Guests Attending the Festival 2015

Meet the guests of VTIFF 2015

Filmmakers

Mark Covino (Jury, in Burlington)
Mark Covino has worked on numerous film and television projects in a variety of capacities over the years. He is perhaps best known as the director of the widely praised documentary A Band Called Death and the upcoming The Crest.

Erin Davis (Lunchtime Shorts, The Land)
Erin Davis is an artist, filmmaker, radio producer and educator living in Vermont, USA. To support her documentary habit, Erin teaches courses in radio documentary at Middlebury College

Tom DiCillo (Director, Down in Shadowland and Living in Oblivion)
DiCillo is a filmmaker, cinematographer and actor. In 1987 he shot (and acted in) Stranger Than Paradise for friend and film school classmate Jim Jarmusch. He directed his first feature Johnny Suede in 1990 which one Best Picture at the Locarno Film Festival. In 1995 he made the multi-award winning film Living in Oblivion starring Steve Buscemi. Other films include Box of Moonlight, The Real Blonde, Double Whammy, Delirious, and When You’re Strange, a documentary film on the The Doors. DiCillo has also written books and worked for television.

Ted Dintersmith (Executive Producer, Most Likely to Succeed)
After a twenty-five year career in venture capital, Ted Dintersmith is now focused on issues at the intersection of innovation and education. He is actively involved with a number of initiatives that seek to deliver vastly improved learning experiences to people around the globe. He is particularly interested in the role of film in effecting social change.

Lázaro J. González González (Lunchtime Shorts, Director, Masks)
Lazaro Gonzalez was born in Pinar del Rio, Cuba in 1990. Lazaro is a graduate of the Journalism School at the University of Havana. Masks, his first documentary film, has been written about extensively in Cuba. Masks has also received various awards and recognition both in Cuba and throughout Latin America. Lazaro also works in the Communications Department at the International Film and Television School (EICTV) in San Antonio de los Baños

Deedee Halleck (Lunchtime Shorts, Bread & Puppet Video Presentation)
Halleck is a media activist and co-founder of Deep Dish TV. Together with Tamar Schumann she has created a comprehensive online archive of Bread and Puppet imagery.

Stéphane Lafleur (Director, Tu Dors Nicole)
Lafleur is a Quebec filmmaker and a musician. His first short, Karaoke, won the Best Canadian Short at TIFF 1999. In 2007 he directed his first feature, Continental, a Film Without Guns, which premiered at Venice Film Festival. It won awards there and elsewhere. Tu Dors Nicole is his 3rd feature.

Robin Lloyd (Lunchtime Shorts, Bread & Puppet Video Presentation)
Lloyd is a videographer who has documented numerous B&P pageants from 1992 to 1998. She is also a long-time supporter of VTIFF.

Luke Meyer (Director, Breaking a Monster)
Part of the filmmaking collective SeeThink Films, Meyer won the SxSW audience award for his directorial debut, Darkon. He has since been involved – as director, writer, or producer – on a number of documentaries, including New World Order and Alice Neel.

Holly Morris (Director, The Babushkas of Chernobyl)
Morris is an author and documentary director/producer as well as a television presenter. Her articles have been published in the NY Times Book Review, The Daily Telegraph and more. As producer and correspondent, Morris has made programs in Bangladesh, Borneo, Brazil, Cuba, Gabon, India, Iran, Niger and many others. She is one of the main hosts of Treks in a Wild World as well as the TV Travel Show Globe Trekker. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is featured in Gringo Trails, also showing at this festival.
Joshua Oppenheimer (Director, The Look of Silence, Q&A via Skype)
Oppenheimer was born in Austin, TX and grew up in and around Washington DC and Austin TX. His first film, The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase (1997) won a Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival (1988). From 2004 to 2012, he produced a series of films in Indonesia. His debut feature, The Act of Killing (shown at VTIFF 2013) went on to win many prizes world-wide. Joshua currently lives in Denmark. He is the recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award.
Eva Sollberger (Jury, Sleepless in Burlington)
Sollberger is a filmmaker, journalist, and social media maven who created and produces the acclaimed Stuck in Vermont web series. She has directed over 400 episodes for the series.

Shannon Sun-Higginson (Director, GTFO)
Sun-Higginson is a documentary filmmaker from New York City. She has worked as a Production Coordinator at Zero Point Zero Production on the TV series No Reservations and Parts Unkown. She has also worked on such programs as city.ballet on AOL and The Getaway on Esquire Network. GTFO is her first feature documentary and it was funded on Kickstarter. She is currently working on a new film, The Witman Project.

Sylvain Tremblay (Lunchtime Shorts, Director No Gender)
Tremblay was born in Quebec City. From a career in illustration, he made a shift in 2002 to painting full time. His work has been shown in Canada, the USA, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has gallery representation on three continents. In addition, Tremblay takes part in live painting events and projects that bring art outside the walls, for example his participation in the Formula 1 Grand Prix in 2014, the Abu Dhabi Art Hub and the launch of Ferrari’s new California T. Tremblay is based in Dubai where he teaches history of modern art at the Canadian University. He also lives and works in Beijing and Montreal

Colin Trevorrow (Head of Jury, Sleepless in Burlington)
Trevorrow is the lauded writer and director of Safety Not Guaranteed and Jurassic World. He has been tapped to direct one of the upcoming Star Wars sequels and is currently at work on the drama The Book of Henry.

Pegi Vail (Director, Gringo Trails)
Vail is an anthropologist at the Center for Media, Culture, and History and professor at NYU. She is a former Fulbright Scholar who has been featured worldwide as a sustainable travel expert and serves as a judge for National Geographic’s World Legacy Awards. As a curator, she has collaborated with the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian, American Museum of Natural History, Museum of Modern Art and The Moth, the storytelling collective for which she was a founding member. Most recently, she was the cultural consultant for Montreal-based Felix & Paul Studios’ upcoming Nomad virtual reality series for Oculus Rift / Facebook. Gringo Trails is her first feature-length documentary.

Steve Woloshen (Animation workshop)
Woloshen was born and lives in Montreal. He is an internationally renowned film animator and a pioneer of cameraless drawn-on-film animation. His films are heavily inspired by music, particularly jazz, and he has made numerous short abstract works that have been shown in festivals worldwide. Woloshen created the special 30th anniversary for this year’s VTIFF trailer and will be leading an animation workshop at the festival, suitable for the whole family. This is Steve’s second visit to VTIFF.

Speakers, Panelists

Harry Bliss (Very Semi-Serious)
Bliss has illustrated many books, produced hundreds of cartoons and 19 covers for The New Yorker.

Bree Benjamin (Student Matinee: My Skinny Sister)
Bree Benjamin is the founder and director of the Vermont Center for Integrative Therapy who holds a masters degree in Counseling Psychology. Her therapeutic interests have focused on integrative treatment for Eating Disorders, Trauma, and Addiction.

Meaghan Emery (Student Matinee: Once in a Lifetime)
Meaghan is an Associate Professor of French at UVM with a focus on French and Francophone literature and film.

Mark Estrin (Lunchtime Shorts, Bread & Puppet Video Presentation)
Mark is a writer and publisher as well as a puppeteer and author of Rehearsing with Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread and Puppet Theater (photos by Ron Simon). He has published several books on Peter Schumann.

Megan Epler Wood (Gringo Trails)
Epler Wood has been working for 25 years on ecotourism and sustainable travel as an NGO leader, international consultant, and educator. She is presently heading a research program at the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment on sustainable tourism which is developing tools to manage tourism in the 21st century.

Alexandra Halkin (Song of the Street & Lunchtime Shorts: Masks)
Halkin is the director of the Americas Media Initiative and will be presenting two new Cuban films. She lives in Burlington.

House of LeMay (Audience Favorite Awards Winners Presentation before Closing Night Film)
The House of LeMay – featuring Amber, Lucy Belle, and Margaurite – has been raising funds and awareness for many local charities and organizations for over twenty years. Their bio-documentary, Slingbacks and Syrup, was featured at VTIFF 2008.

Doreen Kraft (Sweet Micky for President)
Kraft is a filmmaker who made two films in Haiti in the 1970s. She is also the Executive Director of Burlington City Arts. She will be introducing Sweet Micky for President.

Ed Koren (Very Semi-Serious)
Koren has published over 1000 cartoons for the New Yorker, as well as numerous covers and illustrations.

Mónica Rivero Cabrera (via skype)– (Song of the Street)
Mónica is a Cuban Journalist who will be appearing via Skype for a post screening Q&A for Song of the Street

David Tomasi (The Dinner)
David Tomasi was born in South Tyrol, the trilingual region of Northern Italy. He was formerly a teacher at the Italian Waldorf School and was Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Verona. He is a mental health residential counselor the Howard Center in Burlington, and teaches classes at St Michael’s College, UVM and CVU.