ELLEN KURAS
Cinematographer
Grand Jury

Award winning Cinematographer Ellen Kuras has accomplished a great deal in a short period of time. After having shot her first piece in 1987 - the documentary El Salvador - Kuras shot commercials for the likes of Pepsi and Chevrolet. From there, she went on to shoot numerous independent and mainstream films. Her DP/Cinematographer credits include ‘The Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind,’  ‘He Got Game,’ ‘Summer of Sam,’ ‘Blow’ and ‘Analyze That.’
Kuras has been nominated for several Emmys, Independent Spirit Awards and other prizes. Her awards include three Best Cinematographer - Dramatic Film Awards at Sundance, most recently in 2002 for ‘Personal Velocity: Three Portraits.

KURT LODER
Author, MTV
Grand Jury

Author and former Rolling Stone editor Kurt Loder came to MTV in 1988 to anchor the channel’s long-running weekly news show, “The Week in Rock,” and later its successor series, “1515.” He has also written and hosted a number of MTV News specials, among them “Smashed” (about alcohol abuse), “Straight Dope” (about drugs), “Hate Rock” (about the new wave of racist and neo-Nazi bands, both here and in Europe), “The Cult Question” (about dubious religious groups) and “Abducted” (a comical show, as it turned out, about the phenomenon of so-called “alien abductions”). He continues to write and host various MTV News specials, and to do interviews and reports for both MTV News and the MTV Radio Network. He also writes on a fairly regular basis for MTVNews.com.

Raised in New Jersey, Loder spent three years in the U.S. Army and then worked as a journalist in Europe for several years. Returning to the States, he worked at Circus magazine in the late ‘70s, and then moved on to a nine-year stint at Rolling Stone, where he was a writer and senior editor. He is the author of the New York Times best-seller “I, Tina” (with singer Tina Turner; later the basis of the movie “What’s Love Got to Do With It”), and “Bat Chain Puller,” a collection of his Rolling Stone features, which was recently reissued by Cooper Square Press. Much of his other Rolling Stone work is collected in the compilation “Rolling Stone Interviews of the Eighties,” which he also annotated. He is still a Rolling Stone contributing editor, and has also written for such magazines as Esquire, Details, New York, and Time, as well as tapping out liner notes for compilations by such acts as Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, the Velvet Underground, the Ramones, and Jimi Hendrix.

He lives in New York City, and doesn’t really like to leave it.

KAROL MARTESKO-FENSTER
President, RES Media
Grand Jury

Karol Martesko-Fenster is the co-founder and President of RES Media
Group, Inc and has extensive experience in film   He joined the management team of Palm Pictures LLC in
July 2001. Concurrent to his stewardship of RES Media Group, he supervised the strategic re-organization and operations of the Palm Pictures film division through July of 2003.

Prior to Palm Pictures Karol served for three years as President of Rising Tide Studios LLC, an integrated media and convergence company, where he oversaw publications such as Silicon Alley Reporter and Digital Coast Reporter and numerous high profile conferences on the Media, Finance and Technology Industries.

Karol’s background in the entertainment industry ranges from producing print & electronic publications (he co-founded FILMMAKER Magazine, RES Magazine and indieWIRE.com), virtual communities, fiction features (Before Sunrise, Scenes From the New World ), documentary films (Vienna 1900), television specials and numerous live satellite programs. From 1986 to 1990, Martesko-Fenster was the coordinating producer for Great Performances Music on PBS, acted as the Market Director for the breakout 1989 Independent Feature Film Market. In 1990, while working as Acting Executive Director of the Independent Feature Project (IFP), Martesko-Fenster restructured the nation’s leading film service organization and initiated the inaugural Gotham Awards, an annual ceremony honoring the vitality of the New York film community.

JIM SEYMORE
Journalist
Grand Jury

Jim Seymore is a journalist who specializes in entertainment. During his twelve years as editor of “Entertainment Weekly,” the magazine won four National Magazine awards, was selected for Adweek’s “Hot List” an unprecedented six consecutive years, and he was named “Editor of the Year” in 1991. He studied at the University of Madrid and is a graduate of Princeton University.

EDDIE BAMONTE
Execuitve Creative Director, STAIN nyc
Jury
Eddie Bamonte is the co-founder and Executive Creative Director of STAIN nyc, an award-winning advertising agency that specializes in unique buzz marketing methods and non-traditional creative. STAIN is on the agency roster of such companies as Pepsi, Condé Nast Publications, Lancome, eBay, Novell, and Dolce & Gabbana. Eddie is currently directing a series of guerilla style web videos for one of his clients.

Before starting STAIN, Eddie was a copywriter at several NYC ad agencies, where he helped create TV and print campaigns for a number of Fortune 500 brands. Eddie has won many industry awards for creative excellence, including a Best in Show at the New York Addys. Some of Eddie’s work was recently featured in the experiential marketing book by Columbia Marketing Professor, Bernd Schmitt’s, “There’s No Business That’s Not Show Business.” He is a graduate of Xavier University, The Portfolio Center and The New York Film Academy.

SCOTT JACOBSON
Writer
Jury
Soctt Jacobson is an Emmy Award winning writer for Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” Prior to that, he has written several sketches for NBC’s Saturday Night Live and worked on other Comedy Central productions.

GEORGIA LEE
Director
Jury
Award-winning writer/director Georgia Lee gained early acclaim for her first two shorts The Big Dish: Tiananmen ‘89 and Bloom, which was acquired and broadcast as part of the Reel New York series. In 2000, she was selected by director Martin Scorsese to serve as his apprentice on the set of Gangs of New York in Rome. Her subsequent short film Educated (2002) has shown in over 30 festivals worldwide and won the Best Short Film Award at the 2003 Durango Film Festival.  She is the recipient of a 2004 film fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Jerome Foundation New York Media Award.  Last year, Lee completed work on two additional short films: Basic Emotions and Diagnosis.  Lee’s first feature Red Doors won the Best Narrative Feature Award in the NY NY Competition at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.  Lee’s next project Forbidden City was also selected for the Tribeca Film Institute’s All Access rogram. Prior to filmmaking, Lee worked for the management-consulting firm McKinsey & Company and earned a degree in biochemistry from Harvard University.

DENNIS LIM
The Village Voice
Jury
Dennis Lim has been at the Village Voice of New York since 1998. He is currently a senior film editor and critic at the periodical. Mr. Lim is also a Contributing Editor to Cinema Scope.

KRISTA PARRIS
VP Development, Jane Startz
Jury
Krista Parris began her film career working for Jonathan Demme and Ed Saxon’s company Clinica Estetico. She worked with Saxon for several years, as his Director of Development, during which time she shepherded a wide slate of projects—working with such writers and directors as Doug Wright, Jim Sheridan, Robert Schenkkan and Neil LaBute, and on ADAPTATION from development through release. Most recently, Parris spearheaded the industry department at the Tribeca Film Festival, comprised of more than 500 Industry members from over 21 different countries. She has also acted as an ongoing reader for the Tribeca All Access (TAA) programs, Open Stage and TAA Connects, during her two years working with the Tribeca Film Institute. Parris will begin working with producer Jane Startz in July, as her VP of Development. Parris is a graduate of Princeton University.


BRIAN SHIREY
Director, DVD Production
Kino International
Jury
Since 1998, Brian has managed various aspects of DVD production for Kino Film, New York’s leading independent theatrical and DVD distributer of foreign, indie and classical cinema. His experiences
have included conducting filmed interviews as well as gathering deleted scenes, rare shorts and trailers for the DVD extras, and he has overseen graphic design for all of Kino’s DVD output. His DVD projects
included a recent series on the 3 films of Josephine Baker and Michael Haneke’s Cannes award-winning The Piano Teacher.

Brian has a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the arts.

JEFF YANG
Writer, ‘Once Upon a Time in China’
Jury
Yang was the founder of aMagazine: Inside Asian America, the nation’s leading Asian American periodical, and conceived of and developed Stir, the first nationally broadcast show for Asian American youth (recently renewed for its second season). He created Asian America’s two most prominent annual events-the New York-based “Bridge Builder” Asian American Leadership Awards and the Los Angeles-based Ammy Awards for Asian American Entertainment-and developed them into premium sponsorship opportunities for brands including Ford Motors, GE, Avon, The Prudential, AT&T, State Farm Insurance, Anheuser Busch, and Merrill Lynch. In 1997, Yang edited aMagazine’s first book, Eastern Standard Time: A Guide to Asian Influence in American Culture, from Astro Boy to Zen Buddhism (Houghton Mifflin, May 1997); in 1998, he cowrote I Am Jackie Chan, the international action hero’s autobiography (Ballantine Books, 1998). His most recent book, Once Upon a Time in China: An Enthusiast’s Guide to Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong Cinema, was published in 2003 by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster. Yang is former boardmember of the Asian American Journalists Association’s New York chapter, a member of the advisory board of the China Institute in America, and a founding boardmember of the Second Generation Theater Company. He graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. degree in Psychology.

MARCI PHILLIPS
ABC Primetime Casting
Best Actor/Actress Category

Marci is the Executive Director of Primetime Casting for ABC Entertainment and is responsible for their New York comedy casting. Along with her associates, Marci casts for all ABC and Touchstone pilots (comedies and dramas), new series regulars, TV movies and alternative series.

Marci previously worked for Steven Bochco Productions and MGM Studios. She cast the independent film “Let It Snow” which was featured at Sundance and co-produced the musical comedy “Moo! The Twisted Tale of Dinky Farms” at MTS. Marci has been an active member of the Advisory Board for The Aspen Comedy Festival for the past eight years.

(More Judge Listings to come)

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