Above all, the team are close personal friends unrelated to the industry, with relationships dating back up to 35 years. This is the first opportunity the winds have aligned over a single concept that each party is equally attracted to for its market novelty and potential.
Producers
(Click on name to go to IMDB profile)
A well established and highly regarded independent film (and TV) executive. He is a qualified solicitor in England and Wales with over 15 years’ experience in the Film and TV industry, across development, production, finance, sales and distribution. He has been both COO and director of legal and business affairs for significant industry financiers as well sales agents. Instrumental in building TV production company Paper Entertainment, film and TV financing company Orogen Entertainment and production monitoring service company Golden Arrow Entertainment.
Anders also has over 15 years in director, commercial and project management roles within the wider media and creative industry, including having founded a marketing company focusing on establishing the 1st web presence for most Southeast England’s NHS organisations.
Anders is currently the COO of TV production company Paper Entertainment and Executive Vice President of film and TV financing company Orogen Entertainment. Some of Anders’s recent Film and TV credits include: Paul Schrader‘s The Card Counter staring Oscar Isaac, the highly anticipated rom-com Meet Cute staring Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson, The upcoming political drama The Independent staring John Cena, Brian Cox and Ann Dowd, Carl Ellsworth road rage nailbiter Unhinged staring Russell Crowe, Boss Level, The Kristen Stewart staring JT LeRoy and Made in Italy co-staring Liam Neeson and his son Micheál Richardson.
Sundance award-winning producer Brent Emery brings over twenty years of international film strategy and business consulting experience to Resonate Entertainment. He has worked as an independent film finance, sales and production specialist at multiple executive posts, including U.S. Head of Co- Productions for ECI (a global entertainment company focused on Chinese Co- Productions) and Executive Vice President of Production and Development at Madonna and Guy Oseary’s Maverick Films.
During his many years at Maverick Films, Emery oversaw development of over fifty studio and independent film and television projects and managed the deals of a dozen independent producers. Projects that emerged from Emery’s tenure include box office record breaking Twilight, which was eventually financed by Summit Entertainment, the hit film Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, and the young adult hit movies Agent Cody Banks I and II.
Emery’s critically acclaimed 2015 film, The Stanford Prison Experiment, won the Alfred P. Sloan Award and Waldo Salt screenwriting award at The Sundance Film Festival. The Road Within, starring Kyra Sedgwick, produced by Emery and written and directed by Emery’s wife, Gren Wells, has garnered multiple international awards, including Best Youth Film at The Rome Film Festival.
After producing Carrie Pilby with Suzanne Farwell and Susan Cartsonis, they went on to create Resonate Entertainment in 2016. In 2020, Emery was Executive Producer on the Sofia Carson starring Netflix film, Feel the Beat, the independent film, Dear Zoe (starring Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink), and, in 2021, Space Oddity (being directed by Kyra Sedgwick) alongside his partners in Resonate. Brent is currently in production and Executing Producing Audrey’s Children (Aimee Mann directing Natalie Dormer) and Producing Sitting in Bars With Cake for Amazon Studios.
Gren Wells was born in Louisville, Kentucky and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. After graduating Summa Cum Laude from Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY, Gren moved to Los Angeles and wrote her first feature script called Earthbound that sold to 20th Century Fox. Earthbound later found a home at The Film Department, and starred Kate Hudson, Gael Garcia Bernal, Kathy Bates and Whoopi Goldberg.
Since then, she has sold over 20 feature film and television projects. In 2014, Gren wrote and directed The Road Within – starring Robert Sheehan, Dev Patel, Zoe Kravitz, Robert Patrick and Kyra Sedgwick. Based off of this film, Variety chose her as one of their ’10 Directors to Watch’. The Road Within won Best Film at the Rome Film Festival, the Champs Elysees Film Festival and the Zlin Film Festival. It also won Best Actor (Dev Patel) and Best Actress (Zoë Kravitz) at the Napa Film Festival and Best Supporting Actor (Dev Patel) and Best Supporting Actor (Zoë Kravitz) at the Milan International Film Festival.
Gren recently directed the adaptation of the award-winning YA novel, Dear Zoe. It sold to Byron Allen’s Freestyle Media and stars Sadie Sink, Theo Rossi, Jessica Capshaw, Justin Bartha, Vivian Lyra Blair and introducing Kweku Collins. It will be released in November 2022.
She is attached to direct The Wright Girls, starring Bella Thorne and Dove Cameron, written by Bert Royal, with Atlas Entertainment producing. She also wrote and is co-directing Albino Island with Sheila Munyiva (Rafiki), who is also starring. She also wrote and is directing the adaptation of the award-winning book Ms. Bixby’s Last Day, starring Vivien Lyra Blair.
She is represented by Ryan Saul at The Cartel and Gregg Gellman at Morris Yorn.
Paris spent more than 40 years in theatre and writing professionally for film, television and video games. Among his many episodic television credits are China Beach, Equal Justice, Quantum Leap and Law & Order.
Some of his television movies include The Tuskegee Airmen, The Rosa Parks Story and A Raisin in the Sun. Feature films include The Inkwell, Hannibal, Sadgwar, Liberty’s Children, Chevalier and Barbara Jordan.
Multiple awards and honours include two Humanitas Prizes, Writers Guild Award, Image Award, two Christopher Awards; Black Reel Award, Emmy Nomination, Epiphany Prize Nomination, Three WGA Nominations, Three Humanitas Prize Nominations, Cable-Ace Nomination and four Image Award Nominations.
Honours include a Trusteeship with the Humanitas Foundation, an Honorary Doctoral Degree from Rutgers College, Rutgers University, as well as inductions into the Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni and Long Branch High School Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame.
Paris is a voting member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, recently selected to head a steering committee of the Emmy Awards.
Bonnie Milner
Bonnie has been the Co-Owner and General Manager of Long View Entertainment for over 30 years. Long View Entertainment is a premiere development company for music and music centric film, television and new media projects.
For the past several years Long View has been working closely with artists and activists from the global green movement and has co-founded a non-profit organization called CGMM, Inc.
Through music and media, CGMM is committed to educating, empowering and amplifying the next generation’s voices as they lead us to a more just and sustainable existence on this planet.
The company only became profitable under Bonnie’s restructuring, management and leadership.
In addition to general management of the studio operation, as a seasoned musician, songwriter and music producer, Bonnie has written and co-written a catalog of songs varying in genre, many of which have been successfully placed. Bonnie has produced full length and singles for an impressive roster of artists and is well known and respected in the music industry. She has developed and directed for twenty years, an award winning after-school music program for children from rural, poor communities and received commendations from the Massachusetts State Senate and other educational government agencies.
Founders
Taj Johnston-Montesano
For Taj, Iravidarts is in close alignment with his principles and those of his company Montesano Capital Partners which focuses on sustainable growth and investments with a dual commercial/social application. This line of thinking is evident in his previous engagements in helping launch the Hallmark Channel (family friendly programming), the Employment Channel (helping people find gainful employment), fund raiser for the San Francisco Opera disadvantaged youth outreach programs as well as corporate experience as Managing Director at Hill & Knowlton, one of the largest public relations/ public affairs networks in the world help to bring the necessary spirit, human resources and vision to reality on a global scale.
Jost Thöne
Jost Thöne, son of music pedagogue and composer Karl Thöne (1924-1993), was born Germany near Düsseldorf. Continuing the Thöne family tradition, he studied music and viola at the Academies in Dortmund and Muenster in Germany. In the course of his studies, he also spent a great deal of time learning about the art of violin making and its history. After completing his studies, Thöne decided to become a dealer in fine stringed instruments, with shops in Germany and in Italy.
Since 1998, when he established the publishing house “Jost Thöne Verlag”, Thöne has published a dozen large books about the Italian and French violin makers of the last four centuries. These reference works feature more than 120 of these important violin makers along with their instruments and biographies.
The latest of these works was “Antonio Stradivari”, published in 2010; it became “the state of the art” in violin documentation, showing in four volumes 300 violins, violas and cellos of the icon Antonio Stradivari in life size. This documentation gained international recognition.
Some of the books have been translated into four other languages besides English and are already being sold worldwide, for example by international auction houses such as Sotheby’s, Christies or Tarisio in London and New York.
Jost Thöne founded the Violin Expo Cologne in 2006, creating a globally unique stage to present international contemporary violin making in the historic centre of Cologne. He supervised the exhibition “Antonio Stradivari – Myth and Music” in Cologne in 2010 as a guest curator of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Foundation Corboud. This exhibition was unfortunately postponed due to culture budget cuts by the city of Cologne.
Partner
The art foundation “Fondazione Artistica Bambarone” is a non-profit institution promoting the dialogue between art, nature and architecture, between local and international artists.
In collaboration with local and international curators, the foundation promotes contemporary art projects of emerging talents in the fields of visual arts, literature, performing arts, music, art criticism and cultural management by awarding scholarships, board, lodging and the provision of tools and work utensils.
By issuing publications and organising colloqui, workshops and exhibitions, locally and internationally, we introduce the award winners to a wide public.
The foundation wants to enable talented artists of different disciplines to pursue their creative activities outside their cultural circle or place of residence, without using their own financial resources. to work, be creative and present art within the network of affiliated foundations, art associations, galleries and museums.
Personalities from politics, social life, cultural institutions and artists are represented in the different committees of the art foundation to support this ambition.