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Lone Star International Film Festival Fort Worth in Sundance Square Names Competition Jurors
Participants internationally recognized in film and art communities
FORT WORTH, Texas – Nov. 6, 2009 – The Lone Star Film Society (LSFS), has announced the competition jurors for its upcoming 2009 Lone Star International Film Festival Fort Worth in Sundance Square, Nov. 11-15. The juries are comprised of esteemed professionals from the creative and business aspects of the film and art community. (Complete list and biographies of jurors below.) “The credentials of this year’s jurors bring a tremendous amount of credibility to our festival, and speaks to the quality of work being presented,” said Alec Jhangiani, LSFS artistic director. “With such an accomplished and diverse mix of talented jury participants, the films that will eventually be recognized as winners in their respective categories will hold tremendous merit in domestic and international film circles. We are very fortunate to have such high caliber individuals participate in this festival.” Film lineup and schedules for the 2009 Lone Star International Film Festival Fort Worth in Sundance Square are available at www.lsiff.com. CATEGORIES & JURORS:
Narrative Feature Competition Christian Gaines – Director of Festivals, IMDB Betty Buckley – Actress/Singer Melonie Diaz – Actor Documentary Feature Competition Erin Owens – Vice President of Distribution, Arthouse Films Malcolm Warner, Ph.D. – Deputy Director, Kimbell Art Museum of Fort Worth Eric Bricker – Filmmaker Short Form Competition Arianne Ayers - Publicity and Marketing Director, Magnolia Pictures Owen Shiflett – Manager of Original Programming, AMC Network Foreign Language Feature Competition Harris Dew – Director of Programs and Promotions, IFC Center, New York Kelly Williams – Director of Programming, Austin Film Festival Andrei Plakhov – President, International Federation of Film Critics Animation Competition Dave Vallone – Animation Supervisor, ReelFX Studios Eric Drobile – Animator, ReelFX Studios Jonathan Bryant – Motion Graphics Artist, Red Productions
JUROR BIOS:
Narrative Feature Competition Christian Gaines – Director of Festivals, IMDB In 1988, Christian Gaines joined the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival, serving as its Administrative Director for six years. In 1994, Christian was appointed Film Programmer at the Sundance Film Festival, programming the 1995 and 1996 festivals. From 1996 to 2000, he served as Festival Director and Director of Programming for the Hawaii International Film Festival, responsible for the overall management and programming of the festival. From 2000 to 2008, Christian served as Director of Festivals at the American Film Institute, where he worked on several festivals including AFI FEST, serving as Festival Director. During this time, Christian was key to the launch planning of SILVERDOCS:
AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival now in its sixth year, was instrumental in developing a strategic alliance with the American Film Market, and oversaw the rapid development of AFI’s Los Angeles-based, year-round exhibition programs. Representing AFI, Christian also spearheaded the negotiations that led to the launch of the AFI DALLAS International Film Festival. Most recently, Christian joined IMDb.com, and Amazon.com company, as Director of Festivals. Betty Buckley Betty Lynn Buckley was born in Big Spring, Texas and raised in Fort Worth, the daughter of Betty Bob (née Diltz), a dancer and journalist, and Ernest Lynn Buckley, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force and former dean of engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington and South Dakota State University. She is the eldest of their four children. While a student at Texas Christian University (TCU), she was crowned "Miss Fort Worth" in 1966 and was runner-up in the Miss Texas competition. Buckley was then invited to perform at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, and it was there that she was spotted by a talent scout. After returning to TCU to earn her degree, she toured Asia to visit soldiers wounded in the Vietnam War. She then worked for a time as a reporter for the Fort Worth newspaper but went to New York City in 1969, where she landed the role of Martha Jefferson in the original Broadway production of 1776 on her first day in town. Buckley has been called "The Voice of Broadway" by New York Magazine. Her rendition of "Memory" in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats established her reputation. She has recorded 13 solo albums and tours extensively across the U.S. each year and is also featured on many Broadway compilation recordings. Also a composer, her first recording is mostly her own compositions. She has twice been nominated for a Grammy Award. Buckley has also taught song interpretation and communication for over 30 years, conducting master classes in Fort Worth. Melonie Diaz A native of New York, Melonie Diaz started her film career with a supporting role in Tom DiCillo's Double Whammy (2001) with her breakthrough roles coming later as Blanca in Catherine Hardwicke's Lords of Dogtown (2005) and as Laurie in Dito Montiel's A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006) which earned her an Independent Spirit Awards nomination for Best Supporting Female. Her first studio film Be Kind Rewind, premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival along with three others in which she appeared, earning her the title “Queen of Sundance” — an honor she shares with Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst and Chloe Sevigny. Diaz's 2008 Sundance films illustrate both her vivacity and versatility and her recent anchoring performance in Spencer Parson’s I’ll Come Running expertly conveys both the film’s warmth and rough edges. She has made numerous off-Broadway and workshop appearances. In the year 2008 alone she appeared in 6 films: Nothing Like the Holidays, Hamlet 2, Be Kind Rewind, Assassination of a High School President, I'll Come Running, and American Son. In the course of 7 years she has appeared in 15 films and numerous TV episodes. Having recently completed a degree in Film Production at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, she produced her first film in 2009, a 20 minute short entitled She’s a Blur. Melonie appears in a recurring role on the current season of Nip/Tuck, is also serving as a Narrative Feature Juror for the Independent Spirit Awards as well as on the Breakthrough Actor Juror for the Gotham Independent Film Awards. Documentary Feature Competition Erin Owens – Vice President of Distribution, Arthouse Films “Erin Owens is currently the VP of Theatrical Distribution at Arthouse Films. Previously she was Director of Marketing at THINKFilm and Director of Publicity at Palm Pictures.” Malcolm Warner, Ph.D. – Deputy Director, Kimbell Art Museum of Fort Worth Malcolm Warner joined the Kimbell Art Museum as Senior Curator in 2002 and was appointed Deputy Director in 2007, also serving as Acting Director from September 2007 to March 2009. He was previously Curator of European Art at the San Diego Museum of Art and Senior Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art. He was born in Aldershot (UK) and pursued both undergraduate and graduate studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. He received his Ph.D. from the Courtauld in 1985. His doctoral dissertation was on the PreRaphaelite painter John Everett Millais. He remains the leading authority on Millais and is preparing a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s works. His publications have ranged widely over European art, with an emphasis on art in Britain, from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. They include various articles and essays on Millais and other Victorian painters, an introductory history of portraiture, a guidebook to places in Britain associated with artists, and a catalogue of British paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago. He has taught courses in art history at the universities of Manchester, Cambridge, and Chicago. Among the exhibitions that Malcolm Warner has curated are The Victorians. British Painting in the Reign of Queen Victoria, 1837-1901 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington (1997); This Other Eden: British Paintings from the Paul
Mellon Collection at Yale, which toured Australian museums (1998); Millais: Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, London (1999); James Tissot: Victorian Life/Modern Love at the Yale Center for British Art and other venues (1999); Great British Paintings from American Collections: Holbein to Hockney at Yale and the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California (2001-2002); Stubbs and the Horse at the Kimbell Art Museum, the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, and the National Gallery, London (2004-2005); the award-winning The Mirror and the Mask: Portraiture in the Age of Picasso at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and the Kimbell Art Museum (2007); and Butchers, Dragons, Gods & Skeletons: Film Installations by Philip Haas Inspired by Works in the Collection (2009). Eric Bricker Filmmaker Eric Bricker made his directorial debut with Visual Acoustics, the award winning documentary film narrated by Dustin Hoffman, on the life and work of acclaimed photographer Julius Shulman. Visual Acoustics won the MercedesBenz Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Austin Film Festival, and the Grand Jury Prize at the Lone Star International Film Festival. It has also been screened with much critical acclaim at the Los Angeles Film Festival (world premiere), Chicago International Film Festival, Festival International Du Film Sur L'Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Art. The film is currently screening in theaters in a number of cities across the United States. Short Form Competition Arianne Ayers - Publicity and Marketing Director, Magnolia Pictures Arianne Ayers is the Publicity and Marketing Director at Magnolia Pictures. Arianne has been with the company for three years overseeing regional publicity and festival relations. Prior to Magnolia, Arianne was the Sponsorship Account Manager at Landmark Theaters and coordinated the sale of on screen advertising. Her publicity experience began at Dualstar Entertainment as the International Marketing and Publicity Coordinator where she learned how to say “twins” in several languages. Her favorite movie is Monster Squad and she is scared of spiders….really scared. Owen Shiflett – Manager of Original Programming, AMC Network As the Manager of Original Programming for AMC Network, Owen Shiflett is responsible for cultivating and developing dynamic original content for television series, miniseries, and the network's digital platforms. Since May 2006, he has been a vital part of the team behind ground-breaking television including MAD MEN and BREAKING BAD. The two programs earned almost universal fanfare and shocked the television landscape with back-to-back Emmy wins for Best Drama and Best Actor respectively, a fete unprecedented in basic cable. Virginia born and Carolina reared, Shiflett gained a true appreciation for the creative voice while interning under Richard Linklater and Anne Walker-McBay during his time in the University of Texas at Austin's RTF program. Since then, Shiflett's experience in both big agencies and small production companies has strengthened his belief that superior storytelling remains the most valued commodity in the industry. The ability to weave together unique narratives and memorable characters will always pay dividends. In addition to his work at the cable network, Shiflett co-founded CARPE, an information and networking forum dedicated to the organic regeneration of produced entertainment. Foreign Language Feature Competition Harris Dew – Director of Programs and Promotions, IFC Center, New York Harris Dew is Director of Programs and Promotions at IFC Center, one of New York City's leading arthouse cinemas. In addition to programming first-run films, he organizes revivals and special events ranging from retrospectives of filmmakers such as Robert Altman, Arnaud Desplechin, Lars von Trier and Stanley Kubrick to surveys of Cuban Cinema, '80s high school movies, '70s sci-fi, and short film programs. He has previously held programming and publicity positions at Film Forum, The Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco International Film Festival and the late, New Yorker Films. Kelly Williams – Director of Programming, Austin Film Festival Involved with the Austin Film Festival since 2001, Kelly Williams became the Film Program Director at the Austin Film Festival in 2004, programming features and shorts as well as overseeing the full scope of the festival’s programming. He was awarded the International Film Festival Summit Excellence Award for his "significant contribution to the success of the festival" in 2007. He has produced numerous award-winning short films, including the Student Academy Award nominee Perils in Nude Modeling, and also wrote and directed the short film Richard and the doc short Sid Smith for Congress. An active member of the Austin Media Arts Council, Williams attended the writing program at The Second City in Chicago and is also a graduate of the film program at the University of Texas at Austin. Andrei Plakhov – President, International Federation of Film Critics Russian film critic and historian of cinema Andrei Plakhov has been President of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) since 2005. Born in Ukraint, Russia, after graduating in mechanics and mathematics from Lviv University, he studied history of cinema at VGIK (All-Russian Institute of Cinematography) in Moscow. In 1982, he defended his Ph.D. thesis on Italian theatre, opera and film director Luchino Visconti. Since the seventies, Plakhov has written articles and reviews for the daily and professional, Russian and international press (Pravda, Iskusstvo kino, Seans, Sight and Sound, Guardian, Cahiers du Cinema, etc.). He currently works as a film critic for Kommersant, and has published several books about Soviet and modern world cinema. During Perestroika, Plakhov was a secretary of the
USSR Union of Cinematographers and a head of the Conflict Committee, which released more than 200 films banned by Soviet censorship. He is chairman of selection commission of the Moscow International Film Festival and a member of the European Film Academy. He has served as an adviser to many international festivals and juried the festivals of Berlin, Venice, Tokyo, and San Sebastian. Animation Competition Dave Vallone – Animation Supervisor, ReelFX Studios David Vallone is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) 1985, Richmond, Va. and holds a BFA in Painting and Printmaking. He has been a Character animator for nearly 25 years. First as a drawn animator then transitioning over to Computer Graphics. He's worked for such companies as Sony Pictures (Imageworks), 20th Century Fox (Blue Sky Studios), Blur Studio and Lucas Arts Games. Currently he is working at Reelfx Creative Studios in Dallas TX. as an Animation Supervisor. His feature credits include James and the Giant Peach, Stuart Little and Stuart Little 2, Ice Age, Contact, Anaconda, Hollowman and Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas (direct to DVD). In addition to feature films he has worked on notable short films such as Academy Award winning and semi-finalist short films, "Attack of the Chubb Chubbs", "In the Rough and Gentleman’s Duel." With an extensive career that includes work in film, television commercials, educational films, games, direct to video and theme park attractions he is also one of the Mentors at “Animation Mentor.com”. Eric Drobile – Animator, ReelFX Studios Eric Drobile is a traditional artist and computer animator who hails from southern New Jersey. He has his bachelors in Computer Animation from Ringling College of Art and Design, where his senior thesis, "The Animator and the Seat" was accepted into the 2007 Siggraph Animation Theater. This paved the way towards getting an animation position at Reel FX Creative Studios, where he has already worked on a wealth of diverse projects. His animation credits include "Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five", "Open Season 2", "ABC's Princess", "The Spy Next Door", and is currently a Character Lead on "Open Season 3". This year he has also co-directed on two vignettes for the online game, Webosaurs: "Snowball Skirmish" and "Battle Arena". Jonathan Bryant – Motion Graphics Artist, Red Productions Jonathan Bryant is a DP and motion graphics artist who has lived in the Fort Worth area since the age of 4. He got his start 16 years ago in local school district BISD's Media Technology Program and now has 9 years of full time experience in the field. He has received a number of national awards including a Beacon Award for Best Public Service Announcement. He spent the last 5 years as a general specialist for Fellowship Church and is currently a full-time freelancer and the primary motion graphics artist for Red Productions.
About Lone Star Film Society The Lone Star Film Society was created in 2002 after the original editions of the Fort Worth Film Festival concluded in 2001. The inaugural Lone Star International Film Festival Fort Worth in Sundance Square was realized in 2007 through the hard work of a dedicated staff and Board of Directors. While preserving the original event’s objective to promote artistic integrity and the independent spirit in film, the Lone Star Film Society added to its mission a goal of becoming a beneficial partner in the community of Fort Worth so that a successful November festival and year round slate of events would not only be a good thing for filmmakers, but for everyone in the city of Fort Worth and beyond. Now in its third year, the LSFS and LSIFF have reached that goal as evidenced through the support of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce, and many of Fort Worth’s most prestigious corporations, non-profits, and cultural institutions. And the festival: The Lone Star International Film Festival (LSIFF) Fort Worth in Sundance Square is a presentation of the Lone Star Film Society (LSFS) and represents the culmination of the society’s year round series of film screenings and events. Featuring an impressive slate of narrative and documentary features and short films from around the world, educational panels, red carpet entrances, filmmakers, celebrity guests, and nightly parties featuring celebrated musical acts, the fall festival is quickly becoming a marquee cultural event in Fort Worth and beyond. For more, visit: www.lonestarfilmsociety.com or www.lsiff.com. ###