Risa Morimoto (producer/director) produced the feature film, The LaMastas in 1998. Since then she has produced, written and directed for film and television. Risa produced the award-winning program Cinema AZN, a half-hour show on Asian film. President of Edgewood Pictures Inc., a motion picture production company, Risa graduated with a Masters in film and education from New York University in 1999 where she served as the Associate Director of the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute. From 2002-2006, she served as Executive Director of Asian CineVision, a non-profit media arts organization. A second-generation Japanese American, Risa studied at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.

Linda Hoaglund (producer/writer) is the film advisor for the Japan Society in New York. Born and raised in Japan, the daughter of American missionary parents, she attended Japanese public schools. A graduate of Yale University, after working as a bilingual news producer for Japanese television, she joined an independent American film production company as a producer. Since 1996, she has subtitled 150 Japanese films. She represents Japanese directors and artists and serves as an international liaison for producers. In 2004, she received a commendation from the Foreign Minister of Japan for her work promoting Japanese film abroad.

Maya Stark (editor) is an accomplished editor of both fiction and non-fiction films. Born and raised in Israel, she moved to the U.S. to pursue a career in the film industry. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts, she has worked on several feature films including Following Rosa and Chooch and television projects for BBC, HBO, and AZN, Logo, Sundance Channel and Here TV.

Francisco Aliwalas (cinematographer) is a Manhattan-based filmmaker. His documentaries, series, and promos have aired on MTV, Discovery Asia, and AZN. Francisco served as director, videographer, and series producer for three seasons of 5 Takes (Travel Channel). Francisco created video web content for Current TV, Google Travel, Ford Models, Aviation Week, General Electric, and Dress for Success. Recently, he won Best Picture, Director, and Editor at MTV World's 72 Hour Film Shoot-Out and his series for Conde Naste’s Concierge.com titled 24 Hours in… won Best Online Video Series as voted by Magazine Publishers of America.

Jef Castro (animator) As far back as he could remember, Jef Castro never escaped the intense appeal of bright colored illustrations of comic books and morning cartoons. This visual obsession led him to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where he received his BFA in Film and Animation. His need for a continued pop culture fix steered him to photo editing at Entertainment Weekly and Vibe Magazine and then on to television as production manager for AZN TV's award winning show on Asian and Asian American films, Cinema AZN. He has also storyboarded for various commercials, music videos, and feature films as well illustrated for the upcoming graphic novel on Asian American super heros, Secret Identities by The New Press. All the while he continues to work with Asian CineVision (ACV) and their past five New York Asian American International Film Festivals as festival manager and as creator/curator for their annual music video program. Wings of Defeat is his first animation for a feature film.

Joe Wu (art director/animator) is a New York-based multi-disciplinary graphic designer and a graduate of School of Visual Arts in Graphic Design and Fine Arts. His breadth of medium include print, web, interactive, illustration, 3D, film, and video. As a jack of all trades, he has worked with film and television designing on-air packaging for MTV On-Air, award-winning program Cinema AZN, and Reel Life on AZNTV. A mainstay in the independent film industry, he has been art directing the New York Asian American International Film Festival from 2001 to 2007 and has designed promotional trailers for AAIFF as well as Media That Matters Film Festival, an online film festival. Joe has also designed film titles for independent films Outsourced and Election Day. He has worked on various design projects for both corporate and non-profit during his tenure at Woo Art International, Inc. as a senior designer/art director in New York. Currently, Joe is a recent transplant as an in-house Motion Graphics Designer at Elastic Creative in San Francisco, California.

Tom Lino (sound designer) has been involved in film and film making for 20 years following the progression from film flatbeds and Moviolas to the digital media age of today. His career has included work in production and post-production starting as a picture editor and now working as a sound designer for film and TV. His credits include creating the sound for the animated segment of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. He works closely with FlickerLab, a New York-based animation house. Tom has been the mixer on the PBS show In the Life for ten years and recently has mixed the verite style shows Lesbian Sex and Sexuality for the Here! Network and the upcoming series for LOGO, Be Real. He works and lives in New York and prides himself on his latest accomplishment, raising his three-year old son, Kieran.

Fumiko Hattori (associate producer) is an independent researcher specializing in the WWII Pacific Theater. When she's not translating news at a leading Tokyo-based TV broadcaster, she's off on her personal mission to meet with military and civilian war survivors, and to travel around the world to war-related sites on land and in the sea. To better understand the trials of war without risking her life in actual war zones, she's crawled through dark underground war tunnels, flown a helicopter, fired an AK47 and M16 (on automatic!) and parachuted out of a plane at 14,000 feet. She co-authored "Banzai! Debunking the Kamikaze Myth" (Asia Times Online, October 2004) and "Ex-Kamikaze Pilots Remember Comrades" (Naval History magazine, February 2005). Devoted to passing on history, she is currently carrying out research for a U.S. project to preserve the WWII battle site on the southern Palauan island of Peleliu.