Vida Films and Our Bizniss Productions Pty Ltd Vida Films is the recently incorporated broadcast division of Our Bizniss Productions Pty Ltd. “Ayen’s Cooking School for African Men” is the first title to be produced under the badge of this new company. Our Bizniss Productions is a video production company that specializes in creating educational training multi media content for national and international audiences. Both Vida Films and Our Bizniss Productions Pty Ltd are owned and run by Tracy Riddiford and Cathy Beitz, who together, arguably make one of the most experienced teams currently operating in the video education publishing industry. Our Bizniss Productions was established in 1997. The company publishes human resource videos. Tracy and Cathy design and write the course work, leader's guides and drama based videos. There are over twenty Our Bizniss videos and DVDs, which are distributed in 60 countries around the world and translated into 13 languages, including Mandarin and Cantonese. Vida Films has two broadcast documentaries in development “Bang Bang You’re Dead” and “Confessions of a Tax Evader”. Ayen Kuol   Ayen was born in 1965 in the small town of Bor in central southern Sudan. She refers to it as the "deep south", a rich and fertile land on the upper reaches of the White Nile. Her Dad was medical worker, landowner and purveyor of many cattle. He also had nine wives, 26 children and a close extended family that are "too many to count" according to Ayen. They went to primary school in the local town and went further a field to the provincial town of Malakal to complete their secondary studies. The family was a close and bonded unit which included Ayen's Grandma who was over a hundred years old. Her young life was changed forever in 1983. She was married to Dr Robert Deng shortly before the most recent war broke out in her home town. The newly married couple had moved to Kenya; and Ayen was separated from all of her family till 1998 when they began to re-unite in various refugee camps throughout Africa. Her four children were born in Africa and the family came to Australia in 2000. The next five or six years have seen many family members join her in the new life in Australia and others settle in America and Canada. She has two mothers, two brothers, two sisters and dozens of other family members living here in Adelaide. Sieh Mchawala Director   Sieh was born in Adelaide, Australia. At 18 months old he moved to Tanzania returning when he was nine to complete his schooling. His father is from the Makua tribe from South Tanzania and his mother is part McKenzie (Scottish tribe) and he's not sure of the other part. He completed his secondary education at Glenunga International High School. As per family tradition, after finishing high school he was dispatched back to Tanzania (so he didn't forget the other half) and then ended up in London. It was supposed to be an 8 month round trip; back to Adelaide to begin a nursing degree. Things changed when he discovered he had itchy feet, and his return ticket was cancelled. He spent the next five years traveling internationally and around Australia; all the while, racking his brain: What to do? What to do? Finally an introductory course in filmmaking (MAPS) grabbed his attention. The course coordinator, Peter Thurmer was incredibly inspirational, as were the rest of the staff and fellow students. This year long course has set him on the path of filmmaking - directing four student films, lots of editing and a stack of wedding videos. Cathy Beitz Writer/Producer/Mentor Director   Cathy began her career with an arts degree from Griffith University after quitting Teachers College. They told her she lacked the ability to discipline children. In between cab driving and her job at the abattoir, she was executive producer/producer of the tele-movie Madness of Two. She moved to the United States in 1985 and finally got a break from doing food/parking production tasks to direct cheap retail commercials and corporate videos on subjects like plastic extrusion and how Nancy Reagan wanted everyone to say no to drugs. Lots of them won awards including the 1989 Gold Effie for the most effective television commercial in America. Next opportunity was directing the award winning documentary, They Called Me Kathy, the story of Katharine Hepburn's childhood in Connecticut for the PBS network. For the past decade she has lived in Adelaide and kept busy making documentaries for television - two one hour films for Channel 4 in the UK about the trial of the British Nurses in Saudi Arabia and a Seven Part Series on Great Australian Train Journeys for the PBS Network in the US. She has also co-written/produced and directed over thirty educational films that are distributed into 60 countries, translated into 13 languages and used by organizations such as NASA, The Mormon Church, the US Senate and The San Diego Zoo. She has two documentaries in development, Confessions of a Tax Evader and Bang Bang you're Dead, What if it was legal for women to shoot men? Gerald Manouge Cameraman   After 15 years of shooting cricket balls, footballs, basketballs and speeding cars, no one can have a camera on his shoulder, rolling and in focus faster than Gerald Manouge. And those are but his technical skills. Gerald has also worked for every network filming lifestyle, current affairs, documentaries and drama. That much experience and a solid dose of good humoured curiosity was just what was needed to realize the director's vision for a fly on the wall view of Ayen's classes. David McDonald Sound Recordist   Like Gerald, David has a decade of experience in news, current affairs, sport, lifestyle and documentaries all over the world. David accepted the challenge of recording wonderful sound (which he often didn't understand a word of what was being said) and enjoyed the experience of working with the Sudanese community. David Banbury Editor   David has edited almost twenty broadcast documentaries, half a dozen television series and a plethora of short films and commercials during the past two decades; episodes of Boney and Neighbours, feature documentaries, Dam Right I'm a Cowboy and Sacred Journey and the children's television series, Humphrey, Pigs Breakfast and Fairies. For Ayen's Cooking School, David had fifty-seven hours of footage, often in Dinka language which needed to be crafted into a 52 minute film. It was a time consuming exercise. David edited the film over a year with breaks for other jobs, the director's absence and everyone else's potted availability - but never once lost his focus on what a wonderful story was there to be told.