Rhode Island School of Design

Robert Bridge Richardson, ASC is an American cinematographer. He has won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography three times, for his work on JFK,... The Aviator, and Hugo. Richardson is and has been a frequent collaborator for several directors, including Oliver Stone, John Sayles, Errol Morris, Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese. He is one of two living person who won Academy Award for Best Cinematography three times, the other being Vittorio Storaro. Richardson was born in Hyannis, Massachusetts. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Film/Animation/Video and received his MFA from AFI Conservatory. Richardson worked as a camera operator and 2nd unit photographer on such features as Alex Cox's Repo Man, Dorian Walker's Making the Grade and Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street . He also served as cinematographer on TV documentaries and docudramas such as America, America for The Disney Channel, God's Peace for the BBC and PBS' The Front Line: El Salvador. His work in El Salvador led to his meeting Oliver Stone, who hired him to "shoot" Salvador .
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Chris Van Allsburg is an American author and illustrator of children's books. He twice won the Caldecott Medal, for Jumanji and The Polar Express ,... both of which he wrote and illustrated, and both of which were later adapted into successful motion pictures. He received the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1980 for The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. Van Allsburg was born in East Grand Rapids, Michigan where he was the second child to his mother Doris Christianen Van Allsburg and his father Richard Van Allsburg. Van Allsburg became a younger brother when his older sister was born in 1947. When Chris was first born his family lived in an old farm house. His family then moved when Chris was three years old. They moved to a new house at the edge of Grand Rapids. His new house was located close enough to his elementary school, so he could walk there for class. His family moved again to East Grand Rapids. He would attend middle school and high school at East Grand Rapids. He attended the College of Architecture and Design at the University of Michigan, which at that time included the art school.
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Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American film director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the... Academy Award for Best Director — for Good Will Hunting and Milk , both of which were also nominated for Best Picture — and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his film Elephant . He lives in Portland, Oregon. His early career was devoted to directing television commercials in the Pacific Northwest. In his films, he has dealt with themes concerning homosexuality and other marginalized subcultures. His filmography as writer and director includes a 1994 adaptation of Tom Robbins' 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which features a diverse cast ; and My Own Private Idaho , also starring Reeves as well as River Phoenix. He wrote the screenplays for most of his early movies, and wrote one novel, Pink. A book of his photography has also been published, called 108 Portraits.
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Brian Selznick is a Caldecott-winning American author and illustrator of children's books. Selznick, the oldest of three children, was born and grew... up in East Brunswick Township, New Jersey. His grandfather was a cousin of Hollywood producer David O. Selznick. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and then worked for three years at Eeyore's Books for Children in Manhattan while working on his first book, The Houdini Box. Selznick received the 2008 Caldecott Medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret. He also won the Caldecott Honor for The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins in 2002. Additional awards include the Texas Bluebonnet Award, the Rhode Island Children's Book Award, and the Christopher Award. The Invention of Hugo Cabret has also inspired students to action, including a fourth grade class staging a silent film festival, and a group of fifth graders who turned the book into a 30 minute modern dance. The Invention of Hugo Cabret follows a young orphan in Paris in the 1930s as he tries to piece together a broken automaton.
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Chris Van Allsburg is an American author and illustrator of children's books. He twice won the Caldecott Medal, for Jumanji and The Polar Express ,... both of which he wrote and illustrated, and both of which were later adapted into successful motion pictures. He received the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1980 for The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. Van Allsburg was born in East Grand Rapids, Michigan where he was the second child to his mother Doris Christianen Van Allsburg and his father Richard Van Allsburg. Van Allsburg became a younger brother when his older sister was born in 1947. When Chris was first born his family lived in an old farm house. His family then moved when Chris was three years old. They moved to a new house at the edge of Grand Rapids. His new house was located close enough to his elementary school, so he could walk there for class. His family moved again to East Grand Rapids. He would attend middle school and high school at East Grand Rapids. He attended the College of Architecture and Design at the University of Michigan, which at that time included the art school.
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Jhumpa Lahiri is a Indian American author. Lahiri's debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies , won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction,... and her first novel, The Namesake , was adapted into the popular film of the same name. She was born Nilanjana Sudeshna, which she says are both "good names", but goes by her nickname Jhumpa. Lahiri is a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama. Lahiri was born in London, the daughter of Indian immigrants from the state of West Bengal. Her family moved to the United States when she was three; Lahiri considers herself an American, stating, "I wasn't born here, but I might as well have been." Lahiri grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island, where her father Amar Lahiri works as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island; he is the basis for the protagonist in "The Third and Final Continent," the closing story from Interpreter of Maladies. Lahiri's mother wanted her children to grow up knowing their Bengali heritage, and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta .
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