SYNOPSIS

Indie film professionals from Film Independent Spirit Award-nominated films join together in a dynamic discussion on storytelling, casting, collaborating with actors, industry trends, and sharing their unique voices on screen.

PANELISTS

Ingrid Jungermann - Director, Women Who Kill, Kiehl's Someone to Watch Award 
Along with several short films, Ingrid co-created the acclaimed web series The Slope, and created the WGA-Nominated web series F To 7th, featuring Amy Sedaris, Michael Showalter, Gaby Hoffmann, Olympia Dukakis and Janeane Garofalo. Her work has screened at various film festivals around the world, including the Tribeca Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, Outfest and BFI London. Ingrid, who earned her MFA at NYU Graduate Film School, was one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 Faces of Independent Film and Out Magazine's 100 People of the Year. Her debut feature, Women Who Kill  (Tribeca All Access program, IFP Emerging Narrative Labs), premiered in competition at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, where she won the Jury Award for Best Screenplay. She is currently in development at Showtime for a half-hour comedy version of F to 7th , and was recently nominated for the Independent Spirit Someone to Watch Award.

Melody C Roscher - Producer, Piaget Producer’s Award
Melody most recently produced director Antonio Campos’ third feature film, Christine, (starring Rebecca Hall, Michael C. Hall, and Tracy Letts) which premiered at Sundance 2016 and was released fall of 2016. Other works include Josh Mond’s feature film James White (starring Sex in the City's Cynthia Nixon and Girls's Chris Abbott) which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2015 (and received the Sundance Audience Award for Best of Next, Deauville Film Festival’s Revelations Prize, Locarno International Film Festival’s Don Quixote Award, and an Independent Spirit Award nomination for best first feature), as well as Ben Dickinson’s Creative Control, which premiered in theaters in March 2016, garnered the Special Jury Award for Visual Excellence at SXSW 2015, and was one of the first theatrical films released by distributor Amazon. Melody also worked on Antonio Campos’ Simon Killer and Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, two seasons of IFC’s original programming Food Party and feature film Opus Jazz - featuring the choreography of Jerome Robbins, dancing talent of the NY City ballet, and directing talent of Henry Joost and Jody Lee Lipes. Commercially she has garnered a NY EMMY nomination for her commercial work with Catfish directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, and in music video work, a 2009 UK VMA for Best Video for Patrick Daughters and fine artist Marcel Dzama’s music video collaboration No One Does It Like You. Melody lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and is a 2006 graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Josh Locy – Writer, director, Hunter Gatherer; John Cassavetes Award 
Josh Locy, writer/director, was born in the mountains of Virginia, studied literature in east Tennessee and, after deciding against becoming a Southern Baptist minister, moved to Los Angeles in 2004 to pursue his dream of making feature films.

Once in LA, it didn’t take long for Josh to get work in the film industry, working on commercials and independent films. In 2007, Josh became the assistant to David Gordon Green, and has worked with him on three of his films.

In 2010, through his work in film and commercials, Josh became a member IATSE local 800, the Art Director’s Guild, and has worked in this capacity for many great filmmakers including David O. Russell, Chris Smith, and Peter Berg, among many others. His work as a production designer, while in itself a true creative outlet, has increased Josh’s film knowledge and fueled his passion for making films.

Hunter Gatherer is Josh’s first film.

Mike S. Ryan – Producer, Free In Deed; John Cassavetes Award
Mike S. Ryan is president of Greyshack Films and a veteran of the independent film community, who started out in the industry’s 1990’s heyday with films like Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm and Todd Hayne’s Far from Heaven. As a producer and executive producer, he has helped realize many groundbreaking films in the last fifteen years, most made under $3 million. He was nominated for an Independent Spirit “Producer of the Year” Award, and was one of Variety’s 2007 “10 Producers to Watch.” His films have garnered nominations and prizes from the Academy Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, Gotham Awards and many more. Junebug, starring Amy Adams, made its international premiere at Cannes in 2005 and went on to be one of the lowest-budgeted feature films ever nominated for an Oscar (Best Supporting Actress, 2005). Most recently he produced Jake Mahaffy's Free in Deed which won best film at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards, A.D. Calvo's  Sweet, Sweet Lonely, which premiered at Fantastic Fest and The Missing Girl, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Grain, a Turkish/German coproduction.

Other credits include Todd Solondz’s Palindromes and Life During Wartime; Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy (winner, Rotterdam International Film Festival 2006) and her Meek's Cutoff starring Michelle Williams; Ira Sach’s 40 Shades of Blue (winner, Sundance Film Festival 06); Hal Hartley’s Fay Grim, starring Parker Posey and Jeff Goldblum; Lake City, starring Sissy Spacek (premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2008), Ilya Chaiken’s Liberty Kid  (Winner of HBO's Latino Film Festival in 2007 and in competition at the Los Angeles Film Festival), Bela Tarr’s final film, Turnin Horse, winner at Berlin and in competition at the Toronto, Telluride and New York Film Festivals, About Sunny (Toronto '11), nominated for a Spirit Award for Best Actress, The Comedy, a drama starring comedian Tim Heidecker (Sundance and Rotterdam 2012), Between Us, starring Julia Stiles and Taye Diggs, and Last Weekend, starring Patricia Clarkson and Zachary Booth (premiered at San Francisco Film Festival in 2014). Mike is a New York City native and NYU Tisch School of the Arts graduate. He has taught workshops and given lectures at universities and festivals including Columbia, Yale, NYU, Bard, the Atlantic Film Festival, VIFF, Indie Memphis, the San Francisco Film Society, and for the past four years has mentored as a Producer Leader at the Venice Biennale College and participated recently as a producer/mentor at EAVE PLUS in Luxembourg. He has seen an enormous number of films and writes criticism for the online site Hammer to Nail, which he cofounded with Ted Hope, and as a regular contributor to Filmmaker Magazine.

Jayce Bartok - Moderator
After appearing in films and television shows as an actor, most notably Richard Linklater’s Suburbia, Sam Raimi’s Spiderman, and Tom McCarthy’s The Station Agent, Jayce Bartok was inspired to write and star in The Cake Eaters. Jayce’s critically acclaimed feature screenplay debut, was directed by Mary Stuart Masterson, stars Kristen Stewart and Bruce Dern, and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. He wrote and directed the award-winning feature, Fall to Rise, in theaters Spring 2015. Jayce was recognized for his exceptional work on Fall to Rise with the Bulleit Frontier Filmmaker Award at the prestigious First Time Fest in New York City. Jayce has two more screenplays in development: Dream Country (based on the novel by Luanne Rice) and Red River, a dark thriller about mysterious drownings in Wisconsin. His past credits include co-director and producer of the award-winning documentary, Altered By Elvis, about lives changed by the King of Rock ‘n Roll, director of the short films Sunburn, starring Jack Falahee and Damian Young, the award-winning Jack and Paul and Stricken, starring Hayley Mills, producer of the award-winning short Suddenly… starring Terry Kinney, and writer of the SXSW winning short, Little Pumpkin. Jayce is a regular contributor to MovieMaker Magazine, and can be seen in The Following on FOX.