Date: Fri. Nov. 15, 2024
Time: 12:30 PM
Venue: Cloudland
Cost: FREE
Co-presented by Film Festival Alliance, FilmNorth, Cloudland Theater, St. Thomas: Music, Film & Creative Enterprise
Meet various Film Festival Programmers to find out how they carefully balance their programs and learn some insider secrets on programming and selecting films. Find out what each programmer looks for when watching submissions and how they decide what films make it into a festival, what are good and bad practices, and if they still love film.
Panelists:
Melanie Addington - Tallgrass Film Festival
Sharon Badal - Tribeca Film
Jesse Bishop - Minneapolis/St. Paul Int'l Film Festival
Richard Gill - Sound Unseen Music + Film Festival
Moderated by Andrew Peterson - FilmNorth Executive Director, Program Director Provincetown Film Festival
Melanie Addington
Melanie Addington has worked in the film festival world since 2006, first as a volunteer, and then eventually becoming the Oxford Film Festival Executive Director in August 2015. She used to be a reporter for the Oxford Eagle (a community newspaper) and then Pizza Magazine Quarterly (Global trade magazine). She still loves pizza. She is from Southern California originally but has lived in the South for 20 years. She has family in Wichita and considers it a great new home. She also writes, directs, and produces films. She has one son.
Sharon Badal
Sharon Badal is former VP of Programming for the Tribeca Film Festival and has been with the festival since its inception. She is currently Tribeca’s Shorts Music Video Programmer and screens music documentary submissions. Sharon is recognized as a Distinguished Teacher at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and created & teaches the “Producing in London” study abroad program. She has been a juror and panelist for many film festivals globally and is the author of Swimming Upstream – A Lifesaving Guide to Short Film Distribution.
Jesse Bishop
Jesse Bishop has over 17 years of experience in non-profit arts and film festival organizing, and 13 years in film curation. As Programming Director at MSP Film Society, Bishop oversees film programs for MSP Film, including the annual Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF), contemporary and retrospective series, and theatrical programming at The Main Cinema.
Rich Gill
Rich Gill has been involved with Sound Unseen since 2014 and currently holds the title of Program Director. When not working on the film festival he is also a programmer at Pop’s Art Theater in Rochester, MN, co-hosts a podcast about survivors of sexual assault in the music industry called enough., is a digital archivist for the Rochester Recordings Archive Project, and works a few days a week at a record store.
Andrew Peterson
Andrew Peterson is the Executive Director of FilmNorth and Director of Programming for the Oscar Qualifying Provincetown International Film Festival. From 2008-2012 Andrew served as Vice President of Production for Werc Werk Works, where he co-produced the feature films Howl, Life During Wartime, Thin Ice, and Darling Companion. He holds an MFA from New York University Graduate Film School and has taught filmmaking at Macalester and Middlebury Colleges. He regularly consults independent films and film festivals.