JURORS

The Florida Film Festival Juries are comprised of three members each for Dramatic Features, Documentaries, Shorts, and Student Works. Our juries are made up of filmmakers, journalists, and industry professionals.

American Independent Competition
Narrative Features Jury

Raymond De Felitta, director of the hilarious and heartbreaking Two Family House, was born in New York City, grew up in LA, fled for New York again which has since become his home when he's not fleeing back to LA trying to get another movie made. He attended Bard College (BA in Lit) and received and MFA in Directing from the American Film Institute. His AFI thesis short, "Bronx Cheers" was nominated for an Academy Award in 1991, and his screenplay "Begin The Beguine" won a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting the following year. He's written screenplays for many major companies, among them HBO, Universal Studios, Largo Entertainment, Lakeshore Entertainment, RKO Pictures and others. A lifelong jazz pianist, his songs appear on his self-produced CD Movies 'Til Dawn and he has just completed a new CD, Monday Morning Quarterbacks, a duet collaboration with De Felitta on piano and Peter Bogdanovich on vocals. His novel, City Desk, is self published and available via XLIBRAS.

Dave Karger has been covering movies, television, and music for Entertainment Weekly since 1995. He's written cover stories on Denzel Washington, Julianne Moore, Will Smith and Halle Berry, and Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck, as well as features on Hilary Swank, Nick Nolte, Dennis Quaid, Rupert Everett, Tobey Maguire, Heath Ledger, Camryn Manheim, Laura Linney, and Ian McKellen. Karger is also a regular contributor to the Today show on NBC, where he discusses box office, the Oscars, and movie-related trends. Before that he served as a weekly contributor to CNNfn's Biz Buzz and has appeared on such local and national television programs as Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, Good Morning America Sunday, The Early Show, MTV's Total Request Live, and E! News Daily. He's a graduate of Duke University.

Diana Williams is the producer of critically acclaimed films such as Our Song, the ground-breaking mock-documentary The Love Machine, and Nice Guys Sleep Alone. She has also produced award-winning documentaries, including the Emmy-winning Sylvia Drew Ivie, and the Cine-Golden Eagle winning Another First Step. Through her company, Exit 5 Entertainment, Diana is currently in development on All Fall Down (written and to be directed by Matt Tauber, in partnership with Sly Dog Films; Sundance Lab 2002), Black Tiger (written and to be directed by Gordon Eriksen) and I Like to Watch (written and to be directed by Stephen Kijak). In 2001, Diana was nominated for the prestigious Motorola Producer Award by the Independent Feature Project/West Spirit Awards. She is currently a National Board Member for the Minnesota Film Fund, an Advisory Board Member for the New York Latino International Film Festival and a member of the Board of Advisors for Stellar Network, a new filmmaker organization based in NY. Diana began her career as an Assistant Director upon graduation from the DGA's Assistant Director's Training Program. Her feature film credits include The Brady Bunch, Clueless, Soap Dish, My Fellow Americans, Nick of Time and Dante's Peak; television credits include the multiple Emmy winning The Larry Sanders Show. Diana also served as the head of development for Fresh Produce Films.

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American Independent Competition
Documentaries Jury

Alan Berliner's award-winning films, The Sweetest Sound, Nobody's Business, Intimate Stranger and The Family Album have been broadcast all over the world, honored at top international film festivals, and purchased for the permanent collections of many film societies, festivals, libraries, colleges and museums. A recipient of Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Jerome Foundation Fellowships, Berliner has received multiple grants from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA and in 1998, won his third career Emmy Award (he has also received six nominations) from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He was also the recipient of a Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association in 1993, and was honored with a "Storyteller Award" from the 2001 Taos Talking Picture Film Festival. In June, 2002, he received a "Jewish Cultural Achievement Award in the Arts" from the National Foundation For Jewish Culture. Retrospectives of his films have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography and at film festivals and cinema showcases all over the world. He is currently a faculty member at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where he teaches a course entitled, "Experiments in Time, Light and Motion."

Mary Litkovich is currently a film publicist for Jeremy Walker + Associates in New York. Her most recent projects include Tim Blake Nelson's The Grey Zone, Roger Avary's The Rules of Attraction, and photographer Sam Jones's I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, the feature length documentary about the experimental rock band Wilco. Litkovich began working in publicity at mPRm Public Relations in New York, where she created and executed release campaigns for such high profile specialized films as David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, Todd Fields's In The Bedroom, Bill Paxton's Frailty, Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, and the Oscar-nominated documentaries Promises and Dancemaker. As a unit publicist, Litkovich has worked on such films as Darren Aronofsky's Requiem For A Dream, Victor Nunez's Coastlines and Christopher McQuarrie's Way Of The Gun. Her festival experience includes the Sundance, Toronto, and New York Film Festivals.

Kelly M. DeVine acquires shorts and independent features for the Independent Film Channel, managed and operated by IFC Companies, bringing the best of independent film to viewers uncut and uncensored 24 hours a day. She works together with her colleagues at IFC Productions and IFC FILMS, divisions of IFC Entertainment, to bring films such as Lost in LaMancha to audiences under the IFC banner. With the channel for 5 years, she worked previously with the film production division.

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American Independent Competition
Shorts Jury

Michael Ellenbogen is a Film Analyst at Focus Features where he studies the competitive theatrical environment and provides his boss, Jack Foley, with vital statistics that help him plan the best release strategies for Focus Features' releases such as Gosford Park, Traffic, and The Pianist. As a producer, Mr. Ellenbogen's first feature film, Ilya Chaiken's Margarita Happy Hour, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001. It was released theatrically in 2002 and is now available on Sundance Channel or in video stores. Mr. Ellenbogen is currently developing other personal projects in the film, media, and art worlds. Mr. Ellenbogen was Director of Programming for the Manchester Film Festival (VT, 2002), on the programming committees of the Gen Art Film Festival (NYC, 2002), Jury Member at the Woodstock Film Festival (2002), and a programmer of the Shorts International Film Festival (NYC, 1997-2001). In 1997 he distributed Larry Fessenden's film Habit across the country.

Laura Levine's first documentary short, Peekaboo Sunday, had its world premiere at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, and her first doc feature, Digging for Dutch, is currently making the festival rounds, having recently screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Best known for her photographs of music personalities, from R.E.M. to Bjork, Levine has also directed music videos, created an animated pilot for MTV, and as an illustrator has published two children's books, Wig! (with the B-52's) and Shake, Rattle and Roll: The Founders of Rock and Roll. A self-taught artist, her award-winning illustrations have appeared in Time, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker, in books and on CDs (Richard Thompson's Rumour and Sigh, Verve's Essential Jazz Series). Levine's paintings have been exhibited at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the House of Blues, the Buddy Holly Center, and the EMP, and are in the private collections of several notable art aficionados with impeccable taste including Nora Ephron, Lisa Bonet, Harry Shearer & Judith Owen, Laurie & Larry David, and Cher. A graduate of Harvard University--where she studied cultural anthropology--Levine is the proprietress of Homer & Langley's Mystery Spot, an antique/junk/oddities shop in Phoenicia, N.Y.

Stephen Schaefer is a film critic and entertainment writer for The Boston Herald and a contributor to USA Today and Entertainment Weekly. He has been writing about movies for nearly three decades and has interviewed practically every important star and director of the last 20 years, from Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, and Steven Spielberg to Julia Roberts, Jennifer Connelly, Judi Dench, and Isabelle Huppert. He has appeared on Access Hollywood, A&E's Biography series and other TV programs as a commentator and critic. Author of a well-reviewed 1986 Hollywood spoof, The Autobiography of Marla Del Marr as told to Stephen Schaefer (St. Martin's Press), he regularly covers film festivals around the world, including Cannes, Venice, and Berlin. Born in South Dakota, raised in Michigan, a graduate of Marquette University, he lives in Manhattan.

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Student Works Jury

Tracy Frenkel, a Central Floridian since 1982, is a member of the Screen Actor's Guild and works professionally as an actor, film producer, director, production manager, and casting director. Acting credits include Things Change, Second City, Nickelodeon's Welcome Freshmen, HBO's From The Earth To The Moon, Safe Harbor, dozens of television commercials, and over 100 live industrial performances. Currently, he has a recurring role on Nickelodeon's Noah Knows Best and has been seen most recently on Slime Time Live. He has been an acting coach and a teacher of improvisation and on-camera technique since 1989. Tracy is currently working with several different independent film companies in developing and producing feature film projects to be produced, cast and shot in central Florida. He has already produced, cast, and worked on The Falkland Man, Shallow Waters, Dead Air, Sacred Seal, Deadly Species and The Brothers.

Leslie Halpern is the author of Dreams on Film: The Cinematic Struggle Between Art and Science and co-author of the literacy book Windows to the World, which won awards from Project Literacy U.S. Task Force and The Florida Literacy Coalition. She is currently working on a date movie guidebook to be published next year by Cooper Square Press. Leslie writes a column called "Indies" about independent films for the monthly trade publication Markee Magazine. She also has written more than 1,000 magazine and newspaper articles for publications including The Hollywood Reporter, Daily Variety, Location Update, Storytelling Magazine and The Orlando Sentinel. She is the 1997 grand prize winner of "The Mentor Award," a national essay contest about personal mentoring experiences, and received her MLS degree from Rollins College and B.A. in Journalism from the University of Kentucky.

With a degree in Film and Television from the University of Central Florida, Katrinka Van Deventer set out to pursue a career in her own community. During her eight years at the Metro Orlando Film Commission, Katrinka's credits included Superboy, Problem Child 2, Rosewood, and From the Earth to the Moon. Today she is Office Manager for the Universal Studios Florida Production Group, where she oversees the needs of clients who produce film, television, music videos, print, and commercial projects in the company's nine Sound Stages, more than 100 back lot locations, and a 727-aircraft configured for video and film production. Katrinka is a member of Women In Film, indulges her ongoing passion for classic movies, and is currently renovating her Winter Garden home under the supervision of her two cats Sabrina & Charlie.

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