Kireet Khurana is a filmmaker, storyteller, animator and ad-film director. Kireet has won more than 30 awards, including 6 prestigious President’s National Awards for his films, the first of which he won in 1995 for the animated film Mahagiri. He has made over 12 short films, and over 500 ad. He is the director of India’s first film combining live-action and 3D animation called Toonpur Ka Super Hero, His 2018 feature film T for Taj Mahal was launched at the Festival de Cannes in 2018, and premiered at the London Indian Film Festival. It won the Best Feature Film Audience Award and Best Story Award at the DC South Asian Film Festival. Kireet has worked on many award-winning public service campaigns, including a series of four short films for Childline India Foundation on child labor, child marriage, corporal punishment and child sexual abuse. He has served on the Jury of many international awards including National Film Awards, MIFF, FICCI-BAF Awards and PIFF, Pune.
Born in Sofia, Bulgaria. Graduated in Film and TV Graphics from the High School of Applied Arts in Prague with animated film Sonata Facile. During the same period illustrated a book of Bulgarian fables, published by Alba-tros in Prague, and then started as a animator and director at the Sofia Animated Film Studio in Bulgaria. Made “The Little Girl, the Kitten and the Wall Clock”, in 1984 which was presented in Annecy. His illustrations are published in Bulgaria and Switzerland. Exhibitions of his drawings are presented in Serbia and Slovakia. In 2018 he made “Roses in the Night”, entirely made with water colors on paper and awarded with Jameson Short Film Award. Member of Selection Committees and Juries at many festivals in Europe and Asia. Kunchev is a Guest professor at Jilin Animation Institute in China and Lecturer at New Bulgarian University in Sofia. He is President of ASIFA Bulgaria and Board Member of ASIFA International.
A National Award-winning filmmaker and film critic, Utpal Borpujari is a former journalist and alumni of IIT- Roorkee. His fiction debut “Ishu” (Assamese), produced by Children’s Film Society, India (CFSI), has and won the National Award for Best Assamese film at the 65th National Film Awards and a Special Jury Award in 10th Bengaluru International Film Festival, 2018. In 2003, he had won the Swarna Kamal for the Best Film Critic at the 50th National Film Awards. Borpujari has served on several film juries, including MIFF, National Film Awards, Indian Panorama and many other film festivals. He is also active as a film festival organizer and curator, and has extensively written on cinema, politics, society, literature and culture.
Thomas Waugh, teacher, writer, programmer, critic and activist, is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the School of Cinema, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. His publications on documentary film have ranged from the collections Show Us Life: Toward a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary (1984) and I Confess! Constructing the Sexual Self in the Internet Age (2019) to the monograph The Right to Play Oneself: Looking Back on Documentary (2011).
A K Bir is a renowned director – cinematographer. He received a Diploma in Cinematography from FTII, Pune in 1969. He shot and directed a number of advertising, short and documentary films and won a number of awards for them including from IDPA and Cannes. A K Bir also handled camera in the first unit of the Oscar winning film Gandhi. Six of his feature films which he has scripted, photographed and directed have won national awards for the best film. He has won three national awards for best cinematography. Some of his awards winning films are – Adi Mimamsa, Lavanya Preeti, Aranyaka, Shesha Drushti (as director) and 27 Down, Daasi & Adi Mimansa (as Cinematographer). A K Bir also teaches at the FTII, Pune and SRFTI, Kolkata as an External Expert and Guest Lecturer. He has served as a member of Jury of many international film festivals including Berlin International Film Festival (children’s section), MIFF, ICFF, Lucknow and also was Chairman of the National Award Jury (Non-feature).
Rehina Pereira is an accomplished media professional with over 25 years of experience demonstrating broad-based competencies. She is the Founder/Executive Producer of Verite Productions Pte Ltd, an independent content production company set up in 2000 in Singapore. Under her leadership, the company has won a number of local and international awards. A former journalist/writer with a Bachelors degree in Science, a Masters degree in Communication Studies, and a diploma in film production from New York, Rehina produces content across multiple genres and languages, including documentary, drama, content for children and animation. She specialises in producing print-to-screen adaptations for television. Rehina’s past experience (1989-2000) includes being a writer/journalist, a Special Correspondent for a multi-media company and an Executive Producer for an international media company.
Amrit Gangar is a Mumbai-based film theorist, curator, author and historian. He has also to his credit several short and conceptual films. Over the years, he has worked with a number of Scandinavian and European film makers and artists on documentary films and video installations, including The Five Obstructions by Jorgen Leth and Lars von Trier. As an academic, he has taught at a number of film schools and institutes, including the National Film School in Lodz (Poland), the Danish Film Institute (Denmark), the Industrial Design Centre, IIT, Bombay, etc. Amrit Gangar was Consultant Curator of the National Museum of Indian Cinema (NMIC). He had curated film programs for the Kala Ghoda Artfest (Mumbai), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (Kerala) and many other cultural events. For his curatorial writings and activities, the Cinematographers’ Combine had honored him, as also the International Federation of Cine Clubs had honored him for his work for the Indian film society movement.
She’s a coordinator of the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF) since 2001 and the director of Tokyo Office since 2015, and also works for Cinematrix, a film distribution company based in Tokyo. Hama coordinated programs at YIDFF like “Okinawa: Nexus of Borders: Ryukyu Reflections,””Islands / I Lands-Cinemas in Exile,” “Vista de Cuba” and more. She co-founded the art curatorial unit cimarcus. She also curated the film program for the Aichi Triennale 2016, in which Takamine Go’s feature-length film “Hengyoro (Queer Fish Lane),” the film that Hama produced, premiered
Shaji N Karun is an acclaimed n film director and cinematographer. His debut film Piravi (1988) won the Caméra d’Or – Mention d’honneur at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. He was the premiere chairman of the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, the first academy for film and TV in India and was also the executive chairman of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) from 1998 to 2001. He is best known for his award winning films Piravi (1988), Swaham (1994), Vanaprastham (1999) and Kutty Srank (2009). He won the National Award for Best Director for his debut film Piravi. He also won two Kerala State Film Awards for Best Director for his films Swaham and Vanaprastham. Shaji Karun has served on the Jury of many Indian and International film festivals. Currently, he is the Chairman of Kerala State Film Development
Corporation.
Video artist, filmmaker, composer, Robert Cahen is situated in the boundaries between arts. Researcher, in the1970’s, he is a pioneer in the use of electronic instruments. Graduated from Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris; he brings to video technical and linguistic experimentations from the school of
concrete music. Awarded the Villa Med́ icis Hors les Murs, Grant in 1992, he created in 1995 a permanent video installation in Euralille, Lille.France . Since 1997, his work has been exhibited in international
contemporary art exhibitions: Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain,Greece, China, Vietnam, Argentina, Perou, Colombie, United States, Korea,Japan,…. France. In 2010, a complete Retrospective, Cinema
and Video at le Jeu de Paume, Paris.