Narrative Feature Jurors
Haffed Bouassida graduated with a Ph.D. from the famed Prague Film School, FAMU. He subsequently produced, directed and wrote more than forty productions. After teaching at Film in The Cities in St. Paul, he joined the Minneapolis College Cinema Division in 1992. He currently chairs the award winning Screenwriting Program at MCTC, is President of the Screenwriters Workshop and is a script consultant and panel member to different local and national competitions, foundations and grant organizations. In 2012 Hafed was recognized by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities as Teacher of the Year. He is currently the Screenwriting chair of the University Film and Video Association.
John Koch is an independent filmmaker, film curator, and film educator. He has produced and directed four feature films to date, the latest of which is The Red Goodnight (2018), currently screening at festivals. In 2003, John founded Cinema Revolution, an award-winning Minneapolis video rental store that specialized in foreign, independent, documentary, classic, and cult films. Out of the store emerged Cinema Revolution Society in 2010, a curatorial endeavor and film website.
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In days gone by, Stephen Schwartz once worked the 16mm cameras and editing flatbeds for numerous independent, experimental and documentary shorts. In clandestine fashion, he continues to create his own underground video and music projects, yet now primarily studies, enjoys and lectures upon the works of others. With an MA in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto, he currently teaches film at Seneca College in Canada exploring the complex intersections between film, art, politics and national identity.
Katrien Vanpee is the director of the Arabic Program at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches courses on Arabic language, literature and culture. Her research interests include classical and modern Arabic literature and poetry; the cultural heritage of the Arabian Peninsula; teaching Arabic as a foreign language; curriculum design; and program management. Her recent work has been published in the Journal of Arabic Literature, The Modern Language Journal, al-‘Arabiyya, and the edited volumeForeign Language Proficiency in Higher Education (Springer 2019). Her current project revolves around the late Syrian poet and playwright Muhammad al-Maghut.
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Documentary Feature Jurors
Hisham Bizri is a filmmaker born in Beirut, Lebanon. He started working in films in the US and Hungary with filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Raoul Ruiz, and Miklós Jancsó, and has directed twenty-eight short films and written several feature films. Bizri’s films have shown at Sundance, Cannes, Berlin, Oberhausen, Moscow, and the Anthology Film Archives, and been featured over the years at Mizna’s Arab Film Fest. He has won the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and the American Academy Rome Prize.
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Ahmet Gurata teaches at the Department of Nordic and Media Studies, University of Agder. He has published research on the history of Turkish cinema, reception, remakes and documentary in anthologies and journals. His current research includes projects on digital database, comparative and digital film studies. He also works as a programmer for the Festival on Wheels and is affiliated with Docedge: Asian Forum For Documentary. He is a member of the Turkish Film Critics Association.
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Dean Otto is the founding Film Curator at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY where he launched a new film department and oversaw the opening of a 142-seat state-of-the-art cinema in 2016. Prior to the Speed, he worked at the Walker Art Center for over 24 years in various positions from Program Manager to Associate Curator, Film/Video.
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Memry Roessler After teaching film, literature, and creative writing to high school students for 25 years, I left the classroom to pursue a personal project of watching a film a day. Selections are framed by interests in “slow cinema,” cinematic tourism, and women directors. I spent 7 months in Mexico and curated a film program for a women’s prison while organizing film collections in local libraries. I watched films in parks, monasteries, ex-conventos, cultural centers, rooftops, and an opera house. I continue to watch film daily as I work to transcribe my viewing notes.
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Short Film Jurors
Lameece Issaq is an award-winning actor, writer, and producer. Her film Abe, co-written with Jacob Kader, directed by Fernando Grostein Andrade, and starring Stranger Things’ Noah Schnapp, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Ms. Issaq is the Founding Artistic Director of the Obie Award-winning Noor Theatre, dedicated to the work of artists of Middle Eastern descent. Her play Food and Fadwa (co-created with Kader) was a recipient of the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award and premiered at New York Theatre Workshop. The play was translated into Arabic and presented in festivals in Abu Dhabi and Beirut. www.lameeceissaq.com
Laura Zebuhr is an Associate Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas. She teaches and writes about 19th-century American literature and is working on a project about Henry David Thoreau and the concept of enchantment. In her classes and research, she likes to look at how literary, philosophical, and cultural texts from different times and places can be put in to conversation with each other.
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Siloën Daley is founder and director of Halifax, Canada’s art house cinema, Carbon Arc, and The Animation Festival of Halifax. Siloën enjoys regularly watching films with the cultural community and has created a body of short expressionistic films which have screened internationally.