helped put Memphis-based writer-director Craig Brewer ("Hustle & Flow") on the radar with his first feature, "The Poor and Hungry." She also served as a judge for four years of the late, lamented Valleyfest Independent Film Festival's five-year run.

Pickle has served on the advisory council to the Tennessee Film, Entertainment & Music Commission. She does volunteer work for several charitable groups and stays particularly active with her alumnae chapter of Alpha Chi Omega. She is currently the province alumnae chairman for Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virgina.

Jack Sholder
Jack was born in Philadelphia, where he studied to become a professional trumpet player. While still in high school, he performed under such conductors as Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy.

He graduated from Antioch College with a degree in English literature, having studied along the way at Drexel Institute of Technology, the University of Edinburgh and L'Université de Besançon.

After writing and directing a number of award winning short films while working as an editor in New York (he won an Emmy for his editing work on 3-2-1 Contact), Jack directed his first feature in 1982 for New Line Cinema, Alone In The Dark with Martin Landau, Jack Palance and Donald Pleasance. He then wrote Where Are The Children starring Jill Clayburgh for Ray Stark and Columbia, and directed Nightmare On Elm Street II.

His next feature, The Hidden, won, among many other prizes, the Grand Prix at the Avoriaz Film Festival. Premiere Magazine called it "one of the ten most underrated films of the '80s." This was followed by Renegades with Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips for Universal and By Dawn's Early Light for HBO with Rebecca de Mornay, Martin Landau, James Earl Jones, Rip Torn and Powers Boothe.

Jack has directed four movies for the Fox Network: 12:01 with Jonathan Silverman, Martin Landau and Helen Slater; Dark Reflection; Generation X, based on the Marvel comic book; and Runaway Car. He also directed Hands That See with Courtney Cox for Showtime. In 1998 he wrote and directed Evil Never Dies for Artisan Entertainment and, in 2000, completed Arachnid for Filmax (Barcelona) and Lion’s Gate.

In 2002, Jack directed Beeper, a thriller starring Harvey Keitel and Joey Lauren Adams that was shot in India. And in 2003 he directed Twelve Days of Terror for Fox Television Studios, a fictionalized account of an infamous series of shark attacks that took place in New Jersey in 1916.

In addition, Jack has directed episodes of Vietnam War Stories, Gabriel's Fire, Pensacola, Tales From The Crypt and Tremors, as well as the pilot for Richard Donner’s The Omen for NBC.

In 2004, Jack was appointed professor in the Communications Department at Western Carolina University where he is Director of the Motion Picture & Television Production program. He is currently living in Asheville, NC.