The All Genders, Lifestyles, and Identities Film Festival (aGLIFF) today officially announced the theme of the 32nd edition of the film festival will be PRISM. The Board of Directors selected PRISM to highlight the way aGLIFF can refract a single beam of art into multiple viewpoints, showcasing all the voices in the spectrum of the LGBTQ+ community. The film festival also announced this year’s slate of filmmaker panels and the impressive lineup up of jury members coming to Austin next month for the film festival. aGLIFF screens exclusively at Alamo Drafthouse Lamar (1120 S. Lamar Blvd.) in Austin, Texas on August 22-25.
aGLIFF is an experience,” says Board President Ashley Marshall, “not just the four days a year that the annual festival occurs but throughout the year, with events and screenings programmed to elevate and appreciate the work of queer filmmakers and films that celebrate the LGBTQIA experience. By being able to visualize our lives on the big screen, we foster connection and validate the joys and struggles of our community, through narrative stories, documentaries, and shorts that honor the challenges that we face today as well as the progress that our previous generations pushed to create. Our vision for aGLIFF is to be a place where any queer person can walk into the theater and feel seen and surrounded by family. In the past several years, we’ve focused heavily on increasing the diversity of our programming, our board, and our audience, to reflect the full prism of the rainbow.”
The PRISM theme will also be highlighted among the panel discussions at aGLIFF, on Saturday, August 24 and Sunday, August 25, with subjects including:
Meet the Programmers
Saturday, August 24, 3:00PM-4:15PM
Have you ever wondered who selects the films for festivals you attend and what goes into the deciding factors? What is the process behind putting a lineup together? What are some of the horrors and joys of putting a festival program together watching hundreds of films? aGLIFF is proud to present this “Meet the Programmers” panel featuring four programmers from various film festivals and hear their stories of accomplishments and defeats in an ever changing and growing profession. Moderated by Toronto’s Inside Out Executive Director, Andria Wilson Panelists include: Beth Barrett – Artistic Director, Seattle International Film Festival; Paul Struthers – Director of Exhibition & Programming, Frameline; Jon Gann – Founder, DC Shorts; Justina Walford – Founder & Artistic Director, Women Texas Film Festival.
Meet the Honorees
Saturday, August 24 4:30PM – 5:45PM
This year, aGLIFF will be honoring three filmmakers, Lisa Donato (GOSSAMER FOLDS) with the Breakthrough Award, and Rose Troche (GO FISH) and Jim Fall (TRICK) with aGLIFF Tribute Awards. Listen to stories about how they got started in the entertainment business, what challenges they were faced with, how they overcame adversity and struggles, stories about working in the independent film and what are some of their greatest success stories in a demanding industry. Moderator is TBA.
The PRISM Filmmaker Roundtable: Queer Film in the Present and Looking Forward
Sunday, August 24, 2:15PM-3:30PM
This panel will be a “roundtable”- style discussion with aGLIFF’s attending filmmakers, moderated by aGLIFF Board President Marshall to bring together a diverse panel of filmmakers, talent, and aGLIFF members about what queer film means to them, its impact on their lives, its relevance in today’s world and how they envision it evolving in the future.
2019 aGLIFF Jury
Narrative Features
Beth Barrett is the Artistic Director of SIFF (organizers of the Seattle International Film Festival, SIFF Cinema, and SIFF Education) and has been working with SIFF programming since 2003. An aficionado of short films, she secured SIFF’s status as an Academy Award® qualifying festival in 2008. She serves on the board of the Film Festival Alliance, and has participated in juries and panel discussions at several universities and film festivals. Responsible for all aspects of SIFF programming, Beth has been in Seattle for 26 years and holds an M.A. in Northern Renaissance Art History.
Harris Doran is an award-winning filmmaker who was shortlisted for the 2018 Film Independent Spirit Awards’ Someone to Watch Award for his writer/director debut feature film, BEAUTY MARK which earned the ‘Breakout Performance’ Jury Prize for lead actress at its LA Film Festival premiere, Best Ultra Indie Film Award at the Woodstock Film Festival, Audience Award at the Austin Film Festival and many others. Harris’s writer/director debut short THE STORY OF MILO AND ANNIE featuring Alysia Reiner and Cathy Moriarty won the Indie Memphis Film Festival and he produced the short film PHOTO OP starring Randy Harrison which won best LGBTQ short in “Sene”. He has written the screenplays “Atticus Brown is Still Here” (Sundance, Tribeca and Hamptons Sloan grant finalist, developed at the Screenwriters Colony on Nantucket), “Cog” (Academy Nicholl Fellowship quarterfinalist), “In The Wake” (Austin Film Film Festival semifinalist), “Seconds Act” and “An Unofficial of Mice & Men Remake.” Harris conceived and wrote the script for the political concert “Broadway Blue Wave For NY” directed by Tony Winner Rachel Chavkin, starring Taylor Shilling, Edie Falco, Laura Benanti and Cynthia Nixon. Harris is an award-winning actor who has been seen in projects ranging from Broadway to TV to indies including the Sundance premiering MY BEST DAY. Harris is an acting teacher and coach who trained as an actor at The Juilliard School.
David Ninh is the Director of Press and Publicity at independent art house film distributor Kino Lorber where he oversees the press outreach for all the company’s theatrical, home video, and streaming releases. He recently oversaw the publicity outreach for Academy Award documentary nominee OF FATHERS & SONS and led the publicity runs for 2018 Berlinale Golden Bear winner TOUCH ME NOT and the re-release of the restoration of Frank Simon’s queer classic THE QUEEN (1968). He was previously the Senior Communications Specialist at Kickstarter where he worked with filmmakers and creators during the initial funding stages of many successful film, arts and culture projects and has also worked on the publicity teams at the Film at Lincoln Center, New York Film Festival and PMK*BNC. Prior to that, he was an entertainment and style reporter for The Dallas Morning News. He also works as a crowdfunding consultant and is a producer and PR advisor for New York-based production company Still Point Pictures on their LGBTQ projects.
Documentary Features
Sarah Marloff has been covering queer culture for most of her adult life. Today, she’s the editor of the Austin Chronicle’s queer section, Qmmunity, which she’s run since 2016 and rebranded last fall to be more encompassing of the entire LGBTQIA+ qmmunity. But as the alt weekly’s Associate News Editor as well, Sarah’s committed to making the entire paper more queer, one section and one week at a time. Her local film coverage has spotlighted Austin director PJ Raval, Veronica Mars creator Rod Thomas, the inaugural Contrast Film Fest, numerous SXSW premieres, and every aGLIFF Festival since 2013. Sarah’s takes on queer culture have also appeared in numerous publications including Washington D.C.’s City Paper, AfterEllen, and Meets Obsession. In 2018, she was invited to join an official SXSW panel on the death of lesbian bars, and she’s moderated a handful of other panels for aGLIFF, Staple! Independent Media Expo, and more. She’s also a recurring guest on KOOP Radio’s Civil Rights and Wrongs.
Nathaniel Rogers is the creator and owner of the long running website The Film Experience. He is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and GALECA: The Society for LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and recently a Eugene O’Neill Fellow at the National Critics Institute. In addition to his work at The Film Experience, his writing has appeared in both online and print publications including Vanity Fair, Show-Score, Slate, Polygon, Tribeca Film, and Winq. Nathaniel has served on several international festival juries and appeared as an on-air Oscar pundit for CNN.
Paul Struthers started working at Frameline in November 2017, as their Director of Exhibition and Programming. Prior to that, he worked at Queer Screen’s Mardi Gras Film Festival as Festival Director for four years in Sydney. He has over 15 year’s experience in the film industry, including working in exhibition, distribution and sales.
Short Films
Jon Gann is a force in the film festival world, having created, consulted with and fostered dozens of events around the globe. In the past year, he has worked on AFI Docs, Key West FF, DC Environmental FF, Bermuda International FF, Port Townsend FF, SF IndieFest and the Woods Hole FF. He is a founding Board Member of the Film Festival Alliance, the first organization to professionalize the festival space, and sits on the Advisory Board at George Mason University’s School of Film & Video Studies. His book “Behind the Screens: Programmers Reveal How Film Festivals Really Work” examines how programmers and organizers curate, collect, watch and select films for their festivals, with frank insights reveal the inner-workings of an industry that is often misunderstood. Published in 2015, his second book “So You Wanna Start a Film Festival,” explores the trials and tribulations of starting a new event, with lessons from both for- and non-profit festivals. Jon is the Founder of DC Shorts, a non-profit organization championing short filmmaking, and the creator of the DC Shorts Film Festival, one of the country’s premier short film showcases. He has also served as the Executive Director of CINE, a 60-year old organization that honors the best in film, TV and digital media with the prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Award.
Fawzia Mirza is a Pakistani, queer, Muslim female writer, producer, performer who believes in the power of art to tackle divisive topics and breakdown stereotypes. She was named one of ’10 Filmmakers to Watch’ by Independent Magazine, a White House ‘Champion of Change’ in Asian American Art & Storytelling, a 3Arts Acting Grant Recipient, a ‘Top 10 Creative’ by Indiewire magazine, a Djerassi Program Writing Resident, and an SFFILM Society Rainin Fellow. She’s made award-winning web series, short films and documentaries that have screened around the world, including a mockumentary THE MUSLIM TRUMP where she plays the illegitimate Muslim daughter of Donald Trump. She’s featured in the acclaimed Emmy-nominated and Gotham, Peabody and GLAAD-Award winning web series “Her Story.” Her first film SIGNATURE MOVE, which she co-wrote, produced and stars in world premiered at SXSW, was named one of the “Most Anticipated Films of the Year” by Filmmaker Magazine, screened at over 150 film festivals around the world, won 14 awards including the Grand Jury Prize for Best US Narrative at Outfest, stars Indian film legend Shabana Azmi and is available on Amazon. Fawzia has done stand-up comedy, written sketch, hosted The Moth storytelling, spoken at Tedx, Nat Geo and Chicago Ideas Week and her first short story appears in the South Asian anthology Good Girls Marry Doctors. She was the featured Canadian artist in the Chicago episode of the Canadian-Emmy winning doc series, Interrupt This Program on CBC. Her new films include a short comedy I KNOW HER, which she directed, wrote and stars in, (world premiere Outfest 2019 and screening at aGLIFF 32.) and a short drama (directed by Tchaiko Omawale) she wrote, produced and stars in, FIVE TIMES A DAY, the story of two queer, Muslim women on a romantic night together, told in five snapshots marked by the five calls to prayer. She wrote for TV on the CBS limited event series, The Red Line, executive produced by Greg Berlanti and Ava Duvernay.
Justina Walford is a critically acclaimed writer, producer, director, and performer of various types of storytelling on screen, stage, and print. Currently, the Founder and Artistic Director of the Women Texas Film Festival, Walford recently has also made an impact as a dog rescue proponent and environmental activist and last year was a candidate for the Dallas City Council’s District 4. In 2010, Justina left Los Angeles for New York and began creating movies with husband John Wildman, including co-writing and producing the horror thriller, THE LADIES OF THE HOUSE, shot in Dallas and available on VOD. The film received descriptions of “an instant classic” (Dread Central), “potential cult classic” (Awards Circuit), and “a 21st Century cult classic” (Lucky Girl Media) among other critical praise. Walford was formerly the Artistic Director and dramaturge of Split Id Staged Performances in Hollywood. A current board member for Asian Film Festival Dallas and a past board member of Women in Film Dallas, Walford has built a reputation for bringing people together in three major cities (Los Angeles, New York City, Dallas), and is dedicated to utilize that talent to promote and show the range of stories women tell across all media.
