MR. CHRIS A. SHOEMAKER
Executive Director/Founder

Mr. Shoemaker is the co-founder and for the past 15 years, executive director of the International Family Film Festival (IFFF), the first worldwide festival showcasing family and children’s films in Hollywood, CA.  Under his direction, the IFFF also presented a sister festival, The Garden State International Family Film Festival in New Jersey.  Along with his wife Suzanne and Ms. Patte Dee McKee, he also co-founded and executive directed the Burbank International Children’s Film Festival in Burbank, California.  He has organized and served as a member for a total of 18 international festival juries in addition to adjudicating youth films for Scholastic’s national film competition in New York City. 

As an author, Mr. Shoemaker most recently received critical praise for The Great Mrs. Claus (2009), a lavishly illustrated children’s storybook that has garnered the National Mom's Choice Award (Gold), the National Independent Publishers Book Award (Silver), the Moonbeam Children's Book Award (Bronze) and is currently distributed nationwide in America and in France.  More books are in development for release this year and for 2011.  He is also a national award-winning columnist, having received the prestigious Parenting Publications of America’s “Editorial Gold Award” for his work with the Los Angeles Family Magazine.

As an independent video producer, Mr. Shoemaker received the Houston Worldfest Film Festival Platinum Award (Television and Cable Production - Pilot category) for Kidquest – a Viking Trail.  He has written and produced video and animation for a wide variety of entertainment projects, including film festivals, interactive experiences and theme park presentations. 

Mr. Shoemaker has worked continually in the entertainment industry since his youth.  He attained his undergraduate BFA (Theatre) at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.  In Paris, he continued his postgraduate studies at L’Ecole Internationale Du Cirque (Anna Fratellini) and L'Ecole Jaques LeCoq, the internationally acclaimed school of creativity and movement.  While in Europe, Mr. Shoemaker produced and acted at LaGalerie 55 (Paris), in the play Seahorse at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland and performed in several films (Beyond Therapy and Aria) directed by Robert Altman. 

Hired as a cultural expert in China, he collaborated with the Wuhan, Shanghai and Beijing People’s Art Theatres on various theatre and TV projects.  While in Wuhan, he also organized an outdoor bi-weekly film festival that screened western film classics.  Fascinated with storytelling and dramatic techniques, Mr. Shoemaker relocated from China to Hawaii to pursue advanced studies in Asian Drama at the University of Hawaii (Manoa), where he also taught acting, incorporating performance styles and character development techniques from around the world.

In Hawaii, he co-founded Acts of Creation, a multi-media, creative IP and entertainment production Company. 

Founded in 1990, the company conceptualizes and produces cutting-edge entertainment projects for clients in the television, theme park, internet, family entertainment center, cruise line, animation, museum, publishing, corporate & special events industries.

 In 2006, he and his wife established a new media company, Freshi Films, LLC that has quickly become a scalable film training method for children ages 8-18.  Now operating in over 28 states and in several countries outside the United States, Freshi is rapidly becoming a film school for the masses. 

Mr. Shoemaker lives in Los Angeles with his wife Suzanne.  He is an avid writer, traveler, film enthusiast, dramatist and collector of art glass. 

DR. SUZANNE SHOEMAKER
Director of Business Development/Founder

Dr. Shoemaker has worked professionally for the past thirty-five years in theater, film and television. Her range of experience covers teaching, directing, writing and producing. In her experience, she co-founded the International Family Film Festival (IFFF) in Los Angeles, which is celebrating its fifteenth year in 2010, and the Burbank Children’s Film Festival.  She also founded two traveling children’s theaters and a scriptwriting competition which has endured for twenty-five years.

She has twice received a prestigious National Endowment for the Arts grant, has been awarded the Outstanding Educator in America Award twice from the Office of the President of the United States, and has currently been honored with the Gold Award of Excellence for Editorial Content among nationally distributed free magazines.  Her children’s television series, KidQuest, won the Gold Award at the Houston Film Festival for outstanding children’s television series.

Her professional work has taken her to France, Switzerland, Germany, England, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, China, Iceland, Hawaii and , most recently, India.

She and her husband co-founded Freshi Films, LLC, a youth digital media company enabling global collaboration through youth filmmaking.  They see film as the communication tool of the 21st century, and the internet as the primary tool of education and collaboration.  The company has been praised as forward thinking and an excellent tool for 21st century education. She has worked as a Cultural Director for the USIA and the State of Hawaii, and produced for both federal and state cultural arts agencies.

A career focused on the fine and performing arts for family and child audiences has given her an insight into the importance of quality programming that is sustainable and economically feasible while being socially responsible. 

PATTE DEE McKEE
Program Director/Founder

At age sixteen, Patte Dee could hardly wait to leave her hometown of Newhall, California, to explore the exciting world out there! It started with a very successful career as a fashion model with many fashion houses like Cole of California and Blackwell, where she traveled all over the world and worked on the runway, in magazines, television commercials and radio.

Howard Hughes decided that she had excellent potential as an actress, and she was put under contract with RKO Pictures when the "studio system" was still in effect, and this is where she received training in singing (opera and musical comedies) and acting along with a Fine Arts background. The next stage in her career was performing in musical comedies and choral groups in the Los Angeles area. Patte Dee raised four children and became a published needlework designer for clothing. It was a natural progression to become a Costume Designer for feature films for ten years.

For the last 16 years, she has been the Program Director for the annual International Family Film Festival, the FreshiFilm Festival, the FreshiFilm Camps.

CHRISTOPHER WELCH
Treasurer

Chris has over 14 years of experience as an entrepreneur having developed and operated two groups of retail food concepts. He also acquired a group of Jiffy Lube franchises in Texas, in which he is still an investor. Chris’ background includes eight years working in corporate finance and business development for Raleigh Enterprises, a company with holdings in real estate, hotels, an independent film studio in Los Angeles and other businesses. He also worked for 4 years as CFO to Baruk Petroleum, a company which has owned dozens of automotive-service franchises across the country (Jiffy Lube, Midas Muffler and Q-Lube). Chris has also served as a consultant and business advisor to Hollywood Rentals, a large film and TV equipment rental company, with operations in Los Angeles, Orlando, New York, and North Carolina. He has served on the boards of several non-profit organizations which have built affordable housing in Los Angeles and an AIDS memorial in Lincoln Park. Chris has a BA in architecture from the University of California – Berkeley and an MBA from the Anderson School of Business at the University of California, Los Angeles.