SYNOPSIS
Film festivals are some of the best places for discovering new talent in the entertainment world. Whether you are an actor, filmmaker, or both, having your work screened at festivals is a great way to gain exposure and connect with industry peers. Panelists will discuss how film festivals are programmed, criteria for submissions, and some strategies for submitting your own work.
PANELISTS BIOS
Janet Pierson, Director of Film, South by Southwest Film Festival
Janet is responsible for the vision, programming, and execution of SXSW Film Conference & Festival. Before joining SXSW in April 2008, Janet spent over 30 years championing independent films and filmmakers in a variety of roles including exhibitor, producer’s rep, executive producer, and segment director of the IFC cable TV series Split Screen. She appears on screen in the Steve James Documentary, Reel Paradise and Andrew Bujaski’s, Beeswax. She loved curating In The Dark: Filmmakers Illuminate Stories from the Film World for The Moth, on 6/22/2001. On the 2010 Guardian’s Film Power 100, and 2013 Indiewire Influencers lists, she regularly serves on panels, juries etc for other festivals and agencies including NEA, ITVS, BFI, and Creative Capital. She’s currently a member of the Austin Film Society Advisory Board and UT Press Advisory Council.
Adam Montgomery, Senior Manager, Programming Department, Sundance Film Festival
Now in his 12th year at Sundance, Adam oversees the viewing and selection process for the 13,000 film submissions that the Festival receives annually, ensuring that each film submitted is watched and given its due consideration. Additionally, he lends his passion for cult and genre filmmaking to the programming of the Festival’s Midnight section, electing to spend the majority of his nights engrossed in all varieties of horror, thrillers, and off-color comedies. Prior to joining the Institute, he spent five years in television development, most recently at Imagine Entertainment, where he worked on shows such as Arrested Development and 24. He is a firm believer that filmmakers are under no obligation to stick to any previously-established rules with regards to zombies, vampires, werewolves or Frankenstein.
Roya Rastegar, Director of Programming, Los Angeles Film Festival
Roya is the Director of Programming of the Los Angeles Film Festival, produced by Film Independent. She has also worked at the Sundance Film Festival since 2006, currently a Programming Associate for US fiction films and virtual reality content for New Frontier. After several years in corporate finance as an investment banking analyst for Merrill Lynch and UBS Warburg, she pursued her doctorate at the History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz under the guidance of Angela Y. Davis. Roya is currently working on a book about the racial and gendered stakes in independent film, festivals and live experiences, and curatorial practice. Roya has published critical articles on American film culture, race, gender, and aesthetics for popular press (The Nation, Feminist Wire, and The Huffington Post) as well as for peer-reviewed academic journals (Screen, American Quarterly, Camera Obscura). Prior to joining Film Independent, Rastegar was a professor in the History of Art Department, at Bryn Mawr College. In 2013, Roya was awarded a Creative Capital grant in the Emerging Art Fields. She collaborative wrote "Wildness" (2012), a magical realist documentary that premiered at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight Festival, won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at Outfest, and has gained critical acclaim at festivals across the Americas, including South by Southwest Film Festival. Rastegar has curated within both film and art contexts, as a Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program (2008-09) and part of the programming teams of the Tribeca and Sundance film festivals.
Moderator - Adam Nee, Band of Robbers
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