JURORS

Director of Programming; TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL (TFF)

David Kwok is the Director of Programming for the Tribeca Film Festival and is responsible for the curation of the overall film program. He has been with the Film Festival since 2002, its inaugural year. He began his career at the Tribeca Film Festival as a full-time programmer, became Senior Programmer in 2005, and was promoted to his current position in 2009. Kwok was responsible for bringing in such titles as Roger Dodger ('02), Transamerica ('05), Taxi to the Dark Side (‘07), and The Eclipse (‘09), all of which received theatrical distribution and critical acclaim.

In addition, Kwok conceived and developed Tribeca All Access, a program that promotes established yet under-represented artists working in the United States and fosters the careers of emerging talent year-round. Prior to the Tribeca Film Festival, Kwok spent five years at The New Festival, the presenting organization of the New York LGBT Festival. He has also held various posts in specialty marketing and event planning.

Director and Co-Founder; SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Paul Rachman began his film career making underground punk films and music videos for bands such as the Bad Brains and Gang Green in the 1980’s.  He later rose to become one of the of the industry's top music video directors at Propaganda Films in Los Angeles where he worked with Alice in Chains, Roger Waters, Joan, Jett The Replacements and the Pearl Jam / Soundgarden collaboration “Temple of the Dog” .  By 1999 he had directed several award winning short films and made his feature directorial debut in 2000 with Four Dogs Playing Poker starring Forrest Whittaker, Balthazar Getty and Olivia Williams.  

In 2006 his seminal punk documentary American Hardcore premiered at Sundance and was theatrically released by Sony Pictures Classics. He is currently in pre production on a new documentary Lost Rockers.  Paul is also one of the co-founders of the Slamdance Film Festival and it's East Coast Director.  He is based in New York City.

DVD Producer; NEW YORKER FILMS

Cindi currently oversees the home video releases of films by Jia Zhangke, Hong Sang-soo, and Vimukthi Jayasundara, among others.

Her career began in the Film Department at the Museum of Modern Art, the perfect hothouse to cement a lifelong interest in world cinema and the exhibition and preservation of moving image heritages. During her coursework at George Eastman House in film preservation, she commenced a decade of copyediting The Griffith Project, a multi-volume book series on the films of D. W. Griffith, published in conjunction with the Pordenone Silent Film Festival’s complete retrospective of his extant works.

Film festivals are familiar territory. She has held jobs in programming assistance at the Philadelphia Film Festival and in publications at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, as well as writing catalog copy, volunteering, and/or participating on prescreening committees and juries for nearly a dozen other festivals, including the Hamptons, Human Rights Watch, and Asian American International Film Festivals. Most recently she completed her third year on staff for the Flaherty Seminar.

She has worked in distribution since 1999, beginning at Milestone Film & Video. While there, she was integral to the acquisition and release of The Clay Bird, a Bangladeshi independent film directed by Tareque and Catherine Masud. Sadly, Tareque passed away this summer; Ms. Rowell dedicates her SAIFF jury service to his memory.

Co-Founder and Co-Programmer; NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL (NYAFF)

Grady Hendrix is a film programmer and writer living in New York City. For five years he was a regular film critic for the New York Sun and has written for Slate, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Playboy
Magazine and Variety as well as starting Kaiju Shakedown, Variety’s popular Asian entertainment blog. He was also the scriptwriter for the Asian Film Awards, a Hong Kong-based awards show, for its first three years.

He is a frequent guest commentator on the BBC and National Public Radio, and one of the directors, programmers and co-founders of the New York Asian Film Festival, a nine-year-old film festival in New York City, which the New York Times has called “...one of the city’s most valuable events.” He has worked in the Asian film industry for several years, writing subtitles, press kits and English language treatments for various projects for directors from Korea’s Lee Myung-Se to Hong Kong’s Stanley Kwan.

Director of Acquisition; INDIEPIX

Mark DeFrancis is a relative newcomer to the world of indie film, having worked in IndiePix's Acquisitions Department for two years. As such, he has negotiated the acquisition and managed distribution strategy for films such as LOINS OF PUN JAB PRESENTS, LOVE IN INDIA, WELCOME TO NOLLYWOOD, ARTOIS THE GOAT, NO SWEAT and, most recently, SKELETONS. Additionally, he manages IndiePix's submissions department, which has resulted in the acquisition in dozens of unique discoveries such as HORI SMOKU SAILOR JERRY, ROCK PAPER SCISSORS: A GEEK TRAGEDY, GOLDEN DAYS and WHERE YOU FROM?.

Additionally, Mark is responsible for IndiePix's festival coverage. As such, he has screened well over 100 films at top festivals such as Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca and Silverdocs so far this year. He will never get tired of watching films, can watch up to six a day, and plans to have doubled his current tally before 2011. He is a frequent writer on IndiePix's weblog and aids in IndiePix's web presence, managing and designing the individual film pages at IndiePixFilms.com.

Prior to IndiePix, Mark worked throughout the world of New York theatre. He has performed in numerous productions, served as off-Broadway producer for the Young Mirror Repertory Company as well as a production manager for The Dog Run Repertory Company. In his spare time, Mark continues to work as a actor for Mainspring Collective's Monster Literature series and is a theatrical reviewer for NYTheatre.com. He is a graduate of The Northwestern University School of Speech's theatre program with a BA in Communication.