Cassandra is the former producer of the London Short Film Festival (2013 & 2014) and has previously delivered industry strands for the London Film Festival and East End Film Festival. She currently works at BAFTA, producing programmes including BAFTA Crew and Conversations with Screen Composers at the Royal Albert Hall. She also freelances for British Council Film.

Currently CEO of Together Films, a boutique marketing and distribution consultancy who work with filmmakers to create innovative marketing and distribution strategies for their films. Sarah is also a producer, and her feature film debutThey Will Have To Kill Us First, directed by Johanna Schwartz, premiered at SXSW in 2015.

Prano is an award-winning director who grew up on a diet of Twin Peaks in the depths of a strange Welsh community. Her work invokes imaginative worlds, fusing a dark vocabulary with eerie allure, revealing how beauty resides in strange places. Tipped as one-to-watch by Film4, Prano’s work has been recognised at events and festivals including BFI London Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, Tampere Film Festival, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, UKMVA’s, London Short Film Festival and European Independent Film Festival. She is currently developing her first feature, produced by Silver Salt Films,and is also an award-winning editor

Abigail is a freelance arts producer who works with artists and organisations on realising inventive artists’ moving image projects. She is Associate Director at arts agency Animate Projects, where she is currently producing Wellcome Trust supported interdisciplinary project, Silent Signal. Abigail has worked with numerous cultural organisations including Forma, The Bureau, CAMP Films, Lupus Films, the UK Film Council and Arts Council England. She is also on the board of Four Corners, London’s centre for film and photography.

Virginie Sélavy is the founder and editor of Electric Sheep, an online magazine for offbeat, left-field and transgressive cinema. She is the editor of The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology and has contributed to World Directory Cinema: Eastern Europe and the London volume of Film Locations: Cities of the Imagination. Her work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including The Guardian, Sight and Sound, Cineasteand Frieze.

One of the UK’s most respected and versatile actresses, Maxine first came to prominence in Victoria Wood’s sitcom Dinnerladies. Becoming something of a national treasure due to her role as Veronica in the first four series of Shameless, Maxine has gone on to deliver blistering performances playing Myra Hindley in See No Evil, and the 19th Century lesbian diarist Anne Lister in The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister.

Nira founded Big Talk Productions in 1995, through which she produced the award-winning comedy series Spaced, as well as three series of the BAFTA winning sitcom Black Books, and the Rose D’Or nominated comedy/drama Free Agents. In 2007, Nira expanded Big Talk Productions and created Big Talk Pictures and is now CEO of both companies. Her credits include Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (2010), Paul(2011) and Attack the Block (2011).

Rebecca O’Brien has been an independent film producer for over twenty years. She has produced twelve feature films directed by Ken Loach, including Land and Freedom (1995), Sweet Sixteen (2002), My Name is Joe (1998) and Looking for Eric (2009). In 2006 The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006), set during the Irish War of Independence, won the Palme d’Or in Cannes. Next year they will release The Angels’ Share set in Scotland. O’Brien is a director of South West Screen and is on the Film Industry Training Board. She runs her company Sixteen Films with Ken Loach.

Molly is an exceptional young British composing talent who has risen to prominence with a range of fresh, distinct and highly regarded scores. Molly has scored Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart (2007) and Road To Guantanamo (2006), and Nick Broomfield’s Ghosts (2006) and the critically acclaimed film of Donald Crowhurst’s 1968 round the world yacht race, Deep Water. In 2009 she scored Shifty, the film premiered at the London Film Festival and Molly received a BIFA (British Independent Film Award) nomination for best score.

Laura Mulvey is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London and a Fellow of the British Academy. She is the author of: Visual and Other Pleasures (Macmillan 1989; second edition 2009), Fetishism and Curiosity (British Film Institute 1996), Citizen Kane (in the BFI Classics series 1996) andDeath Twenty-four Times a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (Reaktion Books 2006). She has made six films in collaboration with Peter Wollen including Riddles of the Sphinx (BFI 1978) and Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (Arts Council 1980) and with artist/film-maker Mark Lewis Disgraced Monuments (Channel 4, 1994).

Internationally acclaimed director Kim Longinotto is one of the pre-eminent documentary filmmakers working today, renowned for creating extraordinary human portraits and tackling controversial topics with sensitivity and compassion. Highlights include Sisters in Law (2005), winner of a 2008 Peabody Award and two Cannes awards; Hold Me Tight, Let me Go (2007), winner of the Special Jury Prize at IDFA; The BAFTA Award-winning Divorce Iranian Style (1998); Dream Girls (1993), winner of Best Documentary at Films de Femmes; and Shinjuku Boys(1995), winner for Outstanding Documentary at the Sand Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

Joan Leese is Director of VET Post Production and Training. VET is a boutique Facility in Shoreditch that offers post-production services for broadcast, corporate and online content as well as Independent and experimental film. Joan steers innovation and development, and holds overall responsibility for the training activities. Joan and VET have supported Underwire since its inception and value the festival’s achievements in supporting women filmmakers and creating a dynamic thoughtful space for women to share and develop. As a technical woman in the Industry she values Underwire’s platform for craft and technical alongside wider categories of women in film. Joan blends her solid technical industry background as a BBC engineer with her current experience of a post production house to create relevant and up-to-date training and is committed to making technology understandable to people who lack technical confidence as well as ‘digital natives’. Additionally, she has designed and run numerous women-only or women focussed training programmes.

Andrew Kötting is the director of several experimental shorts, which were awarded prizes at numerous international film festivals. Gallivant(1996), was his first feature film. In 2001 he directed the first of his Landworks trilogy; This Filthy Earth and in 2009 Ivul. He continues to work on multi media art projects including Mapping Perception, In The Wake of a Deadad (2006) and most recently Swandown in collaboration with the writer Iain Sinclair. His feature film Louyre – This Our Still Life (2011) premiered at the Venice Film Festival.