Talia is a multidisciplinary LA-based film and theater maker from Washington, DC via Pittsburgh, PA, where she studied Drama (Directing) and Screenwriting at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work incorporates time travel, supernatural powers, women-powered community, simulated reality, unrequited love, road trips, and kinetic communication and has been featured across international platforms and festivals like Short of the Week, Filmatique Talents, NoFilmSchool, PÖFF Shorts, and the LA Dance Film Festival. In the industrial sector, she has directed and produced work for corporate clients including Nanostring Technologies and Uber ATG. Filmmaking is the ultimate adventure and her goal in any medium is to employ the unexpected to tell more human stories. Next Time, an upcoming science-fiction short film, is an Official Selection of the Nashville Film Festival, SCI-FI-LONDON, and GenreBlast Film Festival. Isolations, a dance film made in quarantine, will screen at Salute Your Shorts, and the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema. Her dance film E T A received an Audience Award at NFFTY in 2018, and she is honored to be on the jury this year.

Media artist and educator Leslie Raymond joined the Ann Arbor Film Festival as its executive director in August 2013. Before that, she founded a New Media Program at the University of Texas at San Antonio and served as assistant professor of art in digital video and new media art at Oakland University, where she was recognized with an Innovations in Teaching award. Raymond excels at organizing special projects that bring together practitioners to advance the conversation around contemporary cinema practice. Off the Screen! consists of precisely such special projects. In this project, Raymond’s role is to review the submissions and select the works and artists to be included in the series. She also communicates with AAFF host venues in the community, such as partnering galleries and event spaces, to share specifications of the works and artists so that installation, exhibition, and presentation logistics can be organized and implemented.

Deborah Girdwood is the Moving Image Program Manager at the Walker Art Center and the lead programmer for Nextwave, an international youth program at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival (2004-present). The annual showcase of global features for family audiences, formerly known as Childish Films, expanded in recent years to include a youth (18 and under) filmmaking competition for which Girdwood mentors a youth selection committee and youth jury. For a decade (2005-15), Girdwood curated a monthly series, Childish Films, for the downtown Minneapolis Public Library, featuring artistic children's films and live arts engagements. She also worked in the performing arts for young audiences at Children’s Theatre Company (2006-2017), serving for four years as Director of Access and Inclusion. Before moving to Minneapolis in 2004, Deborah was the co-founder and a Managing Director and Programmer of the nonprofit film organization, Northwest Film Forum, in Seattle, Washington.

Emily Woodburne has worked in independent film distribution for nearly 20 years and currently oversees theatrical sales and distribution for Janus Films.