2018 Producers Immersive Mentors
Lee Clay
Mr. Clay is an award winning feature producer who produced No Good Deed starring Idris Elba and Taraji Henson, which opened #1 at the US box office and has grossed over $53m domestically. Clay’s other notable credits include Demonic for Dimension Films and James Wan, Comet starring Emmy Rossum and Justin Long for Golden Globe winner Sam Esmail, Sundance entry Very Good Girls starring Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen, SXSW Jury Award Winner 96 Minutes starring Brittany Snow, Evan Ross, and David Oyelowo, and TIFF Discovery Award winner Beautiful Boy starring Michael Sheen and Maria Bello. Clay most recently completed the sci-fi mystery, Rememory, starring Peter Dinklage and Julia Ormond for director Mark Palansky, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
Next up for Clay is Two Guys from Verona (dir. Jeremy Garelick) starring Sam Rockwell and Vince Vaughn. Clay is currently developing The Gift for Gold Circle Films and Book of Leaves (dir. Brad Anderson) with Anonymous Content.
Mr. Clay began his career at Dreamworks SKG where he worked under Steven Spielberg and Bonnie Curtis on A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, Wes Craven’s Red Eye, and The Chumscrubber, which he Co-Produced.
Brian Kohne
Hawaii’s Brian Kohne is an award-winning music producer (Barefoot Natives, Willie K) and writer/director/producer (Get a Job, Kuleana). A San Jose State graduate (Art and Radio/TV/Film), he returned home to Maui in ’05 from Silicon Valley having excelled as national director of sales and marketing, in corporate video production, sports broadcasting, and as senior user interface architect for an interactive television corporation. Kohne is principal of both Malama Pono Production and Hawai’i Cinema Inc., a marketing/distribution company, and is a Creative Media instructor at the University of Hawaii Maui College.
Aimée Lagos
Aimée Lagos is an award-winning director, producer and screenwriter whose films include the #1 box office hit from Sony Picture’s Screen Gems, No Good Deed starring Taraji Henson and Idris Elba which she wrote and Executive Produced as well as the award winning indie thriller 96 Minutes starring Brittany Snow and David Oyelowo which she wrote and directed. She is currently writing multiple feature projects for Universal Pictures including Make Some Noise, produced by George Tillman and Bob Teitle as well as the film adaptation of Theater Geek produced by Jason Bateman and Tobey Maguire. Lagos recently sold the television drama, Searching for Me to 20th Century Fox TV, Fox Network with Chernin Entertainment producing. Lagos has won multiple directing awards at film festivals around the world including awards for her films at SXSW as well as a BAFTA Award for Excellence. Lagos is a mentor for Women In Film, she is a member of the Writers Guild West’s Inclusion and Equity Group and has written opinion pieces for several publications including The Huffington Post, CNN and The Hollywood Journal.
She is repped by WME, Fourth Wall Management and Lichter Grossman Nichols and Adler and Feldman.
Neerga Narayanan
Neerga Narayanan is an international media & entertainment producer and studio executive with 18 years of experience across Asia, Europe, Africa & North/South America in multidisciplinary sectors of the industry. She is currently working with Sony Pictures International Productions, the multi-territory division for global film and television co-productions as well as local language film and television productions.
She has held senior executive management positions at the US Major studios managing development budgets of $30 million annually and separate individual production budgets of up to $40 million per production and has over 60 feature films across 3 continents to her credit.
She was most recently Senior Vice President for 21st Century Fox, Vice President of Content and Production for Disney Studios for their Asian storytelling divisions, Channel Four UK and the UK Film Council (now British Film Institute), prior to that at Capitol Films on with filmmakers such as Robert Altman, Hal Hartley, Terry Zwigoff, Terence Davies, and Edward Yang.