MEET THE 2018 JURORS!
We are pleased to announce that distinguished filmmakers Cecelia Condit, Rea Tajiri, and Ephraim Asili will comprise the Jury for the 56th Ann Arbor Film Festival in March 2018!
Cecelia Condit
Artist Cecelia Condit addresses the fears and displacement that exist between ourselves and society, ourselves and the natural world. Condit has shown internationally in festivals, museums, and alternative spaces; she is represented in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and Centre Georges Pompidou, and Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris, France. Her numerous awards include grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, American Film Institute, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mary L. Nohl Foundation. She is professor emerita in the Department of Film, Video, Animation and New Genres at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA. Her work screened in the 19th (1981) and 55th AAFF.
See Cecilia's website HERE.
Rea Tajiri
(PC: Ryan Collerd)
Rea Tajiri's films straddle documentary and art film genres, finding new ways of storytelling that embrace the murky spaces of memory, history, and public consciousness. She studied at the California Institute of the Arts where she earned an MFA in Post-Studio Art.
Strawberry Fields, Rea’s debut feature film, focuses on a young Japanese-American woman coming to terms with her family’s legacy in the WWII U.S. concentration camps during the turbulent and transformational 1970’s. The film had its European debut at the 54th Venice Film Festival, and premiered as one of the ‘Class of ’97’ at the San Francisco Asian American International Film Festival.
Rea’s previous works were included in several Whitney Biennials. Her groundbreaking film History and Memory won the International Documentary Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award. Rea has received numerous grants for her work including two Rockefeller Media Fellowships grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, NYSCA and New York Foundation for the Arts. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Film Media Arts Department at Temple University.
Check out her Vimeo page.
Ephraim Asili
(PC: Mireya Acierto/Getty Images)
Ephraim Asili is a filmmaker, DJ, and traveler whose work focuses on the African diaspora as a cultural force. His films have screened in festivals and venues all over the world, including the New York Film Festival; Toronto International Film Festival; Ann Arbor Film Festival; San Francisco International Film Festival; Milano Film Festival; International Film Festival Rotterdam; MoMA PS1, NY; LAMOCA, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; and the Whitney Museum, NY. As a DJ, Asili can be heard on his radio program In The Cut on WGXC, or live at his monthly dance party Botanica. Asili currently resides in Hudson, NY, and is an Associate Professor in the Film and Electronic Arts Department at Bard College. He won the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker for his film Many Thousands Gone at the 53rd AAFF and screened another film at 54th AAFF.
Check out his Vimeo page.
