Hilary Brougher
Writer, Director
Hilary is a writer/director based in NYC. Her most recent feature, South Mountain starring Talia Balsam and Scott Cohen, premiered in competition at SXSW 2019 and is now streaming. Stephanie Daley starring Tilda Swinton and Amber Tamblyn premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and won The Waldo Salt Award for Screenwriting. Her first feature, The Sticky Fingers of Time (1996) was an official selection at the Venice, Rotterdam, SXSW and Toronto Film Festivals. She is currently in post-production on a feature documentary Striper: Not Art Without Life with Co-Director Maria Rosenblum. Hilary is also a member of the Faculty in Directing at the MFA Film Program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts since 2009 and chaired the program 2019-2021.
Ty Burr
Film Critic
A film critic and cultural columnist for The Boston Globe for 19 years from 2002 to 2021, Ty writes “Ty Burr’s Watch List” (tyburrswatchlist.substack.com), an email newsletter for streaming movie and TV recommendations and other commentary. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books “Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame” (2013), “The Best Old Movies for Families” (2007), and the e-book “The 50 Movie Starter Kit: What to Know if You Want to Know What You’re Talking About” (2013). He wrote for Entertainment Weekly during the 1990s and programmed movies for HBO/Cinemax in the 1980s. A member of the National Society of Film Critics and the Boston Society of Film Critics, Ty also teaches courses in film and criticism at Boston University and Emerson College. In 2017, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism.
Ali Bahrynian Dundon
Director of Development & Production, QC Entertainment
Ali is a Los Angeles native whose early love of the performing arts blossomed into a lifelong passion for creative storytelling. After earning her bachelor’s degree from Duke University, Ali started her career in the WME mailroom where she quickly rose through the ranks to become a Motion Picture Literary Agent. Following her passion for inventive filmmaking and a deep craving for more involvement in the creative process, in 2021 Ali chose to move over to the producing side of the business to help shepherd projects from inception through execution. She now serves as Director of Development & Production at QC Entertainment, the production and finance company behind the Academy Award-winning films Get Out and BlacKkKlansman.
Erik Ewers
Co-Director/Editor, Florentine Films
Erik has worked with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns for more than 30 years, including nearly all of his single and multi-episodic films. He currently serves as Ken’s senior editor and as co-director and editor of Ewers Brothers Productions, a preferred collaborative company in the co-creation of Ken’s films. Erik has been nominated for more than seven personal and program Emmy Awards and has won one editing Emmy and three program Emmys, as well as two prestigious ACE Eddie Award nominations and one ACE win for Best Edited Documentary. In 2015, Erik collaborated with Ken to create the two-hour PBS film The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope, Science, serving as producer, director and editor. Their partnership continues in an upcoming miniseries on America’s mental health crisis.
Adam Jones
Director, Producer, Writer
Having shot hundreds of TV spots and branded content projects for brands around the world, Adam has developed a wheelhouse in comedy dialogue, improv, documentary and visual storytelling. His spots and shorts have won honors including Gold Lions, Clios, Tellys, Addys, a New England Emmy, and a handful of film festival comedy awards. His comedy web series The Stay-At-Home Dad, which he directed and co-wrote, was dubbed “Mega-popular” on ComedyCentral.com. Jones was nominated for NH Filmmaker of the year in 2008 by the New Hampshire Film Festival. In 2019, his first feature documentary Fish & Men, about the state of the American fishing industry, premiered there and won the Audience Award. Fish & Men would go on to play at 40+ festivals winning 13.
Sierra Pettengill
Documentary Filmmaker
Sierra’s most recent feature-length documentary film RIOTSVILLE, USA premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and is distributed by Magnolia Pictures, and her 2021 short The Rifleman premiered at Sundance the year prior. Her 2017 feature-length film, the all-archival documentary The Reagan Show, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, and her 2018 all-archival short Graven Image aired on POV and is held at the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. In 2013 she produced the Academy Award-nominated film Cutie & the Boxer, which also won an Emmy Award for Best Documentary, and co-directed Town Hall with Jamila Wignot, about the emergent Tea Party movement, for PBS. She has worked as an archival researcher for many artists including Jim Jarmusch and Mike Mills. She was a Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Fellow, and currently serves as a board member of Screen Slate.
Shawn Christensen
Director, Producer
Shawn is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker. He currently directs and produces fiction podcasts such as Blackout (Rami Malek), Hunted (Parker Posey) (2020), and American Hostage (Jon Hamm) (2022). He won the SXSW Audience Award for his feature film debut Before I Disappear in 2014 and a Webby Award for Blackout in 2020. He has produced, directed and acted in many short films and won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for Curfew in 2013.
Matt Grady
Founder, Factory 25
Matt is the founder of Factory 25, a Brooklyn-based independent film production and distribution company launched in 2009. He was named “One of the Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture,” and has been called “One of the most important curatorial voices of new, independent American films.” Matt’s mission is to expose the world to under-the-radar films, music, and other curiosities theatrically and digitally, as well as on TV, VOD, VHS, and limited-edition discs with vinyl LPs and books. Factory 25 titles include Actual People, Other Music, Inspector Ike, Superior, Sylvio, Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine, and the restored Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning film In the Soup by Alexandre Rockwell. Matt also produced Nathan Silver’s The Great Pretender, Onur Tukel’s Applesauce and Summer of Blood, Theodore Collatos & Carolina Monnerat’s Queen of Lapa, and Bryan Wizemann’s You Mean Everything to Me.
Siqi Song
Animation Filmmaker
Siqi is an Oscar-Nominated animation director from China, currently based in California, United States. She is best known for her animated short film Sister, which received an Oscar nomination in 2020. Her work has been shown in numerous film festivals around the world including Sundance, SXSW, Annecy, and Ottawa. Siqi was recently recognized by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts as a USA Breakthrough Director and Animator in 2022. She has been a juror and mentor for animation films at various film festivals around the world.
Ashley Brandon
Documentary Filmmaker
Ashley is a documentary filmmaker from Defiance, Ohio. Her films have been selected to premiere at Sundance, SXSW, Slamdance, HotDocs, institutions including Princeton University and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and have received nods of recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her most recent film, Dia de la Madre, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and received a Special Jury Recognition at SXSW 2020. She is currently based in New Haven, Connecticut, where she teaches film at Quinnipiac University.
Mira Simon
Director of Operations, Center for Independent Documentary
During her time with the Center for Independent Documentary, Mira has supported the development, production and distribution of over one hundred documentaries including Academy Award nominated feature films Crip Camp and Ascension. She is an active participant in the New England arts community, has worked at the Massachusetts Film Office, and helped to organize the 2009 National Media, Arts and Culture Conference which was held in Boston. She is a graduate of Clark University.
Ben Thompson
Shorts Programmer, Tribeca Film Festival
After graduating from Aberystwyth University in 2003, Ben left Wales to head to New York. Shortly after arriving, he joined the Tribeca Film Festival. While there he discovered a passion for short form storytelling and creativity, and began working with the programming team watching film submissions. In 2010, he became the Shorts Programmer for the festival. Ben is fascinated by the influence film has on our world and culture and travels to search out new stories from around the globe. He has watched over 10,000 short films for Tribeca alone.
Delia Konzett
Professor, University of New Hampshire
Delia is a Professor of Film Studies, English, and Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of New Hampshire, Durham. She is the author of “Hollywood’s Hawaii,” “Ethnic Modernisms”, the editor of “Hollywood at the Intersection of Race and Identity,” and numerous essays in film journals.
Carson Lund
Cinematographer, Producer, Director
Carson is a NH-born, LA-based filmmaker and musician. Most recently, he acted as the cinematographer and editor of Jonathan Davies’s Topology of Sirens (2021), a World Premiere at FIDMarseille as one of three American films in competition. He also shot and produced Tyler Taormina’s Ham on Rye (2020), for which his cinematography was nominated for an Oscar in a New Yorker article. His forthcoming directorial debut, the real-time baseball comedy Eephus, will be shot in New England this fall. Apart from filmmaking, Carson is a film writer for Slant Magazine and the Harvard Film Archive, as well as the frontman of the LA-based art rock duo Mines Falls.
Ginnie Lupi
Executive Director, New Hampshire Council on the Arts
Ginnie was appointed the Executive Director of the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts in August 2014, following over eight years leading a multi-county arts services organization in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State. A working visual artist, she has a long professional history in nonprofit organization management, grant writing and fundraising, statewide trade association leadership, and public policy analysis. Lupi holds an M.F.A. in painting from The University at Albany, B.S. in visual art from Skidmore College, and B.A. and M.A. in political science from the College of Saint Rose.
