Lauren Ponto
Currently the head of Programming at the Nashville Film Festival, Lauren has over six years experience working in the Film Festival and non-profit arts organization industry. With a primary background focusing on media literacy and programming, Lauren previously worked at Cinema/Chicago and the Chicago International Film Festival managing the Education Program. This included organizing year-round educational screenings for at-risk youth, a three-day international youth film festival (CineYouth) and assisting with festival programming. Through these experiences, Lauren has developed a passion for approaching film from both an entertainment perspective as well as a powerful teaching tool for cross-cultural understanding. Lauren graduated with a B.A. in Media and Cinema Studies and a Minor in History from DePaul University (Chicago, IL) in 2013. As a film theory professional, Lauren’s primary skills include executing community-driven programming, writing for film and educating youth on the power of film.
Meghan Oretsky
Before joining Vimeo in 2014, you could find Meghan cheering on filmmakers in the comments section of countless videos on their site. Today she serves as a member of Vimeo's curation team, for which she watches and curates thousands of short films a year. In October 2014, she created Ladies With Lenses, a collection of exceptional short films made by women, and, in pre-Covid times, hosted screenings featuring some of those films at venues such as Brooklyn Academy of Music, Museum of the Moving Image, and VICE. Find out more about the channel and screening series at @ladieswithlenses.
Judy K Suh
Judy K Suh is a filmmaker and artist based in Chicago. Her body of work consists of video installations, short films, and branded & commercial films. Her video installation works are often an experiment in merging cinematic content with physical space. She often works with projection mapping techniques to experiment. Her video installation works were shown at various contexts including iLight Singapore, BLINK Festival, Typeforce, CICA Museum, the Banff Centre, and will be featured at Currents New Media Festival in 2021. She has also made permanent installations for lobby spaces. Judy is an alumni of NFFTY with the screening of two short films, and is the winner of the inaugural Story Starts Here screenplay competition for Roberta's Living Room, which after completion went on to win 4 best picture awards and screen at 30+ film festivals around the world. She is a Silver Telly Award winner for a short documentary. She holds a BA in Film and Art at Northwestern University, and currently freelances as an art director in experiential design. www.judysuh.com
David Dinnell
David Dinnell is a filmmaker, film curator and programmer currently living in Washington State where he is the Director of the Tacoma Film Festival. Dinnell is the co-founder and co-curator of Mur Murs, a Los Angeles-based film series that presents artists' cinema. He was recently Visiting Faculty at the California Institute of the Arts and in 2017-2018 was the curator for Canyon Cinema 50, an internationally touring program of historical experimental and avant-garde cinema.