Norman, OK
Steven Paul Judd is Kiowa and Choctaw from Oklahoma. He is a filmmaker, director, screenwriter, writer of fiction and visual artist. He’s a member of the Writers Guild of America and served as staff writer for Disney’s XD Comedy Series, “Zeke and Luther.” Judd’s filmography is large in scope and provides a unique perspective on and from within Native American culture today. His innovative approach provides a glimpse into a world that is familiar to the underrepresented first peoples of this nation and at simultaneously brings about an fresh perspective and understanding among the non-Indian community through humor. Judd’s filmography has earned him many honors and awards and the Native American population have embraced his work with an outpour of support and encouragement to continue creating.
Known primarily as a filmmaker, he is also a prolific visual artist whose mash-ups of Native experiences and disposable American pop culture are sly and often downright funny. His creations include paintings, prints, poster art, photography, and t-shirt designs. In 2015 he designed the cover art and merchandise for the group, “A Tribe Called Red.” His mural “War Paint” can be seen at historic Indian Alley in downtown Los Angeles.
San Francisco, CA
Over the last three decades, artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has been internationally acclaimed for her pioneering use of new technologies and her investigations of issues that are now recognized as key to the working of our society: identity in a time of consumerism, privacy in a era of surveillance, interfacing of humans and machines, and the relationship between real and virtual worlds. In December 2014 a major retrospective of her work titled CiviC RadaR will open at the ZKM (Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie) in Karlsruhe Germany. In 2011 Lynn Hershman Leeson released the ground-breaking documentary Women Art Revolution. Forty-two years in the making, W.A.R. charts the history of the Feminist Art Movement in America from the 1960s to the present and deftly illuminates how this underexplored movement radically transformed the art and culture of our times. Making its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010, the film is distributed by Zeitgeist Films and has since been screened at major museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Migros Museum, Zurich; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. In 2012, a survey of her work was presented at Kunsthalle Bremen, and she was featured in “A Bigger Splash: Painting After Performance” at the Tate Modern London.
Hershman Leeson’s work is also part of the touring ICI exhibition State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970, curated by Constance Lewallen and Karen Moss; and was featured at the Museum of Modern Art recently in XL: 19 New Acquisitions in Photography. It is also part of public collections of at the William Lehmbruck Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Canada, Walker Art Center, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester and the University Art Museum, Berkeley, in addition to the celebrated private collections of Donald Hess and Arturo Schwarz, among many others. Recently honored with grants from the Tides Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, she is also the recipient of a Siemens International Media Arts Award, the Flintridge Foundation Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts, Prix Ars Electronica, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Feature Film Prize, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and SIGGRAPH Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2010 the Digital Art Museum in Berlin recognized her work with the d.velop digital art award (d.daa), the most distinguished honor for lifetime achievement in the field of new media. In 2004 Hershman Leeson’s working archive was acquired by Stanford University Libraries. Hershman Leeson was recently recognized by The New School in New York as a Dorothy H. Hirshon Director in Residence, for the 2013-14 academic year in the School of Media Studies. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis and was previously Chair of the Film Department at San Francisco Art Institute.
Glendale, CA
Quique Rivera is a Puerto Rican artist and multiple award winning filmmaker specialized in stop motion animation; a discipline that gathers all of his artistic interests into a single art medium. Rivera holds a BFA from the University of Puerto Rico (2008) and an MFA in Experimental Animation from CalArts (2014), where he received the 2013 LAIKA Annual Scholarship. His film “Así de grandes son las ideas”, a collaboration with renowned artist René Pérez Joglar, earned Rivera a Best Music Video nomination at the Latin Grammy Awards 2015, among other international recognitions.
His previous films Menuda Urbe (2010), Aedes (2011) and El delirio del pez león (2012) have been screened at over fifty festivals internationally, including Ottawa International Animation Festival, Black Maria Film Festival, Slamdance, New Orleans Film Festival, Cinefiesta, Raindance, Moscow International Film Festival and the Havana Film Festival, winning top awards in multiple occasions. He has been juror for animation categories at various film festivals, including the 2013 New Orleans FF where he won the Grand Jury Award the previous year. Rivera has been guest professor and workshop instructor at the University of Puerto Rico and the Atlantic University College. He currently works as a freelance artist and director with base at Open the Portal Studios in LA, and has collaborated with Disney Interactive, Chiodo Bros, and PES among others.
Oakland, CA
Peter Nicks is an Oakland, CA based filmmaker whose work ranges from documentary features and fiction narratives to digital storytelling projects. His last film The Waiting Room was released in 2012 to critical acclaim, being named by the San Francisco Film Critics Circle as the best documentary of 2012 and shortlisted for an Academy Award®. Nicks is now developing The Oakland Police Project, the second of a series of character-driven documentaries exploring the intersections of health care, criminal justice and education in Oakland, CA. Nicks was recently awarded the SFFS/KRF screenwriting grant and named a Film Independent Fellow to develop his first narrative feature Escaping Morgantown, loosely based on the year he spent in federal prison in the early 90s. He received his B.A. in English from Howard University and his Masters of Journalism from UC Berkeley. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife and two children.
Chicago, IL
Chicago-based artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman makes work that investigates issues of power, control and belief, exploring how places, ideas, and society are intertwined. Recent projects have addressed freedom, surveillance, sinkholes, comets, exodus and faith. She has exhibited widely at venues including MoMA NY, Centre Pompidou, Hammer Museum, Mercer Union, Witte de With, the Whitney Biennial and festivals including Sundance, Viennale, CPH/DOX, Oberhausen, Ann Arbor, Full Frame and Rotterdam. Stratman is the recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, a Creative Capital grant and an Alpert Award. She teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Los Angeles, CA
Sydney Freeland is a Native American and Transgender filmmaker. Her debut feature film, Drunktown’s Finest, explored the Navajo reservation where she grew up and the impact of gender, race, and culture within the community. The film premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and went on to win both the Grand Jury Prize and HBO Outstanding First Feature awards at LA Outfest 2014. Freeland was also a participant in the Sundance Screenwriter’s and Director’s Labs, and is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship.
New York, NY
Ken Jacobs: Born, 1933, Brooklyn, New York. Studied painting with Hans Hofmann, 1956-57. Started making films, 1955. Created/Directed The Millennium Film Workshop, N.Y.C. 1966-68; started the Dept. of Cinema at S.U.N.Y. at Binghamton, 1969; Professor of Cinema 1974-2000; Distinguished Prof. of Cinema, 2000; Distinguished Prof. of Cinema Emeritus.
Philadelphia, PA
Yowei Shaw is an independent radio producer in Philadelphia. She has contributed to This American Life, Studio 360, NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. She specializes in short-form stories about cultural issues, particularly the experience of people of color. Shaw created Philly Youth Radio and is the recipient of the Leeway Foundation Transformation Award, a Third Coast International Audio Festival Award, and the National Journalism Award from the Asian American Journalists Association.
Los Angeles, CA
Ben Cotner & Ryan White directed and produced The Case Against 8, a behind-the-scenes look inside the historic five-year battle to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival, where Cotner and White won the Directing Award for US Documentary, and had its broadcast premiere on HBO in June of 2014. The Case Against 8 has been an audience and jury favorite at festivals and is currently playing in multiple theatres and festivals abroad.
Prior to this collaboration, Cotner served as an executive for ten years at Paramount Pictures and Open Road Films, where he oversaw acquisitions and production for a multitude of films including An Inconvenient Truth, Mad Hot Ballroom, and The Grey. White is the director/producer of Good Ol’ Freda (Magnolia Pictures, 2013), and Pelada (PBS International/Cinetic, 2010). His previous credits include television documentary specials on CNN and PBS.
Los Angeles, CA
Ben Cotner & Ryan White directed and produced The Case Against 8, a behind-the-scenes look inside the historic five-year battle to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival, where Cotner and White won the Directing Award for US Documentary, and had its broadcast premiere on HBO in June of 2014. The Case Against 8 has been an audience and jury favorite at festivals and is currently playing in multiple theatres and festivals abroad.
Prior to this collaboration, Cotner served as an executive for ten years at Paramount Pictures and Open Road Films, where he oversaw acquisitions and production for a multitude of films including An Inconvenient Truth, Mad Hot Ballroom, and The Grey. White is the director/producer of Good Ol’ Freda (Magnolia Pictures, 2013), and Pelada (PBS International/Cinetic, 2010). His previous credits include television documentary specials on CNN and PBS.