Film Festival Jury
Fall 2020
Vincent Aniceto
Producer
Vincent Aniceto is a producer who has worked on multiple animated series for Hasbro Studios and Cartoon Network. Currently, he is producing The VeggieTales Show, a modern revival of the beloved and classic children’s series, for Trilogy Animation Group.
Aniceto is known for his work on Transformers: Animated, The Powerpuff Girls, and Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends, which he was nominated for 2 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards for “Outstanding Animated Program.”
Lyndon J. Barrois Sr.
Member of the AMPAS (Oscars) Visual Effects Branch
As a member of the AMPAS (Oscars) Visual Effects Branch, Lyndon Barrois boasts a 30-plus year career in art and animation. While a master’s candidate at the California Institute of the Arts, his early stopmotion work won accolades for its unique and innovative procedure utilizing chewing gum wrappers as the medium of choice to create “sportraits” of historic athletic figures and events. Barrois continues use of this technique today, with the added component of shooting and editing his films entirely on the iPhone.
In 1990, after officials from the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museums saw an NBC Today Show segment highlighting Barrois’ wondrous work, Ripley’s curators purchased 15 original sculptures, mostly from his Super Bowl series, and since then has displayed his “sportraits” around the world.
Barrois has garnered additional film credits, directing an episode of The PJs, helping to shape the spectacular, ground-breaking CGI visual effects of The Matrix Trilogy, directing sequences in the Oscar-winning Happy Feet, and supervising the nuanced dinosaur performances in the Tree of Life. In addition, Barrois directed a massive team of animators for Alvin and the Chipmunks, vaulting the franchise into a billion-dollar phenomenon. He has been recognized by the Visual Effects Society Awards and nominated for his work on The Thing as well as for his work as a captain and co-author in the VES industry guidebook. Known for his talent in the field of “virtual reality,” Barrois co-founded Blackthorn Media and has exhibited titles at the international film festivals at Sundance and Tribeca.
A native New Orleanian and HBCU grad of Xavier University of Louisiana, he’s on the boards of The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, CalArts, the AMPAS Museum’s Inclusion Task Force, and is an Epic Games Unreal Engine Fellow.
Deborah Calla
Writer/ Producer and Activist
Deborah Calla is a writer/ producer and activist. She produced the 2020, 2019, 2018 Media Access Awards featuring such talent as Simon Cowell, Jimmy Kimmel, Selma Blair, Whoopi Goldberg, Marlee Matlin and Jane Lynch. Calla also produced Chicano Artists (HBO Latino), an exploration of the contemporary trajectory of Chicano art in Los Angeles, A Beautiful Life (Showtime) a feature film with Jesse Garcia, Debbie Mazar and Angela Sarafyan, You Got Served: Beat the World (Sony), Carnival in Rio (Travel Channel), Lost Zweig (TV Cultura), and Dream House (Paramount) with Justin Theroux. Calla is the writer of Romeo & Juliet (MOW) for Freeform, adapted the limited series Stolen Love (Globo International) for the U.S. market. She co-wrote the film A Beautiful Life (Showtime).
Calla served as the chair of the Producers Guild of America Diversity Committee from 2004 to 2018, co-founder (with producer Lydia Dean Pilcher) of the Producers Guild of America Women’s Impact Network, and the Brazil Chair of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. She is also the CO-CEO of the Media Access Awards a non-profit created by Norman Lear, with the goal to advocate for greater inclusion of people with disabilities in media.
Prior to writing for film and television, Calla wrote two health and fitness books for Putnam and one for Scholastic. She has also written for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and had a column in the Huffington Post for many years. She has lectured, created workshops and presentations on film production and screenwriting in the U.S., Jordan, Brazil and Taiwan among other countries.
Romell Foster-Owens
Filmmaker, Producer, Director, and Writer
Romell Foster-Owens is an award winning Filmmaker, Producer, Director, and Writer of television series, shorts, commercials, and independent feature films. A 20 year veteran of TV and film, Foster-Owens has produced over 100 hours of television, produced 30 films and directed the feature films, Reach For The Skies and The Three Muscatels, both distributed by SONY.
Foster-Owens has the rare distinction of three films, that she produced, being “Official Selections” of the Cannes Film Festival. Other festivals include Sedona, Palm Beach, Pan African International Film Festival, Dances With Films, and the Milan, Madrid and Cleveland International Film Festivals.
Additionally, she produced The Lift, winner of Best Film and Best Director at the Madrid International Film Festival and My Mom And The Girl, winner of the Best Picture and Jury Award at the Connect Film Festival. She produced feature films, First Love and The Lonesome Trail.
Foster-Owens’ numerous awards include an EMMY Award, NAACP Image Award, and the Black Filmmaker’s Hall of Fame Award for Best Independent Film, the National Council of Christians and Jews Humanitarian Award and the Platinum Aurora Award for Best In Show. She also the winner of three Gold Aurora Awards, four Telly Awards, four Addy Awards and the Women In Film Spotlight Award for Outstanding Achievement as a producer.
Foster-Owens is a graduate of the prestigious American Film Institute (Directing), San Diego State University (Theatre), the Producers Guild of America’s Power of Diversity Workshop and Robert De Niro’s Tribeca All Access Program. Foster-Owens is a member of the Alliance Of Women Directors, Women In Film, and Board Member of the Gang Alternatives Program and a Board Member Emeritus of The American Film Institute’s Center for Advance Film Studies. Foster-Owens is the President of Jowharah Films.
Karla Kurz Murray
Manager/Executive
Karla Kurz Murray just wrapped working on one of the very first Warner Brother’s features filmed during the 2020 “covid-19 pandemic” titled No Sudden Move, directed by Steven Soderbergh and produced by Casey Silver. The feature set in 1955 Detroit has an all-star cast including: Don Cheadle, Benecio del Toro, Jon Hamm, Ray Liotta, Brendan Fraser, Bill Duke, Frankie Shaw and Matt Damon.
From 2010-2017, Murray served as International Manager of Film Detroit. She was influential in attracting the largest budgeted film of 2015, Superman vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice, and co-creating the Detroit Film Initiative with the City of Detroit.
Previously, Murray was an Executive at Dreamworks Studio’s based Remote Control Productions, partnered with Academy-Award winning film composer Hans Zimmer. Prior roles included working with mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer at Paramount Pictures and award winning directors Tony and Ridley Scott at their production company, Scott Free, developing films such as Crimson Tide with Denzel Washington and Domino with Kiera Knightly
Murray began her career working with cult director/ filmmaker Sam Raimi (Evil Dead/Spiderman 1,2,3) on Crimewave, co-written by Sam Raimi and Joel & Ethan Coen. In 2014, Murray was named Tech Week’s Detroit “Tech 100.” Currently, Murray’s involved with Michigan Independent Film Industry Association to create a film tax-incentive for Michigan.
Koji Steven Sakai
Writer/Producer
Writer/Producer Koji Steven Sakai is the founder of Little Nalu Pictures LLC. He has written seven feature films that have been produced, including, The Commando, a feature film starring Michael Jai White and Mickey Rourke; Haunted Highway (2006), The People I’ve Slept With, Santa & Me, #1 Serial Killer, and Dying to Kill.
Most recently, Sakai wrote and produced a feature film, Last Girl, which is in post-production. The film was the directorial debut of Arsal Asal and stars Jeanne Lau, Stephen L. Wilson, Sarah Wong Thompson, and Christopher Dionne. In addition, his screenplay, Romeo, Juliet, & Rosaline, was optioned by Amazon Studios.
Sakai has also produced a one-hour comedy special on Starz, Dwayne Perkins: Take Note; Comedy InvAsian, a television series featuring the nation’s top Asian American comedians, and Brash Girls Club, a limited comedy series, which premiered on Tubi TV. He produces and hosts three podcasts; Guy Code; Best OR Worst Podcast with M. Martin Mapoma; and Midnight Watchers with Quentin Lee and Jennifer Field.
A graduate of the University of Southern California’s Masters of Professional Writing program, Sakai is currently a screenwriting instructor at UCLA Extensions, New York Film Academy in Burbank, and Chapman University.
Steve Shor
Production and Management
Steve Shor has over 40 years of Industry experience in studio, production and management positions. He has worked in a variety of positions in Hollywood including Columbia Pictures Features and TriStar Pictures Business Affairs Administration. Currently, Shor is an independent producer with a variety of projects in development.
In the past, he was a programmer for the AFI International Film Festival (for ten years). Shor now consults with other festivals – currently an advisor and the programmer to the Sonoma International Film Festival, a programmer/industry liaison for the Newport Beach Film Festival and program director for the Long Beach International Film Festival. Previously, Steve was a programmer for AFIFest, Abu Dahbi Film Festival and the Jackson Hole Film Festival.
He was also a board member of the Hartley-Merrill International Screenwriting Prize, as well as a sponsor for three years of the Mill Valley Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival and IFFCON. Shor has been a juror or panelist at numerous festivals, including a symposium in Cannes for the Kodak Emerging Filmmakers Group and a two-day symposium for the Toronto Worldwide Shorts Festival. Shor has also been a guest instructor for the USC Professional Writing Program at the USC Film School and worked with students at The American Film Institute.
Andrei Zinca
Director/Producer
Andrei Zinca is a leading international Director/Producer with more than 1,500 hours of television in the United States Hispanic and Latin American markets. He studied directing and film production at the University of Southern California (USC) and, previously, film and TV photography in Romania. In Bucharest, he was a Camera Operator for eight features prior to making his directorial and producing debut with Rosa de America, a 6 hour period TV mini series shot in Peru.
In 1988, Mr. Zinca moved to the U.S., where he established himself as a leading Director/ Producer for the TV Hispanic U.S. and Latin American markets. In 1991, he was nominated for an Emmy Regional Award for a Special Program about Pope John-Paul II and the Vatican, which he directed and co-produced. In 2006, Mr. Zinca returned to Romania as a Line Producer for Mirrors, a New Regency/20th Century Fox production. He also directed a local version of ER, which won two Romanian prestigious awards for Best Series.
In 2013, he directed, co-wrote and co-produced Puzzle For a Blind Man, his first theatrical feature. The U.S.-Romania co-production was awarded for best picture, script, lead actors and photography at independent film festivals in the U.S.; and has been sold to various European countries, Turkey and U.S.
His second feature is also a U.S.-Romania co-production, So, What’s Freedom?, won the Audience Choice Award for Best Romanian movie at TIFF Cluj-Napoca 2020 and is scheduled to premiere in 2021. Zinca is currently producing a U.S.-Germany-South Africa feature documentary shooting in South Africa. Zinca is the co-founder and CEO of Voxx Studios, a Los Angeles based audio post-production studio. and is a member of Film Independent LA, IFP NY and NALIP.
Todd Waterman
American Animator, Director, Producer and Storyboard Artist
Todd Waterman is an American animator, director, producer and storyboard artist. He is currently the executive producer/ showrunner and supervising director spearheading a modern revival of The VeggieTales Show (2019), the beloved and classic children’s series.
Waterman is recognized for directing Hasbro Studio’s animated series Transformers Prime (2010-2103), and Transformers: Robots In Disguise (2013-2016), which he was twice nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for “Outstanding Directing in an Animated Series.” He is known for working at such major studios as MGM Animation, Fox Studios, Sony Pictures, Nickelodeon, and at Walt Disney Animation Studios where he was an animator on Mulan (1998), and The Tigger Movie (2002).
In 2018, Waterman was hired by Trilogy Productions, as Executive Producer. Waterman has since formed Trilogy Animation Group, where he is responsible for all animated content and production on all new episodes of The VeggieTales Show (2018 – present). Trilogy Animation Group plans to expand with multiple projects currently in development.