2019 LACFF JURY
Alan Heim
Alan Heim ACE was brought up in The Bronx, NYC where he went through the entire public school system before discovering the CCNY Film Institute and the art of editing. He became a sound effects and music editor before being asked by Sidney Lumet to work on his first feature film. He then edited the comedy "The Twelve Chairs" for Mel Brooks and, in 1972 edited "Liza with a Z", a filmed TV special for Bob Fosse, which, apart from earning Heim is first Emmy nomination, led to a long relationship with Fosse and an Academy Award, BAFTA award and Eddie for editing "All That Jazz". He also was nominated for "Network"; and won an Emmy for his work on the TV Series "Holocaust".
He also edited many other films including "American History X", "The Notebook", "Alpha Dog"and the TV movies, "Grey Gardens" and "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge". He has been the President and Vice President of the American Cinema Editors and is currently the President of the Film Editors Guild, Local 700, IATSE
Momo Wang
A cartoonist, animation director, Momo Wang is the creator of the popular bunny character Tuzki (facebook/WeChat/iMessage built-in emoticons, top 10 most popular animated emoticons in Japan). Momo is also an animation graduate student of CalArts (ranked no. 1 in the animation field in the world). She has over one million fans on the Internet. Her stories has been reported by China Central Television, CNN special report. She has published works such as "MAO individual" series and "I Tuzki you".
Global events:
In February 2014, a short film of Valentine's-Day themed Tuzki was scrolled played in Times Square, New York from February 14th to 18th.
In September 2014, Tuzki series were displayed as demonstration emoticons at the iWatch global launch event.
In July 2017, the collaboration series with minions went online on WeChat and received more than 30 million downloads.
In September 2017, Momo Wang became the Pasadena Promotion Ambassador of the California Office of Tourism.
In February 2018, Momo Wang created marketing images for Beverly Center.
In June 2018, she joined Illumination Entertainment as director and creative director of short films.
Hao Zhou
ZHOU Hao is a documentary filmmaker who has worked as a journalist for more than a decade, producing documentaries since 2001. ZHOU's works have won awards and been screened at film festivals around the world more than a hundred times. His 2014 film Cotton won Best Documentary at the 51st Golden Horse Film Festival. ZHOU's 2015 film, The Chinese Mayor, won the Special Jury Award for Unparalleled Access at the 31st Sundance Film Festival, as well as Best Documentary at the 9th Asian Film Awards, and won Zhou the Best Documentary award for the second time in a row at the 52nd Golden Horse Film Festival.
Michael Renov
Michael Renov is the Haskell Wexler Endowed Chair in Documentary, Professor of Cinema & Media Studies and Vice Dean for Academic Affairs in the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is the author of Hollywood's Wartime Woman: Representation and Ideology and The Subject of Documentary, editor of Theorizing Documentary, and co-editor of Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices.
In 1993, Renov co-founded Visible Evidence, a series of international and highly interdisciplinary documentary studies conferences. He is one of four general editors for the Visible Evidence book series at Columbia University Press. In 2005, he co-programmed the 51st annual Robert Flaherty Seminar.
In addition to curating documentary programs around the world, he has served as a jury member at documentary festivals including Sundance, Silverdocs, the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival, the EBS Documentary Film Festival (EIDF) in Seoul, South Korea and so on. Renov's teaching and research interests include documentary theory, autobiography in film and video, video art and activism, and representations of the Holocaust.
Michael Berry
Michael Berry is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies and Director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA. He is the author of five books on Chinese cinema, including Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (2006) and A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (2008).He has served as a film consultant and a juror for numerous film festivals, including the Golden Horse (Taiwan) and the Fresh Wave (Hong Kong). He is also the translator of several novels, including Wild Kids (2000), Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (2002), To Live (2004),The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (2008) and most recently Remains of Life (2017)
Alexander Stewart
Alexander Stewart (1981, Mobile, Alabama) received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the Experimental Animation program at CalArts. His short films have screened internationally, including at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Ottawa International Animation Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Image Forum in Japan. He co-curated the Flaherty NYC’s 2019 series “Puzzling”, and in 2010 co-founded the annual Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation.
Peter Markham
Peter Markham was Head of Directing in the MFA program of the American Film Institute Conservatory, Los Angeles from 2010 to 2018. Before that he was Senior Lecturer in Directing (2003-2010) having begun teaching at the Conservatory as adjunct faculty in 2001 — a total of 17 years experience as a teacher of directing at graduate level in one of the top film schools in the world.
Prior to his teaching career Markham directed Second Unit for Martin Scorsese on GANGS OF NEW YORK (Nominated for 9 Academy Awards in 2003, including Best Picture), and for Anthony Minghella on THE ENGLISH PATIENT (Winner, 9 Academy Awards in 1997, including Best Picture). As a director in his own right in his native UK, he directed TV drama for the BBC and Granada TV while his film THE CORMORANT, starring Ralph Fiennes, was nominated for a BAFTA Wales Award in 1993. Since leaving AFI Conservatory Markham has taken his teaching out to the world, giving two series of workshops and masterclasses in Beijing. Currently he is writing WHAT’S THE STORY? — THE DIRECTOR MEETS THE SCREENPLAY An Essential Guide for Directors and Writer-Directors for Focal Press/Routledge.
Joseph Petricca
Currently working fulltime as a screenwriter and film education specialist, Petricca was the Executive Vice Dean at the American Film Institute for 14 years and held various position at AFI for 11 years prior. He has been on the jury and taught at numerous film festivals, conferences and international schools. He remains an active screenwriter and film critic.
His short film A MEDITATION, starring Harold Perrineau played at over 35 film festival globally and received five awards. His feature screenplay A TRIP TO ROME has won one screenplay competition and is honored to be selected by the Toronto LGBT Festival to have a scene performed and filmed.
Petricca holds an MFA in Screenwriting from AFI and a BFA in Film Production from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU