Filming in North Alabama

Thereasa Hulgan retired from the Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce in 2023 with twenty years of involvement with Chamber, Tourism, and Economic Development work. Thereasa has been involved with many organizations and served on many boards over the years. Currently, she serves on the Friends of the Preserve at Little River Canyon, Gadsden State Cardinal Foundation, Women’s Club of Weiss Lake, The Spirit of Cherokee, and Cherokee County Career & Tech Advisory Board. Thereasa is a Paul Harris Fellow in Rotary and serves as the Chair of the SO-COOL Summer Camp for Children. Thereasa is now working for the Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association as a Membership Recruitment and Development, and Film Services Coordinator. She is responsible for seeking and recruiting new members, maintaining contact with current members, striving for 100% membership retention for the organization, researching and scouting viable film location sites in North Alabama and working in cooperation with the state film office. She is developing NorthAlabamaFilm.org will serve as an information center for the sixteen counties of North Alabama. Thereasa received many awards over the years at the Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce. Thereasa graduated from GEDI in 2003, and STS Marketing College in 2006. Her most recent award was the String of Pearls Honoree from AMLA in 2021, and was named CCAA Professional of the Year in 2021.

Sandra Ellis Lafferty is best known for her roles in Walk the Line (2005), Hunger Games (2012), Prisoners (2013) Self/Less (2015) and A Walk in the Woods (2015). Over the past three decades, she has received national and international acclaim for playing pivotal characters in film and television. Sandra began her career as a stage actor and was named best actress for a season by the Denver drama critics when she was a member of The Denver Center Theatre Company. She also was named best actress by Westword magazine. With years of theater experience, Sandra began her film career at age 50. After a small role in the movie Dogfight, filmed in Seattle, she moved to Los Angeles. Over the next few years, she found steady work in regular guest roles in television shows including NYPD Blue, Melrose Place, Baywatch and Boy Meets World. Concurrently, she began earning roles on the silver screen. In the early 2000s, Sandra returned to Alabama to help care for her mother. With the movie industry expanding its Hollywood roots to the East Coast, the move accelerated her career with key roles in blockbusters like Walk the Line and The Hunger Games. She followed with A Walk in the Woods, starring Robert Redford; Self/less, starring Ryan Reynolds; and Prisoners with Jake Gyllenhaal. While movies with A-list actors and award-winning directors have helped increase her visibility to larger audiences, she also finds excitement in working on independent films -- Buster’s Mal Heart (Rami Melak), Steel County (Andrew Scott) and Starbright (John Rhys-Davies) and other projects - and having a regular role on the television series Containment -- that stimulate her love of acting. Sandra volunteers with the Mentone Arts & Cultural Center, where she serves as artistic director mentoring high school theater students.

Codie Gopher is an independent researcher of modern culture based in his hometown of Huntsville, Alabama. With over 20 years of experience in the music creative zone, Codie is working to bridge the gaps economically, as well as with sustainable opportunities for his community, to enhance the quality of life for the next generations of creators. He is a self-published author, a filmmaker, and believes culture is a key component to the future of his community. Codie is a member of the Scottsboro Boys Museum Board and a member of the Huntsville Music Board, appointed by Mayor Tommy Battle. Codie understands music education, mixed with a thriving entertainment economy is viable and doable.

Chris Roquemore has worked in television and film for more than 34 years in Alabama. He began working at a local origination cable channel in Montgomery shooting football games, church services, and exercise shows. He spent two years as a studio production person at Alabama Public Television in Montgomery while in high school. After college, Chris returned to Alabama Public Television as a news photographer and then promotions producer. Since 2001, Chris has worked at AIDT as a multimedia producer and is now the manager of the Communications Department where he manages a staff of 17 that focuses on internal and external communications, curriculum development, and recruitment. In 2010 Chris was part of the team that created and implemented the State of Alabama’s Below The Line Film training program, EMPACT. He also ran the radio and television production program at Trenholm State Community College for six years. When he’s not working, Chris enjoys spending time with his goofy dogs Finn and Gracie and equally goofy cat, Miss Boo. He is also an actor and volunteer with The Cloverdale Playhouse in Montgomery where he has performed roles in such shows as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, A Lesson Before Dying and Picasso at the Lapin Agile.

Nancy Noever worked for over 20 years as a freelance commercial production manager and producer before joining the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville as the Director of Marketing Operations and Film Production. Nancy has filmed all over the world on projects ranging from small-budget regional commercials to million-dollar Super Bowl ads to television series. In addition to the normal staffing, accounting, and logistics tasks of film production, during her freelance career, she has had to find a hotel for orangutans, acted as ballast in a stunt bi-plane for a shot, and popped her head out of the top of the Seattle Space Needle to call the rigging team in for lunch. Nancy is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and a member of the independent caucus of the Writers Guild of America. Originally from Oklahoma, she has lived in Texas where she graduated from Rice University in Houston, Florida, and most recently, Los Angeles, CA before relocating to Huntsville. Nancy is an adventurer who has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and swam with whales in the Galapagos. She looks forward to helping expand film production in Alabama.

Debbie Wilson is a native of Florence, Alabama and a graduate of the University of North Alabama, Debbie has been around the music and hospitality industries for over 30 years. Her hospitality career started in Los Angeles, California with the Westin Bonaventure where she worked in the public relations department and served as the location manager for the hotels for films and commercials. After returning to Alabama, Debbie worked as marketing director for the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and then went on to serve 20 years as the Convention and Visitors Bureau Director for Florence and Lauderdale County. She was called to Montgomery by State Tourism Director Lee Sentell to work on special projects, including music promotions in the state and to serve as the manager for the state’s Welcome Centers. In 2017 she returned home to dive into the revitalized Muscle Shoals Sound Studio as the executive director. She has helped spearhead several regional, national and international music and tourism projects such as The Americana Music Triangle, speaking in London for the first-ever Music Tourism Conference about the project, and during the Covid pandemic, she worked with a group to create Nashville’s Big Back Yard. Most recently she worked on Russellville native Myk Watford’s film, “Sweetwater Road” securing locations, props and production scheduling.

Director Benjamin Stark has combined a love of cinematic experiences, a dedication to craft, and a heart for people to build an award-winning catalog of films and music videos that have screened at more than 30 film festivals across the country, including the Orlando Film Festival, Portland Film Festival, and Sidewalk Film Festival. Ben’s films include the micro-budget feature film The Nocturnal Third, a trilogy of noir-inspired music videos featuring rising hip-hop artist King Kwofi , and the short thriller Dead Saturday, featuring Oscar nominee Eric Roberts (Runaway Train). Ben’s second feature film, Don’t Die - a pulpy crime thriller starring Theodus Crane (The Walking Dead), Virginia Newcomb (The Beta Test), Frank Mosley (Freeland), and Joshua Burge (The Revenant) - won the Audience Award for Best Alabama Film at the 2023 Sidewalk Film Festival and is slated for a 2024 release.

During her more than three-decade-long career in the tourism and travel industry, Tami has lived by the theme expressed by the famous American heroine Helen Keller, “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” This theme is carried forth in all her speaking engagements across the country and has had proven results in her professional accomplishments. Tami is the President/CEO of the Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association (AMLA). Her duties include planning, implementing, directing, and evaluating all promotional programs as well as the overall development of the tourism and travel industry within the 16 northernmost counties of the State of Alabama. The region currently generates more than $4.7 billion in travel expenditures on an annual basis. Tami is a board member for a number of tourism and travel-related and civic organizations including Governor Appointee to the Scenic Byways Committee, Southeast Tourism Society Legislative Council, Alabama Travel Council, Alabama Council of Association Executives, Alabama Association of Destination Marketing Organizations, and numerous other local and state travel-related groups. Tami is also an instructor at the Southeast Tourism Society’s Marketing College has been a contributing presenter to the tourism and travel field of study at Mississippi State University. Among her many recognitions are the ATHENA Leadership Award from the Decatur-Morgan County Chamber of Commerce, the Alabama Travel Council Partnership Award, the Southeast Tourism Society Dorothy Hardman Spirit Award, and This is Alabama and Birmingham Magazine’s Women Who Shape the State honoree.