Jury 2018 | TLVFest

Israeli Short Feature Competition

Damien Pelliccione
Founder and CEO of Revry, LGBTQ digital content streaming service who reaches over 100 countries across the globe. Damien has 15 year expirience in working on streaming services like Youtube Space.

Cyril Legann
President of Chéries-Chéris, the LGBT film festival in Paris since 2015. Directed the short films – Contradictions (2002), Comme un frere (2005) and Chemin de croix (2007)

Manny De Guerre
Founder and organizer of Side by Side, the LGBT film festival in Saint Petersburg and Moscow for the last 11 years. Although facing hard times and obstacles derived from Putin’s LGBTphobian rules, the festival celebrated their 10th year in 2017.

OFFICIAL COMPETITION: narrative

Hen Yanni
Musician singer-songwriter, DJ, and an actress. Hen worked as professional model at 17 in Paris, London and New York for major companies and magazines such as Dolce and Gabbana, Kenneth Cole, French Vogue, Italian Vogue and ID.
At 21 she came back to Israel to peruse her acting career, among them you could find “Melting Away” – where she played the lead-role of a transgender woman, for whom she won many awards in festivals across the globe and A special award for breakthrough performance in TLVFEST 2012.
These days, Hen is DJing, acting in Veronica Kedar’s “Family” and working on her first music solo project.

Chris Rodriguez
A producer and entertainment attorney with a background in reality television and digital media, Christopher has acted as legal counsel on a myriad of award-winning shows including Shark Tank, Deadliest Catch, Jay Leno’s Garage, The People’s Choice Awards, and Storage Wars. Having represented web television content creators and produced festival-featured digital media productions, Christopher bring his wealth of knowledge in the digital space to Revry as a co-founder and the Chief Business Officer.

Ayelet Robinson
Actress, Musician and Creator. Finished Beit Zvi School of the Performing Arts with honor. Acted in dozens of theatre shows, tv shows, web series and movies. among them – “Next to Normal” (HaBima), “The Office” and “In Tweetment”. Co-Created, Directed and Acted in the web series “Two Girls One Brain”. These days she plays the lead in the musical “Billy Schwartz” and recording her first music album.

Official Competition - documentary

Filipe Matzembacher
Director, Screenwriter and producer of “Tinta Bruta”, the Teddy award winner of Berlinale 2018 and at the Guadalajara International Film Festival 2018. This is his second feature film. His feature debut, Seashore, was screened at the Berlinale Forum. He also created the Brazilian tv show The Nest.

Marcio Reolon
Director, Screenwriter and producer of “Tinta Bruta”, the Teddy award winner of Berlinale 2018 and at the Guadalajara International Film Festival 2018. This is his second feature film. His feature debut, Seashore, was screened at the Berlinale Forum. He also created the Brazilian tv show The Nest.

Anat Even
Documentary filmmaker, her films “Duda”, “compremise”, “detained”, “closure and many more were screened in international film festivals and exhibitions around the world. Anat is the winner of the Ministry of Education prize for the art of cinema and the Landau prize for performing arts. She teaches at the at the school pf audio and visual arts at the Sapir college and editor of theonline magazine “Takriv”.

OFFICIAL COMPETITION: INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILMS

Jeppe Larsen
Jeppe has served as Organizer and Board Member of the oldest running LGBTQ festival MIX Copenhagen Film Festival (2007-2012), and as Programmer at Wicked Queer – Boston LGBT Film Festival (2012-2013). Jeppe holds a PhD degree from the University of Copenhagen (2009).

Shico Menegat
Shico graduated in Social Communication at UFRGS and currently studies Art History. He researches academically the field of performances and also sexuality and gender studies. He is the star of the movie HARD PAINT, his first time as an actor, premiered at the 68th Berlinale, winning Best Film at the Teddy Award and at the CICAE Award.

Karni Haneman
Graduate of the Film and Television department at Tel-Aviv University, where she wrote and directed the short film “Stairway” (2009). Her first feature film, “Fuck You Jessica Blair” (2017), was screened in various film festivals around the world, including TLVFest and Mar del Plata. Currently pursuing her MFA at RCSSD.

The Dan Lachman Short Script Competition

Courtesy of the Gesher Fund

Lee Gilat
Movie Director, Screenwriter, Editor. Lee Gilat was a theater director in Israel and the UK. Lee’s work in Israeli television she developed and wrote the script for the Israeli adaptation of American classic “The Golden Girls”, as well as a number of other series for Israel’s top broadcasting entities.
In cinema, Lee wrote and directed the short film ‘Shalom’ (2011), that won the Note of Honor at the Haifa International Film Festival. Lee’s first feature film ‘Encirclements (2015) premiered at the Cinema South Film Festival and had great critical and audience success Furthermore, Lee has been involved in a wide range of films and TV series as a script editor.

Omer Tobi
The founder and producer of the ARISA- the revolutionary middle eastern theme parties. His short film “Hounds” won the best short in the Haifa film festival , Espen & AFI. His last short film “Set Me as a Seal upon Thine Heart”, produced by the TLVFest, was premiered at the sundance film festival. Tbi is currently working on a new series for Keshet media group and on his debut feature film.

Lior Elefant
Elefant is a feminist activist dedicated to support and promote women in the media industries in Israel.Since 2008 she co-founded and took part in projects related to women and the media. such as “P. See”, the Israeli Women in Film and Television Forum, the Lethal Lesbian film festival and more. She is currently co-CEO of Women in the Picture Association, and working on her Ph.D. in sociology at Ben Gurion University of the Negev

NARRATIVE PITCHING COMPETITION

Courtesy of the Rabinovich Foundation

Adi Ezroni
Actress and film producer for the last 15 years. Together with Mandy Tagger-Brockey she leads Keshet Inetnational’s Feature Production Division in the last year. Before joining KI Tagger and Ezroni managed the independent studio company Spring Pictures, that among their films you could find – A Late Quartet by Yaron Zilberman starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener, Kelly & Cal directed by Jen McGowan and starring Juliette Lewis and Dean directed by Demetri Martin and starring Kevin Kline and Gillian Jacobs. Besides producing, Adi is an actress (Prisoners of War, When Will We Kiss) and a former presenter at the kids tv channel Arutz HaYeladim.

Christine Vachon
Producer of many award-winning films, among them: “Boys Don’t Cry”, “Still Alice”, “Carol”, “Far From Heaven”, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” etc. Christine considers to be one of the important independent producers in the USA and the starter of the New Queer Cinema movement in the early 90’s as the producer of all Todd Haynes’s films.

Tamar Marom
Head of the scripted department in Reshet. As part of her role she is in charge of the comic and draetic series right fron the concept up to the minute tey are broardcast on the reshet screen. Tamar is a screenwriter and screenwriting editor of various TV shows including “Mekimi”, that was sold to AMAZON and HULU. Tamar teaches screenwriting at TAU, the Sam Shpigel school and college of managment.

Yoav Abramovich
Deputy director-general of The Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts, and the Foundation’s artistic director for the support of full-length feature films. Prior to his current position, he’s been the Foundation’s artistic director for student graduation films, and the Foundation’s production manager. Mr. Abramovich has also been a film critic for different Israeli publications, and a screenwriting lecturer.

Avi Nesher
Israeli director screenwriter and producer. His acclaimed films have played a major part in Israeli cinema’s success and rise to international prominence. His work had a major part in forming the Israeli cinema. Nesher has received the Cinematic Excellence Award at the Haifa Film Festival, the Outstanding Achievement Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival and the Landau prize for stage arts.

Damon Cardasis
Director, scriptwriter and co-producer of “Saturday Church“. The movie was selected to Tribeca Film Festival 2017. Damon is a two-time Writer’s Guild Award nominee for the New Media series “Vicky & Lysander”. He produced Rebecca Miller’s “Maggis’s Plan”, starring Greta Gerwig and the documentary film “Arthur Miller: Writer” for HBO. These days Damon is producing the film “She Came to Me” with Nicole Kidman, Steve Carell and Amy Schumer.

Esti Zakheim
Director of Shaham – The Israeli actors guild. An actress in theater, films & television, winner of two Ofir prizes for acting and lecturer in Sapir college, Sderot and “Maale” film school in Jerusalem.

Documentary pitching competition

Courtesy of the Rabinovich Foundation

Pini Schatz
The head programmer of Cinematheque Tel-Aviv since 1997. He is a documentary film director and artistic director of the documentary department at the cinema project (Rabinovich foundation)

Yony Leyser
Leyser is a well known documentary filmmaker. His work deals with race, gender identity, pop-culture and deviant social histories. . His films- William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (2010), Docufiction film Desire Will Set You Free. were screened around the world. His new film “Queercore” that deals with the gay punk phenomena has won best documentary prize at Rio Internaitonal Film Fesitval, Homochrom, Soundwatch, and Merlinka film festivals.

Matt Lambert
Matt Lambert is a Berlin/London-based artist whose intimate stories celebrates the spirit of LGBTQ youth through narrative, documentary, music video and experimental film and photo works. He was selected by the tribeca festival as one of the ten most promising filmmakers.

Lior Shefer
Director and Producer, BA graduate of the Tel Aviv University Department of Film and Television.
Head of the Documentary Department at Reshet Broadcasting.
Selected Filmography: Creator and Director of “GoalStar”, “Master Chef”, “Super Nanny”, “The Biggest Loser”, “Fair & Square” and also produced and wrote the movie “Hamangalistim”

Adi Garti-Naar
Head of the Documentary and current affairs Department at Keshet Broadcasting Since 2012.Adi took part in mant doco-series including the successful the Israeli version of the doco-reality “Married at first sight” Adi started as part of the research team in Telaad network and was content editor at the morning show and the “Friday” edition in channel 10. In 2011 Adi was the content vice president at channel 10.

DIGITAL PROJECT COMPETITION

Afek Testa Launer
An Israeli/Canadian director, producer and Transgender Advocate. Afek has created community based educational Art’s projects in Israel and abroad that focus on empowerment and social justice, most recently, the popular documentary series “spectrums” (2017). Afek has won the Keren Rabinovitch grant for documentary project development (2017) in partnership with TLVfest and has also received the Mifal Ha’pais culture grant for documentary project development (2017). Afek Studied fine arts at Concordia university in Montreal.

Zohar Melinek Ezra
An Israeli/Canadian film director, cinematographer and editor. He has created several internationally acclaimed films and projects, most recently the popular documentary series – “Spectrums” (2017). His film “Nation’s Legacy of Severance” (2014) has won Best Experimental Film at the Toronto Film Week in 2016.. Zohar has a BA in Intermedia arts from the Concordia University in Montreal, has an MA in Film Production from Sapir College and has a Directing Diploma from The Vancouver Film School.

Ron Goldman
The Artistic Director of the NFCT and a renowned documentary film editor in Israel. Ron has worked as a freelance editor and script-writer since graduating from the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in 1998. Specializing in documentary feature films, he has edited and co-scripted the Israeli Academy Award winner Children of the Sun (2007) and many highly acclaimed prize-winning films . Between the years 2006 and 2009, Ron received three awards for Best Documentary Editing from the Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum.