Explore Panels By Creative Discipline

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Creative
Writing

Dance

Film

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Music
Performance

Original
Music

Photography

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Visual Art

Previous Film Panelists

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Adrian Burrell

  • 2025 Panelist
    Adrian Burrell’s practice includes photography, film, installation, and experimental media. Burrell’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions Venus Blues at the Minnesota Street Project Foundation and Sugarcane and Lightning pt 3 at the San José ICA. A third-generation Oakland artist and US Marine Corps veteran, Burrell received his BFA in Film from the San Francisco Art Institute and MFA from Stanford University’s Department of Art & Art History. His works are included in the collections of SFMOMA and Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento.

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Lex Sloan

  • 2024, 2025 Panelist
    Lex is the Executive Director at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, one of the founders of the Bay Area Media Maker Summit, and serves on the Board of the Art House Convergence. They graduated with an MFA in Cinema from San Francisco State University and a BA in Social Change Media from Western Washington University. Lex is a devoted member of the LGBTQ+ filmmaking community and is committed to ensuring that queer history is preserved and shared through the power of cinema.

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  • 2025 Panelist
    Rafael Flores is a Phi Beta Kappa scholar specializing in Directing, Social Justice Film Production, Chicano Cinema, and Third Cinema. He is the Co-founder of Green Eyed Media and Administrative Director of Hidden GEM Creative Studios in Oakland, CA. His work has been recognized by institutions such as The White House, TEDx, the Cannes Film Festival, and the Chicano International Film Festival.

Rafael Flores

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Jody Stillwater

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Matthew Silas

  • 2024, 2025 Panelist
    Matthew Silas is an animation layout artist and cinematographer at Pixar. He studied film directing in UCLA's graduate program, which eventually led to an internship with Pixar. Matthew returned to Pixar after graduating from school and has spent the last 18 years making "funny pictures with friends," including WALL-E, Inside Out, and Turning Red, among others.

  • 2022, 2023, 2025 Panelist
    Film Director, Jody Stillwater, has been nominated for two Emmy’s and created work featured at the MoMA, de Young Museum, YBCA, Mutek, Transfer Gallery, and ISEA. He co-founded Yanasa Creative Group, whose mission is to employ storytelling that prioritizes equity and inclusion, allowing for diverse stories from underrepresented communities to thrive. To Jody, making films and telling stories feels like taking imagery and symbolism from culture, breaking it down to its most base elements and building it back up for the present and future.

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Michele Turnure-Salleo

  • 2025 Panelist
    Australian-born Michele Turnure-Salleo is the Principal/Producer at San Francisco-based Feracious Entertainment. Her recent Executive Producer/Co-Executive Producer credits include Blueback (TIFF 2022/Sundance 2023), Farewell Amor (Sundance 2020), and Buoyancy (Berlinale 2019). Michele also works internationally as a script editor and mentor for screenwriting labs, including Stowe Story Lab and Biennale College Cinema. She has taught in the film department at California College of the Arts for over a decade.

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  • 2022, 2023, 2024 Panelist
    Amanda is a filmmaker who earned a BFA from California College of the Arts with a duel focus on jewelry/metal arts and textiles. Multifaceted and always exploring new mediums, Amanda began her career as a production designer before becoming a director. In 2013 she made film her career, and has become known for her innovative style and ability to coordinate ambitious visions into reality.

Amanda Beane

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  • 2024 Panelist
    Kate is the Associate Film Curator, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). Through her work as a curator, programmer, and projectionist she has cultivated and shared her expansive appreciation of cinema from around the globe. Kate has organized scores of film series and special screenings, including; Hippie Modernism: Cinema and Counterculture 1964-1974; Samurai Rebellion: Toshiro Mifune, Screen Icon; Reflection and Resistance: James Baldwin and Cinema; Life Goes On: The Films of Mia Hansen-Love; Next Door to Darkness: The Films of David Lynch; Forever Kinuyo Tanaka; Joel Coen in Person; and, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cinema of Now.

Kate MacKay

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  • 2021, 2022, 2024 Panelist
    Nicole is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning documentary producer and director, five-time Sundance Film Festival alumnus, and seven-time Emmy nominee. She most recently directed The Disappearance of Shere Hite, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, and two episodes of the Emmy-nominated ESPN landmark Title-1X series 37 Words. Nicole co-directed and produced the 2021 Academy Award-nominated documentary Crip Camp with Jim LeBrecht, which won the 2020 Sundance Audience Award, the IDA Best Feature Documentary Award, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature, and a Peabody.

Nicole Newnham

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  • 2023, 2024 Panelist
    Joanne is the Director of Education at the California Film Institute, providing year-round programs to youth and community members to learn about themselves and the world through film. Joanne is a media education specialist and film festival programmer specializing in children’s and documentary films, with 25+ years of experience with film festivals and film arts organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationwide, including a five-year stint as the first Director of Education at the San Francisco Film Society (now SFFILM). She served on the Board of the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) from 2015-2020.

Joanne Parsont

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  • 2022, 2023 Panelist
    Paul Abueg-Igaz is an educator rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area, currently serving as BAVC Media's San Francisco Youth Program Manager. With ten years of classroom teaching experience, he specializes in developing immersive project-based curriculum. Outside of these roles, Paul is also a freelance filmmaker, media creator, and curriculum writer.

Paul Abueg-Igaz

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  • 2023 Panelist
    Christine Chung is the Director of Operations & Design and Director of Choreography at SFBATCO. She focuses her work in non-profit theatre & performing arts, documentary short films, film festivals, and experiential immersive design. Her recent affiliations include Field of Vision, IF/Then Shorts, SXSW, SFFILM, Museum of Ice Cream, Revolutionary Love Project, and African Voices.

Christine Chung

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  • 2022, 2023 Panelist
    Kathleen Courtney began her freelance career as a Production Coordinator on feature films. In the mid-90s she found that she most enjoyed being a Producer and/or Production Manager on both films and television. She shared that a UPM has many ways to express creativity, starting with hiring the crew who are the right fit for the project and facilitating the director's vision while staying within the budget.

Kathleen Courtney

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  • 2022 Panelist
    George NeJame has consulted and worked in the entertainment industry for over 40 years. He currently serves as the Supervising Producer of the CW's hit comedy series, "Whose Line Is It Anyway," and is under contract to YouTube Originals (YTO Stages) at the Google Campus in the historical Howard Hughes Hangar, Buffalo Studios in NY, and the Cabo Agency in Mexico. NeJame also runs the day-to-day operations of his own consulting and production company, NSQ, Inc.

George NeJame

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  • 2021 Panelist
    Bryn Imagire has worked at Pixar Animation Studios for 26 years. She initially served as a digital painter on "A Bug's Life" and was later promoted to Shading Art Director for "Toy Story 2." Bryn has worked on many movies, including "The Incredibles," "Monsters, Inc." and "Coco." The advice she gives to students currently pursuing art is to work really hard, and to look at all sorts of architecture and design, and art history to absorb as much knowledge as possible.

Bryn Imagire