Ben Russell
Ben Russell is an itinerant media artist and curator whose films and
performances have been presented in spaces ranging from 14th Century Belgian
monasteries to 17th Century East India Trading Co. buildings, police station
basements to outdoor punk squats, Japanese cinematheques to Parisian
storefronts, and solo screenings at the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Museum
of Modern Art. A 2008 Guggenheim award recipient, Ben began the Magic
Lantern screening series in Providence, Rhode Island, is co-director of the
artist-run space BEN RUSSELL in Chicago, and he currently teaches at the
University of Illinois at Chicago.
Tomonari Nishikawa
Born in Nagoya, Japan. Nishikawa started filmmaking in 2001, and his works have been screened at film festivals, including Ann Arbor Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Media City Experimental Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival. While pursuing his MFA at San Francisco Art Institute, Nishikawa started making film installations, and such works have been exhibited at Berlinale, Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, and Still Motion in Toronto. One of his installations, Building 945, received the 2008 Museum of Contemporary Cinema Grant. Nishikawa works as a guest adviser for Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions in Tokyo, and he is one of the founders and co-directors of KLEX: Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film and Video Festival. He is currently teaching at Binghamton University, as a visiting artist at Cinema Department.
Irina Leimbacher
Irina Leimbacher is a San Francisco-based film curator and scholar. She is co-founder of kino21 and former artistic director of San Francisco Cinematheque where she curated experimental and documentary programs for 12 years. She curated the he 2009 Flaherty Seminar and has created film programs for venues including the Pacific Film Archive, San Francisco International Film Festival, Cinemaayat Arab Film Festival, San Francisco Camerawork, and Cinema Project in Portland, Oregon. Her touring series of the work of feminist film pioneer Germaine Dulac was presented at MoMA, Cinematheque Ontario , and UCLA Film Archive. She has taught at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Sarah Lawrence's Florence Program, and her writing has been published in Film Comment, La critica sociologica, Bright Lights, Framework, Wide Angle and elsewhere.