FENG Xi is a China born Canadian film editor based in Montreal. Having lived in China, Canada, and France, she has cultivated a unique blend of cultural and artistic sensitivity. Feng has worked as an editor on award winning films including China Heavyweight, Clebs, Cette Maison and Caiti Blues. Her filmography includes films premiered at prestigious festivals such as Berlinale, ACID Cannes, Sundance, Vision du Réel, Hot Docs, Art of the Reel, etc. She also served as editing mentor for festival such as Hot Docs, Reel Asian and CCDF.

Miao WANG (director, producer, editor) is a Beijing-born New York-based filmmaker. Proudly bicultural and bilingual, she has a sensitive and fine-tuned appreciation of cultural nuances. Her focus is on creative and cinematic films that tell poignant human stories, inspire cultural understanding, build connections, and encourage a more humanistic perspective of the world. She holds a BA in economics from the University of Chicago, and an MFA in design and film from Parsons School of Design. She apprenticed with two mentors while completing her MFA: renowned graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister and the legendary documentarian Albert Maysles. Design sharpened her eyes to visual detail and how colors, textures, and patterns affect us. Maysles taught her how to be perceptive to people’s gestures and emotions, however subtle. Both became models when she founded Three Waters Films in 2005. She has directed and produced three documentary features, Admissions Granted (MSNBC Films), Maineland (SXSW Jury Award Winner, New York Times Critic’s Pick), Beijing Taxi (New York Magazine Critic’s Pick), and short films Made by China in America and Yellow Ox Mountain. Her films have screened at hundreds of international festivals and institutions such as SXSW and the Guggenheim Museum, with US theatrical releases, nationwide broadcasts, and digitally released globally on multiple platforms. Miao is a recipient of grants and fellowships from Impact Partners, the Sundance Institute, the Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, the Tribeca Film Institute, and Women Make Movies. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

PENG Wen-lan is an independent producer/director based in London. She began her television career in the 1980s as a producer/presenter of English language programmes on China Central Television and later went on to present and executive produce Focus in the 1980s, CCTV’s first current affairs programme and the precursor of its present flagship programme Jiaodian Fangtan.

Upon returning to the UK in the late 80’s, Wenlan joined the Central Office for Information (the media department of the UK government) as series producer of UK Today, which gained the Finalist Award in the 1991 New York Film Festival. She subsequently worked for the BBC and the independent sector as producer/director on several documentaries about China, including China Rising, a three-part series on contemporary Chinese history (ITV); Hidden Empire, a series of docu-dramas covering Britain’s imperial past (BBC2); China Close-Up, a series on Shanghai (BBC2).

Her docu-drama A Family Concern, about the founder of the Shell Company, won the Gold Camera Award for Best History Documentary at the 1998 US International Film & Video Festival. Wenlan is a trainer for the BBC as well as EU and British Council funded workshops. She runs her own production company, Sinoscope, making documentaries on China and line producing television and feature film projects for Chinese companies filming in Britain, such as The Opium War by eminent director XIE Jin; drama serial Sun Yat-Sen (CCTV); and The Rise of Nations, a highly acclaimed 12-part documentary series charting the development of the West (CCTV).

S. Leo CHIANG is a filmmaker based in San Francisco and Taipei. His most recent film, Island in Between, received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Short Film in 2024. His previous film, Our Time Machine, played at over 50 film festivals worldwide, winning 10 awards, and was nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy Award and a Gotham Award. In 2020, he directed two episodes of the Peabody Award-winning 5-part PBS series, Asian Americans, which traces the epic history of Asians in the US over the past 200 years. His other films include Emmy-nominated film, A Village Called Versailles, about the rebuilding and transformation of the Vietnamese American community in post-Katrina New Orleans (PBS Independent Lens), Out Run, which profiles the only LGBT political party in the world, Mr. Cao Goes to Washington (Inspiration Award 2012, PBS broadcast 2013), To You Sweetheart, Aloha (PBS broadcast 2006), and One + One (CINE Golden Eagle Award 2002).

Besides his work as a director, Leo produced After the Rain by Chinese director Jian FAN, (Special Jury Award, Doc NYC 2021). He has also collaborated with other filmmakers as an editor (True-Hearted Vixen, POV 2001; Recalling Orange County, PBS/VOCES 2006), and as a cinematographer (United in Anger, MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight 2012; Ask Not, Independent Lens 2009; The Tailenders, POV 2006).

Leo holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical & computer engineering and received his MFA in film production from University of Southern California. His work has received support from funders such as Sundance, Tribeca, ITVS, Creative Capital, Catapult Film Fund & CAAM. He has taught documentary production at the University of California at Santa Cruz, University of California at Berkeley, Northwestern University, and the Communication University of China. In addition to training the CCDF producers, He has served as a mentor for the Hot Docs CrossCurrents and Blue Ice Fellowships, the Scottish Documentary Institute Connecting Stories Mentorship, IDA/American Film Showcase Fellowship, Catapult Film Fund Research Grant Fellowship, and Center for Asian American Media Fellowship. He is a co-founder of the Asian American Documentary Network (A-Doc) and previously the co-chair of New Day Films, the social-issue documentary distribution co-operative. Leo is a consulting producer for CNEX, the Chinese documentary foundation, and a Documentary branch member of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences (AMPAS).

Fan WU is the Producer of Mirror Doc, a documentary short programme of Mirror TV. Prior to that she was the Programmer of TIDF (Taiwan International Documentary Festival), the Director of CCDF (CNEX Chinese Doc Forum), the Festival Director of CNEX Documentary Film Festival. Born in Taipei, studied Motion Picture at National Taiwan University of Arts, and then received an MSc degree in Festival Producing and Management from Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh and a MA degree in Documentary by Practice from Royal Holloway College, University of London.

HSIAO Ju-kuan is a postproduction director and an award-winning senior film editor. HSIAO was previously a production assistant at Chang Shu A&V Production Co. and film editor at Avid, a postproduction company, as well as at Taipei Postproduction. He currently has his own film editing studio located in Beijing and contributes to the planning and editing of Chinese films. The film Girl of the Wind just won the Best Internatioal Documentary Short at the Doc Edge Festival in New Zealand.

HSIAO has served as a judge for the Golden Horse Awards and Taipei Film Festival. He has been nominated for Best Editing at the Golden Horse Awards for Beijing Bicycle, Burning Dreams, and Three Times. He received the Best Editing award at the Golden Bell Awards for Chiang Ching-Kuo. He is now a postproduction director and executive producer working on several documentary series in China.

Elvis A-Liang LU has a M.A. from the Department of Motion Picture at the Taiwan National University of Arts. Being passionate about documentary, he is a freelance filmmaker by profession and earns a living as a handyman in the industry. He works primarily on topics pertinent to personal dilemmas and their expression. In recent years, he focused on the exploration of religion and gender. His feature-length film The Shepherds won the Best Documentary in Golden Harvest Awards and “Euro Kino” Czech International Independent Film Festival. It was also nominated for Best Documentary at Taipei Film Festival. His film A Holy Family was selected for International Feature Film Competition at Visions du Réel and was nominated for Best Documentary and Best Editing at the 2022 Golden Horse Awards. It won the Grand Prize, Audience Choice Award, Best Documentary, and Best Editing at the 2022 Taipei Film Festival.

CEO & founder of Taskovski Films network London based world sales & production company with offices across Europe. Irena is working as film consultant / expert on marketing, sales, financing and festivals for many film institutions e.g. HBO Europe, TRT world, Asian Cinema Fund, Dok.incubator CZ, Sources Germany, and Head Tutor at Emerging Producers – at Ji.hlava IDFF CZ. Founder of the training program initiative art of creative producing and distribution “Film Academy for Conscious Creative leaders and film residencies.”

Irena studied in Prague, graduating from FAMU. She also studied at the Sam Spiegel Film and TV School in Jerusalem and obtained a Master’s degree from the National Film & Television School in London, UK.

I worked for over forty years in documentary television, the past twenty of which almost exclusively in Asia – variously in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and China. I divided my time between producing original productions, re-versioning other people’s programs and, of course, training. Over the years I have worn many hats – researcher, development producer, producer, executive producer, scriptwriter, script doctor and, the one that has given me the greatest satisfaction, trainer.

I started making documentary films in 1983. In 1986, I was a member of the first Western documentary crew allowed to film in Inner Mongolia. Since then I have made or re-versioned over forty documentary programs in Asia including Inside The Forbidden City (National Geographic Channels International – voted No.1 series in a 2009 viewer’s poll), The History of Beijing (BBC WorldWide), Kung Fu Dragons of Mt Wudang (NGCI, Bronze Medal NY Film and Television Festival), China’s Space Hero (Discovery Asia – “Highly Commended”, Asia Television Awards), Hip Korea: Rain (Discovery Asia, Finalist, Asia Television Awards), Hip Korea: Kim Yuna (Discovery Asia, winner Best Editing, ATA 2010, runner-up Best Direction plus two other categories). Original award-winning productions at LIC include The Flying Tigers, China’s Golden Monkeys, The Blind Monkey, China’s Swan Lake, and The Last Little Train in China among others. Recent projects include international co-productions with European broadcasters about Tides (Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland), Bridges (Germany) and Sheep (Germany). Although most of my work in Asia has been in the “specialist factual” genre, I also work on creative/feature docs. I was, for example, a co- producer and scriptwriter on the International Emmy-winning No Burqas Behind Bars.

When not developing or working on documentaries I find fulfilment in participating in various training programs around the world. I have been a trainer at IDFA, IDFA Academy, Hot Docs, Sunny Side, Greenhouse, the Baltic Forum, the Dragon Forum, as well as several training initiatives in South Korea, Japan and Singapore. For many years the closest to my heart was Crossing Borders (a longitudinal training program that brought together filmmakers from Asia and Europe) of which I was Head of Studies for seven years. I have been privileged to work with CNEX and CCDF for fourteen years. It is the highlight of my year.

Pat FERNS is President of Ferns Productions (and formerly Vice-President of Nielsen Ferns International and President of Primedia Productions). Pat has produced some of Canada’s finest award-winning programming and the world’s leading media events. Having launched public pitching at the Banff Television Festival in 1985, Pat has presented his signature pitching sessions worldwide on five continents. He is the overall organizer of the CNEX Chinese Documentary Forum in Taiwan, now in its fifteenth year. In 2000 he was the fifth recipient of the prestigious Academy of Canadian Film and Television’s Achievement Award for “exceptional contribution to the Canadian television industry.” In 2005 he was awarded The Order of Canada for his services to the industry. Pat is currently writing his memoirs and a history of independent production in Canada.

Through his company Ferns Productions Inc. Pat produced blue chip factual mini-series, feature films and television drama. Following the 4-hour, Gemini and Leo award-winning Australia-Canada co-production Captain Cook: Obsession and Discovery, he produced the 3-hour Australia-Canada co-production Darwin’s Brave New World for CBC’s The Nature of Things.

Listening to Orcas won a Leo at British Columbia’s film awards for Best Short Documentary and Best of Festival (Ocean Life) at the Nature Without Borders International Film Festival. Whale Talk was a Canada-Germany co- production for CBC, Radio-Canada, ZDF, 3SAT and Arte France.

Ferns Productions Inc. provided Pat’s services to Aarrow Productions as Executive Producer of 1491: A New History of The Americas, an award-winning eight-hour docu-drama series; and as Producer for Holgate Production House’s feature length documentary China: The Miraculous Transformation.

Pat helped to finance The Shipsinkers for National Geographic Channels International and wrote and produced China’s Hollywood, a China-France co-production involving Beijing’s CultureLink Media for France 5.

For 21 years Pat served as the International Consultant and Pitch Moderator for CoPro, the Israeli Documentary Screen Market, a role he plays for two Chinese events – CICSEP and GZDOC – in addition to his fifteen years working with CNEX.