NOFF2020 Awards and Jurors | New Orleans Film Society

#NOFF2020 Awards

Watch NOFF2020 Filmmaker Awards presented by WarnerMedia below!

Narrative Features Competition

The winner of this award will receive a $15,000 Panavision camera rental package and a $13,500 Light Iron Post Production Services.

Jurors: Kyle Alex Brett (Netflix), Numa Perrier (Filmmaker + Co-founder of Black&Sexy TV), and Bilge Ebiri (Film critic at Vulture)
Jury Award Winner: Inspector Ike (dir. Graham Mason)
Special Jury Recognition: Right Near The Beach (dir. Gibrey Allen)

Documentary Features Competition

The winner of this category will receive Final Draft 10, and Showbiz budgeting software and Showbiz budgeting software from Media Services.

Jurors: Martine Granby (UnionDocs), Davin Agatep (ITVS), and Mustafa Uzuner (Distributor, Acephale + Documentary Fund at Sundance Institute)
Jury Award Winner: Two Gods (dir. Zeshawn Ali)
Honorable Mentions:

Keyboard Fantasies (dir. Posy Dixon)
Landfall (dir. Cecilia Aldarondo)
Through the Night (dir. Loira Limbal)

Best Louisiana Feature Award

The best Louisiana Feature film will receive a $15,000 Panavision camera rental package and (1) Free Screening at Light Iron NOLA’s facility.

Jurors: Julie Haberstick (Seed&Spark), April Dobbins (Filmmaker), and Kia Brooks (IFP – Independent Filmmaker Project)
Jury Award Winner: To Decadence with Love, Thanks for Everything! (dir. Stuart Sox)
Honorable mention, Rising Star Award: Angelica Hale from American Reject (dir. Marlo Hunter)

Best Cinematography Prize (Louisiana Feature)

The winner of this category will be awarded a $10,000 camera package from PRG.

Winner: Ella Hatamian and Stiven Luka for their work in Nobody May Come

Best Narrative Short

Academy-Award® Qualifying Category*

The winner of Best Narrative Short will receive $2500 in Kodak film stock, Final Draft 10 software, and Showbiz budgeting software from Media Services.

Jurors: Sara Keiner (Filmmaker), Adam Piron (Sundance Institute), and Alec Ring (Cinetic)
Jury Award Winner: In Sudden Darkness (dir. Tayler Montague)

*The jury-winning film automatically qualifies for consideration for the Annual Academy Awards® without the standard theatrical run, provided the film otherwise complies with the Academy rules.

Best Documentary Short

Academy-Award® Qualifying Category*

The winner of the juried award for Best Documentary Short will receive Showbiz budgeting software from Media Services.

Jurors: Chris Hastings (Mailchimp Studios), Abby Sun (MIT Open Documentary Lab), and Christina Humphrey (World Channel)
Jury Award Winner: Spirit never dies, only transitions. (dir. Logan L. Burroughs)
Honorable Mention: Coby and Stephen Are in Love (dir. Carlo Nasisse and Luka Yuanyuan Yang)

*The jury-winning film automatically qualifies for consideration for the Annual Academy Awards® without the standard theatrical run, provided the film otherwise complies with the Academy rules.

Helen Hill Award for Animation

Academy-Award® Qualifying Category*

The winner of this award will receive a year-long license of Harmony Premium and a year-long license of Storyboard Pro.

Jurors: Jordan Askins (Development Team at Adult Swim), Carrie McClain (Film Critic, Scholar), and Nara Normande (Winner of #NOFF2019 Animated Shorts Jury Prize with “Guaxuma”)
Jury Award Winner: Umbilical (dir. Danski Tang)
Honorable Mention: Flesh (dir. Camila Kater)

*The jury-winning film automatically qualifies for consideration for the Annual Academy Awards® without the standard theatrical run, provided the film otherwise complies with the Academy rules.

Best Louisiana Short

The winner of this award will receive a $5,000 Storyville Post package, software for Final Draft 10, and Showbiz budgeting software from Media Services.

Jurors: Diliana Alexander (FilmGate Miami), Michael A. Betts II (Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in N.C.), and Harrison Glaser (Stage32)
Jury Award Winner: Change (dir. Abraham Felix)
Special Jury Mention:

The Way Station (dir. Jason Affolder)
The Cut (dir. Zac Manuel)

Best Cinematography Prize (Louisiana Short)

Additionally, this prize will be presented to a Louisiana Short with a $10,000 camera package from PRG.

Winner: Lasse T for their work in Pillars

Experimental Shorts Competition

Jurors: Richard Fung (Filmmaker), Sophia Nahli Allison (Filmmaker), and Madeleine Hunt Ehrlich (Filmmaker)
Jury Award Winner: CHOR(E)S (dir. Danielle Deadwyler)

Reel South Short Award

The winners of this award will each receive $1,000 and the opportunity to screen as part of Reel South’s programming slate.

Winners:

Le Boulanger (dir. Stanley Thomas)
A Fine Girl (dir. Darcy McKinnon and Biliana Grozdanova)

SOUTH PITCH COMPETITION WINNERS

Narrative Open Call

The winner of this award will receive a $2000 cash award, plus $40,000 post-production package from Kyotocolor and software for Final Draft 10. The runner-up will receive a cash prize of $500.

Winner: MJ Eastin and Rebecca Isbill Davis with the project ‘E Is For:’
Runner-up: Sharon Arteaga with the project ‘In Tow’

IF/Then Documentary Short Film Pitch Awards

The winner of this award receives a $25,000 production grant, and the runner-up receives a $5,000 production grant.

Winner: Rachelle Salnave with ‘Madame Pipi’
Runner Up: Zac Manuel and Marta Rodriguez Maleck with ‘Nonstop’

Jurors

Narrative Features Competition

The winner of this award will receive a $15,000 Panavision camera rental package and a $13,500 Light Iron Post Production Services.

Jury

Kyle Alex Brett
Kyle Alex Brett is a Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer, working as in-house counsel at Netflix for the Original Independent Film team. Previously, Kyle worked as a talent lawyer in New York City. He graduated from Howard University School of Law and received his Bachelor of Arts from Connecticut College. When he’s not working, he’s watching old movies or learning how to skateboard. He can be reached across all social media platforms through his handle, @kyalbr.

Numa Perrier
Born in Haiti and raised in small-town USA, Numa Perrier has emerged as an exciting voice in the film/TV landscape.  Her early work includes starring in and writing the hit web series, The Couple, which scored a deal at HBO. She co-founded the pioneering streaming platform Black&Sexy TV serving as a creator, director, and showrunner on over a dozen series including Roomieloverfriends (produced by Issa Rae) and Hello Cupid (co-created by Lena Waithe) She then moved on to her feature film directorial debut, Jezebel, which premiered at SXSW 2019 and is distributed on Netflix via Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing. Numa is the recipient of the Best Feature and Best Director Awards at the American Black Film Festival, is a Root100 alumni and is also counted as one of the all women directing team on Queen Sugar. Numa recently signed on to direct her first studio film, The Perfect Find with Netflix starring Gabrielle Union. In front of the camera Numa recurred as guest star on Showtime’s irreverent comedy SMILF in an critically acclaimed story arc about immigrants.  Numa is currently starring in the surreal thriller Fuzzyhead alongside Rain Phoenix, and is in development on numerous projects including TOXIC, an erotic thriller series and her follow up feature, Blood Mother, via her boutique production arm House of Numa.

Bilge Ebiri
Bilge Ebiri is the film critic for Vulture.

Documentary Features Competition

The winner of this category will receive Final Draft 10, and Showbiz budgeting software.

Jury

Martine Granby
Martine Granby is a visual storyteller. She has worked as a documentarian, producer, editor, video journalist and educator for The New York Times, Kartemquin Films, Kindling Group, City Bureau, BRIC TV and Global Girl Media, an organization empowering young women with the tools for visual journalism to tell their own stories. As a Producer with the Brooklyn-based BRICTV, Martine co-produced and directed the Emmy-winning #BHeard documentary series, #BHeard Town Halls covering timely issues from #MeToo, Islamophobia to mental health as a civil right. She also produced the weekly magazine-style show Going In With Brian Vines centered around local Brooklyn issues. She is currently the Producer of Workshops & Labs at UnionDocs; a non-profit Center for Documentary Art dedicated towards collaborating with activist artists, experimental media-makers, and journalists creating urgent expressions of the human experience, practical and compelling visions for the future. Martine is a part-time lecturer at The New School’s Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, where she teaches Ethics & History of Journalism to undergraduate students. She serves on the board of ART WORKS Projects’, a non-profit who uses design and the arts to raise awareness and educate the public about significant human rights issues. As a fellow with Kartemquin Film’s Diverse Voices in Docs program, she started production on her current film THE MASK THAT GRINS AND LIES; a meditative documentary feature uncovering intergenerational silence shrouding black women’s mental illness. Martine attended Mount Holyoke College where she received her bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Film Studies. She holds an M.A. from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and is a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia.

Davin Agatep
Davin Agatep is the current Associate Manager of Initiatives at ITVS. He previously served as the Media Fund Manager at the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM).

Mustafa Uzuner
Mustafa Uzuner is a film curator, producer, and distributor based in Montreal. After graduating from Concordia University with a Masters in Film Studies, he stationed himself by the Golden Horn where he worked as Programming Director for the !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival from 2011-2018. He also curated and helped design the artistic vision of Kaunas International Film Festival from 2018-2020. In 2016, he launched his own Montreal-based boutique distribution company, Acéphale, with the aim of drawing attention to contemporary and cutting-edge cinema from around the world. His producer credits include Belonging (2019), which premiered at Berlinale’s Forum and played at over 30 festivals including New Directors/New Films and Sarajevo Film Festival, A Topography of Memory (2019) by Burak Çevik, and Drink Some Darkness (2020) by Trevor Mowchun. He is currently working as a freelance curator for The Sundance Institute Documentary Fund.

Louisiana Features Competition

The best Louisiana Feature film will receive a $15,000 Panavision camera rental package and (1) Free Screening at Light Iron NOLA’s facility.

Jury

Julie Haberstick
Over her career, Julie Haberstick has worked on productions for Showtime, DreamWorks, and Annapurna, among others, including Lincoln, Chicago Fire, Bones, and Homeland. As a filmmaker, she writes and directs intimate journey stories. When not on set, she supports creative professionals via Citric Focus Consulting, her organization that helps others refocus their written work around a core mission. She also serves as the Managing Director of Programming for the streaming and online festival branches of Seed&Spark, for which the company objective is to connect people through stories that matter.

April Dobbins
April Dobbins is a writer and filmmaker based in Miami. She is currently at work on her feature documentary Alabamaland, which explores the lives of three Black women and their evolving relationships to their 688-acre family farm through the years. She was a 2017 Sundance Institute Knight Fellow and a recipient of the Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellowship and Wyncote Filmmaker Fellowship. Her short films have screened at festivals across the globe. She has received support from Sundance Institute, Southern Documentary Fund, ITVS, Fork Films, International Documentary Association, and Firelight Media, to name a few. Her writings and photographs have been published in a number of places, including Miami New Times, Sugarcane Magazine, Calyx Journal, Cimarron Review, Philadelphia City Paper and Harvard’s Transition magazine. In 2018, she was awarded an Ellies Creator Award by Oolite Arts. Her work is deeply rooted in Black southern experiences, which she detailed in “Home is Where the Heart of the Story Is,” one of her TEDx talks. She serves as the Director of Prestigious Awards and Fellowships at the University of Miami. She holds master’s degrees in international relations and motion pictures and is currently a graduate student at Harvard University.

Kia Brooks
Kia Brooks is the Deputy Director at the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP). She oversees the organization’s programming, membership and marketing. Prior to her role as deputy Director, Kia was the Director, Membership & Strategic Partnerships at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP. She oversaw the Media Center’s general operations, event programming, membership and strategic partnerships. Before joining IFP, she worked in publicity and special events for over five years at revered companies such as Focus Features, Tribeca Film Festival, and Oscilloscope Laboratories working on theatrical releases, awards campaigns and special events titles include Dallas Buyers Club, Anna Karenina, Moonrise Kingdom, Time is Illmatic, among others. Kia received a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Public Communications from American University. Kia loves connecting people and building community.

Documentary Shorts Competition*

*Oscar®-qualifying category: The recipient of the Jury Award will be eligible for consideration for Academy Awards® without the standard theatrical run, provided the film otherwise complies with Academy rules.

The winner of the juried award for Best Documentary Short will also receive the Showbiz budgeting software.

Jury

Chris Hastings
Chris Hastings is Executive Producer and Editorial Manager at World Channel. His passion for television started at age 10 when he produced Kids News, a daily news show at his elementary school outside Philadelphia. After college, he became a founding team member in the development and production of Black Entertainment Television’s award-winning BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley. At WGBH, Chris has worked with children television’s program ZOOM and the WGBH Lab, an innovative incubator for up-and-coming filmmakers. Chris joined WORLD Channel in 2011, where he co-created the award-winning documentary series America ReFramed, Local, USA, and Doc World, and provided editorial oversight to the other original series on WORLD. Series in Chris’s portfolio have won many awards, including a Peabody Award and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award. Chris is committed to developing a diverse pool of filmmakers and storytellers. He’s a regular collaborator with the National Black Programming Consortium, the Center for Asian American Media, Pacific Islanders in Communications, the National Association of Latino Independent Producers, and Vision Maker Media, and has served as content reader and reviewer on various open calls. In 2016, Chris became a Rockwood JustFilms Fellow and was awarded WGBH’s Margaret and Hans Rey Curious George in-house producer fellowship. Chris holds a Bachelor of Arts from Kutztown State University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Arts in film from American University. He is also an alumnus of The Partnership Inc., a Boston-based leadership incubator for executives of color from across the country.

Abby Sun
Abby Sun is an artist, film programmer, and researcher at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, where she is a graduate student in Comparative Media Studies and edits Immerse. Abby has bylines in Film Comment, Filmmaker Magazine, Film Quarterly, Hyperallergic, and MUBI’s Notebook, among other publications. She has served on juries for Palm Springs and the IDA Documentary Awards. Abby has reviewed grants and applications for the National Endowment for the Arts, SFFILM, Center for Asian American Media, LEF Foundation, Sundance Catalyst, If/Then Shorts, and spoken on panels at TIFF, NYFF, Getting Real, and other film festivals. Her latest short film, “Cuba Scalds His Hand” (co-directed with Daniel Garber), premiered at Maryland Film Festival in 2019. Most recently, Abby is the Curator of the DocYard and co-curated My Sight is Lined with Visions: 1990s Asian American Film & Video with Keisha Knight. She previously held positions as the senior editor for Nat. Brut and programmer for True/False Film Fest and Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.

Christina Humphrey
Christina Humphrey leads licensing and acquisition for Mailchimp Studios. Previously, she spent over 5 years as a programmer for the Atlanta Film Festival.

Narrative Shorts Competition*

The winner of Best Narrative Short will receive $2500 in Kodak film stock, Final Draft 10 software, and Showbiz budgeting software.

Jury

Sara Keiner
Sara Kiener’s directorial debut, The Shawl, premiered at The 2020 Sundance Film Festival, won a Special Jury Prize at SXSW and is currently playing in virtual film festivals across the US. Sara is currently developing The Shawl into an animated series and is producing a documentary about the Minneapolis Police. Over the last 4 years, Sara was the Head of Distribution at Cinereach where she championed projects like MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A., I Am Not Your Negro and We The Animals. Prior to Cinereach, Sara was Co-Founder of Film Presence where she supervised national outreach campaigns for movies like 20 Feet from Stardom, Obvious Child and Citizenfour.

Adam Piron
Adam Piron is a filmmaker, film programmer and currently the Associate Director of Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program. Along with filmmakers Sky Hopinka, Adam Khalil, and Alexandra Lazarowich, he is also a co-founder of COUSIN, a collective created to support Indigenous artists experimenting with and pushing the boundaries of the moving image. He is a member of the Sundance Film Festival’s Short Film Programming Team and most recently served as Film Curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He has also been a Programmer for AFI DOCS, AFI FEST and the imagineNative Film and Media Arts Festival. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees and Programming Committee of The Flaherty, an organization devoted to building community around the moving image and the longest continuously running annual film event in North America devoted to creative non-fiction.

Alec Ring
Alec Ring is a manager at Cinetic Media representing writer, director, and multi-hyphenates across all media. He works across the sales, finance, and consulting teams for the company as well. Alec graduated from Dartmouth College with degrees in Economics and Hispanic Studies, and is from Baltimore, Maryland. He is now based in New York.

Experimental Shorts Competition

Jury

Richard Fung
Richard Fung was born in Trinidad and is based in Toronto. His documentaries and experimental videos include Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Asians (1984), My Mother’s Place (1990), Sea in the Blood (2000), Jehad in Motion (2007), Dal Puri Diaspora (2012) and Nang by Nang (2018). Richard’s essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, and he is the co-author with Monika Kin Gagnon of 13: Conversations on Art and Cultural Race Politics. Among other honours, Richard received the 2000 Bell Canada Award for outstanding achievement in video art and the 2015 Kessler Award from CUNY for significant contribution to LGBTQ Studies. He is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Art at OCAD University.

Sophia Nahli Allison
Sophia Nahli Allison is a black queer radical dreamer, experimental documentary filmmaker + photographer. She disrupts conventional documentary methods by reimagining the archives and excavating hidden truths. A meditation of the spirit, her work conjures ancestral memories to explore the intersection of fiction and non-fiction storytelling. She is a 2020 United States Artists Fellow in Film, was named the 2017 Student Video Photographer of the Year by the White House News Photographers Association, and was a 2014 Chicago 3Arts Award recipient. She has held residencies at MacDowell, The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France., The Center for Photography at Woodstock, and POV Spark’s African Interactive Art Residency. Her short documentary A Love Song For Latasha was released on Netflix this September and premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and received the Grand Jury Documentary Prize at AFI Fest, along with Best Documentary Short awards at the New Orleans Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, and more including an IDA Documentary Awards Nomination. She received her Master’s Degree from UNC and is currently working on her long term project Dreaming Gave Us Wings.

Madeleine Hunt Ehrlich
Madeleine Hunt Ehrlich is a filmmaker and artist who has completed projects in Kingston, Jamaica, Miami, Florida and extensively in the five boroughs of New York City. Her work has screened all over the world including at the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of Art in New York and in Film Festivals such as New Orleans Film Festival, Doclisboa and Blackstar Film Festival. She has been featured in Essence Magazine, Studio Museum’s Studio Magazine, ARC Magazine, BOMBLOG, and Guernica Magazine, Small Axe journal among others. She is the recipient of a 2020 San Francisco Film Society Rainin Grant, a 2019 Rema Hort Mann Award, a 2019 UNDO fellowship and grant, a 2015 TFI ESPN Future Filmmaker Award and a 2014 Princess Grace Award in film. Her work has been recognized by the Time Inc. Black Girl Magic Emerging Director’s series, the National Magazine (ELLIE) Awards and she has received grants from the National Black Programming Consortium and Glassbreaker Films. Madeleine has a degree in Film and Photography from Hampshire College and has an MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University. She is currently an Assistant Professor in film and television production at CUNY – Queens College in New York City.

Louisiana Shorts Competition

The winner of this award will receive a $5,000 Storyville Post package, software for Final Draft 10, and Showbiz budgeting software.

Jury

Diliana Alexander
Diliana Alexander is the co-founder and Executive Director of FilmGate Miami and FilmGate Interactive, and she heads the Downtown Media Center, the first-ever creative space for media makers in South Florida. She began her career as a producer and assistant director at CBC, HGTV, the Learning Channel, and Showtime. She studied international relations, finance, and economics at McGill University and later at the University of Toronto. She completed her MFA in film production at the Miami International University of Art and Design. With a strong focus on the intersection of art, science, and technology, Diliana is currently directing and producing Stiltsville VR, a virtual reality experience using the Oculus Quest about the seven iconic houses in Biscayne Bay.

Michael A. Betts II
Michael Anthony Betts II is a native North Carolinia and a sound designer, podcaster, audio installation and exhibition curator, editor, and community activist. He currently serves as the Courses Director for the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received an MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke.

Harrison Glaser
For nearly a decade Harrison Glaser has been immersed in the professional film industry. He served as Austin Film Festival’s Film Competition Director for five years, where he programmed the festival’s films and discovered his passion for identifying deserving projects and championing exciting and unrecognized talent. During Harrison’s tenure as AFF’s Film Competition Director, over 100 films he programmed went on to secure distribution, six short films were later nominated for Oscars, and one that he qualified ultimately won the Academy Award. Harrison currently serves as the Director of Education for Stage 32, the world’s largest online platform that connects and educates film, TV and new media creatives and professionals worldwide. Through this role, Harrison works with countless writers, directors, producers, managers, agents, executives, and other industry professionals to put together regular webinars and classes that educate and empower thousands. Harrison continues to serve on festival juries and moderate panels and film Q&A sessions for multiple film festivals around the country.

Animated Shorts Competition*

Helen Hill Award for Animation –– The winner of this award will receive a year-long license of Harmony Premium and a year-long license of Storyboard Pro.

Jury

Jordan Askins
Jordan Askins has been a part of the development team at Adult Swim for the last four years. She currently works on Rick and Morty, Three Busy Debras, Primal, among others. She is a graduate of Barnard College.

Carrie McClain
Carrie McClain is a Californian native who navigates the world as writer, editor, and media scholar who firmly believes that we can and we should critique the media we consume. Everything under the sun from film to comics to video games to professional wrestling strikes her fancy. She has served as a panelist speaking on cultural appropriation, the media we consume and sisterhood in fandom at Geek Girl Con in Seattle. As a recipient of the 2019 Hollywood Foreign Press Association Creative Promise Fellowship, she created a series of videographic essays on films featuring Black girls and Black women centered in narratives by directors who are women identifying as Black and/or belong to the African Diaspora. Now available online, it is titled, “#FUBU For Us By Us: Depictions of Black Girls and Women On Film By Black Women.” She’s mostly interested in analyzing the creative work that includes art, literature and cinema of people from marginalized communities with an emphasis on women of color, especially Black women. She once aided Cindi Mayweather in avoiding capture. Shuri is her favorite Disney Princess. Nowadays you can usually find her buried under a pile of Josei manga. See more of her on Twitter as @divineblkpearl and at https://carriemcclain.carrd.co/

Nara Normande
Nara Normande (1986) comes from the Northeastern region of Brazil. She co-directed with Tião the short film Sem Coração, which won the Illy Award at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2014. In 2018, her animated short Guaxuma, co-produced with France, mixes several animation techniques connected to sand and was selected to Annecy and TIFF’s competition, winning several awards including Best Animation at SXSW and at New Orleans Film Festival. She is developing her first feature, Heartless, to be co-directed with Tião and produced by Emilie Lesclaux (Bacurau) in Brazil and co-produced by Les Valseurs in France and Komplizen Film in Germany.