About the Filmmakers

Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe first teamed up while pursuing graduate film degrees at Temple University in Philadelphia and have been collaborating on documentary and fiction films for over a decade. In 1995, they produced their first documentary feature, The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys, an in-depth chronicle of the odd marriage of art and commerce in Hollywood filmmaking and their first collaboration with Terry Gilliam. Acclaimed by the Los Angeles Times as "a rare look at the conflicts raging just outside the frame of a feature," and often compared to Burden of Dreams and Hearts of Darkness, The Hamster Factor screened at film festivals world-wide and was broadcast the UK's FilmFour. It is also available on Universal's DVD of 12 Monkeys.

In the wake of The Hamster Factor, Fulton and Pepe formed Low Key Pictures and have produced and directed numerous documentary pieces on filmmaking for Warner Bros., MGM, and Castle Rock Entertainment. Determined to prove that 'behind-the-scenes' needn't be synonymous with 'funereal celebrity hoopla,' they have applied their 'low key' sensibility on the sets of films such as Three Kings, Ghost World and Christopher Nolan's upcoming feature, Insomnia. Their work can be found on numerous DVDs, an HBO special, and several websites.

Fulton and Pepe are currently developing a TV series with John Malkovich's company, Mr. Mudd, and a fiction film, Living and Breathing, with Jericho Entertainment. They are also collaborating on a mock documentary about their absurd clashes with the Hollywood publicity machine and a screen adaptation of a Gothic horror novel. They live and work in the Silverlake district of Los Angeles -- in the shadow of the Hollywood sign, and just down the street from the old Mack Sennett Studios (now a public storage facility).

Keith Fulton: Co-Director
Keith Fulton is a producer, director, and editor of documentary films. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Haverford College and an MFA from Temple University's film program. While in graduate school, Fulton dedicated much of his filmmaking efforts to the pursuit of eccentrics, producing two documentaries along the way -- John the Barber (25 minutes, 1993), a portrait of a prophetic neighbourhood legend, and Ben Franklin(s): A Historical Fiction (58 minutes, 1995), an omnibus of bizarre Franklin imagery and Philadelphia's rival Franklin impersonators. In addition to his projects with Low Key Pictures, Fulton has directed and produced segments for the CBS documentary series A Day in the Life. He has also worked as an editor and director of educational documentaries and as a project facilitator for The Scribe Video Center, an outreach facility which trains community groups in media production.

Louis Pepe : Co-Director
Louis Pepe is an independent filmmaker who divides his time between documentary and fiction projects. In addition to his work with Low Key Pictures, his documentary credits include the short film Roadside Eulogy (1991), a study of people's encounters with road kill. His fiction film Moments of Doubt, a trilogy about women struggling to forge identities within narrowly-defined careers, won the Best Short Film award at the 1999 Hamptons International Film Festival. Pepe has also served as director of photography on several award-winning short films and was one of four recipients of the 1995 Eastman Kodak Scholarship for excellence in cinematography. He holds two Bachelor of Science degrees from M.I.T. -- one in Computer Science and one in Film Studies -- and a Master of Fine Arts in Film from Temple University. He is currently a member of a Los Angeles-based film collective in which he writes and directs one short film per month.

Lucy Darwin: Producer
Lucy Darwin has worked in the film industry in exhibition and distribution since 1986. In a freelance production capacity, she has worked on the feature films First Knight and Twelve Monkeys and served as a producer of its companion feature documentary The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys. Representing the films financiers, she was Associate Producer on Women Talking Dirty, the first film from Elton John's Rocket Pictures, distributed by U.I.P. Darwin is currently developing Leonardo Secret Agent, a feature film with co-producers Duncan Kenworthy and Andrew Macdonald (DNA) from an original script by Jonny Kurzman. Darwin retains Woody Allen, with whom she has worked for the past ten years, as her sole international pr client. Lost in La Mancha is her first film as producer.

Jacob Bricca: Editor
Jacob Bricca is a documentary film editor, director, and teacher. He is the editor of Jimmy Scott: If You Only Knew, a feature documentary about the famed jazz singer that recently played the IFP Film Market and AFI Fest and has won rave reviews in Variety and the Los Angeles Times. Other recent editing credits include Beyond The Border, a PBS documentary about a community of Mexican immigrants in Lexington, Kentucky, and What A Girl Wants, a short about the media's impact on girls' self-image (which he also co-directed) that is currently used in media education programs throughout the country. As director, he has meditated on the power of the moving image in All Of It, documented angst-filled teens in Nothing, and lost himself in abstract imagery in a variety of experimental shorts. He has an MFA in Film Editing from the American Film Institute, and a BA in Film Studies and Sociology from Wesleyan University. He currently divides his time between filmmaking and teaching, holding a post as Visiting Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan University.

Miriam Cutler: Composer
Miriam Cutler, composer and producer, began her musical career as a performer in bands, including Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo and Swingstreet. With the development of her recording studio, she moved into composing full time, contributing music to films including Bachelor Party, Grandview USA, Arlington Road, Slaves to the Underground (Sundance Film Festival), as well as songs for children's series, Square One (PBS) and CTW's Different & Same (Cindy Award). She has scored numerous features, including two recently released independent films: Amy's Orgasm (Santa Barbara Film Festival) and God's Army. Numerous documentaries include Lost in La Mancha (Berlin Film Festival), Scout's Honor (POV/Sundance Film Festival), Death - A Love Story (Sundance Film Festival), Double Life of Ernesto Gomez (POV/Berlin Film Festival), Licensed to Kill (POV/2 Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals), and The Castro (Peabody, CineEagle, 2 Emmys). She wrote the theme music for PBS-affiliate daily news show Life & Times on the air for over 10 years, and the new Book Show. Her other scores include the documentary Shattered Lullabies hosted by Steven Spielberg, Disney Channel's series Movie Surfers, PBS National series Searching for God in America, Showtime's Jonathan Winters special, E's Howard Stern Interview series, Discovery's series Things That Go Bump, and June Foray's Grammy-nominated Small & Tall Tales. Since 1988, Cutler has been resident composer for St. Louis-based Circus Flora, featured at the Kennedy Center and Charleston's Spoleto Festival since 1999, and The Fern St. Circus. She has also co-produced live jazz albums on Polygram/Verve for Joe Williams, Anita O'day, Nina Simone, Shirley Horn, and Marlena Shaw.

The soundtrack to Lost in La Mancha by Miriam Cutler is available to purchase from CD Baby

Stefan Avalos: Animator
Stefan Avalos trained as a classical violinist and was a soloist with, among others, the Philadelphia orchestra. As a film student, he won numerous awards with his short films before moving into a professional film career. He has worked in many areas of the film business, producing and directing commercials for foreign television as well as working for numerous clients as varied as Rescue 911, Frontline, and MTV. In 1993, he wrote, produced and directed his first feature film, The Game. It premiered in 1994, and is currently distributed domestically by Panorama Entertainment, Inc. and internationally by Curb Entertainment, Inc. In 1997, Stefan partnered with Lance Weiler to write, direct, produce and co-star in The Last Broadcast. The Last Broadcast received international acclaim as the first desktop-based feature film and then went on to many festivals, winning Best Feature Film Silver Prize at The Chicago Underground Film Festival. With Esther Robinson and David Beard, he created Wavelength Releasing and, in October 1998, made cinematic history with the first fully digital national theatrical release of a feature film via satellite, The Last Broadcast. Through theatrical, cable, video, and foreign sales, The Last Broadcast has gone on to become, based on budget to profit ratio, one of the most profitable movies in history. He has lectured in Europe, The United States, South America, Japan and Canada about digital filmmaking as well as written for numerous publications about the experience. Other full-length work includes the concert films Cut It Up (1996), and Vine in Concert (1992). Currently, he is in production on a new feature, Ghosts of Edendale. Stefan designed and produced the story of Don Quixote in Lost in La Mancha from the original etchings by Gustave Doré.

Chaim Bianco: Animator
Chaim Bianco is a filmmaker and animator whose directing credits include Into Your Guts (Sundance 1992) and the feature film The Pope of Utah. He is currently working on a future-noir film called Split (www.splitbrain.com). Bianco's animation clients include AT&T, Lucent and the NFL. He is a frequent collaborator with Low Key Pictures, having designed and produced animations for their previous documentary, The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys, and their HBO First Look special on Three Kings. Bianco has been a fan of Monty Python since the age of 7 and finds it an eerie honour to riff on Gilliam's famous animated style for Lost In La Mancha. "Animation", he says, "is the highest form of flattery".