Jury Members

UT Competition

Anita Di Bianco

Anita Di Bianco is a film and video maker living in New York. Her short films take up, modify and re-work existing and re-imagined literary/film characters – excerpting and adapting the texts of Jean Genet, Marguerite Yourcenar, as well as revisiting familiar media rituals and pop-cultural tropes. Di Bianco’s videos and films have been shown, most recently, in PS1’s exhibition Romantic Detachment, at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Paris, and at the Ministry of Social Affairs in the Hague. In recent months she has lectured on the politics of re-makes at the Midwestern Art History Conference, at Klartext! The Status of the Political in Contemporary Art in Berlin, and at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in London. (More information is available at www.anitadi.net)

Janet Pierson


Janet Pierson, co-president of Grainy Pictures, has partnered with her husband John Pierson professionally since 1986. In 2002-2003, they showed free movies at the world's most remote cinema in Taveuni, Fiji. Their final month is the subject of Reel Paradise, a new documentary by noted director Steve James. Reel Paradise premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2005 and is currently in theatrical release via Wellspring Media. Janet was co-creator, executive producer and occasional segment director of their magazine-format cable television series, Split Screen. Earlier projects include staging the Cold Spring Film Workshop and serving as producer reps and/or investors in over two dozen original American independent features like She's Gotta Have It, Roger & Me, Slacker, and Clerks. From 1981 to 1986 she was assistant director of NYC's Film Forum. In 1977-1979 she ran Canyon Cinema Cooperative in S.F. She attended Hampshire College, graduating with a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1977. Having recently relocated to Austin with her family, Janet is now on the board of the Austin Film Society.

Scott Stark

Scott Stark has made over 65 films and videos since the early 1980s, and has created numerous installations, performances and photo-collages as well. His work has shown nationally and internationally in venues as diverse as New York's Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Cinematheque, the Tokyo Image Forum, and many others. His 16mm film Angel Beach was invited into the 2002 Whitney Biennial. Scott is also the webmaster for Flicker (www.hi-beam.net) - the web resource for experimental cinema. He has recently moved from San Francisco to Austin, Texas. (More information is available at www.scottstark.com)

International Competition

Erwin Houtenbrink

Erwin Houtenbrink studied philosophy and art history. He is one of the programmers of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the city where he was born and bred. He has been working for that festival since 1991, starting as catalogue assistant, later catalogue editor. Over the last decade he has been primarily concerned with the short film format. He was one of the editors of Het Meubelboek (1996), a book on Dutch furniture design. Houtenbrink’s biggest love is music (from Schönberg to Suede), with film in good second place. In his spare time he is a painter amateur.

Patrick Huber

Patrick Huber (1964, Switzerland) studied architecture, graduating in 1991. From 1995 onwards he organized art exhibitions and events, initially working under the label “field”. The project Videolounge, a collaboration with Costa Vece, was part of the 1998 Venice Biennale. In October 2000 he was appointed director of the Walcheturm, an independent art center in Zürich that serves as a platform for Swiss and international artists. He is responsible for organizing exhibitions, performances, screenings, concerts and other cultural events. In addition to this, he has been director of Videoex Experimental Film & Video Festival, held each May in Zürich, since 1998.

Oona Mosna

Oona Mosna has been involved in various indexical and self referential forms of cultural illumination/ edification for almost a decade as an extension of her own enigmatic multi-disciplinary practice in performance, audio-synthesis and related labyrinthine literary meanderings. Currently, she is Program Director for Media City, an Annual International Festival of Experimental Film and Video Art, presented by the House of Toast Film and Video Collective and Artcite Incorporated in Windsor, Canada. In recent years, Media City has established a reputation as one of the preeminent forums for experimental and avant garde film and Video, showcasing specialized symposia, multi-disciplinary performance and a legion of internationally renowned guest artists and prestigious media arts productions from around the globe. (thehouseoftoast.ca/mediacity)