MIKAYLA BROWN (speaker, Dahomey) is a doctoral candidate in Media and Communication at Klein College, Temple University. Her research delves into how museums that are in possession of looted Benin Bronzes discursively address repatriation efforts, exploring the ways these institutions confront their colonial legacies and navigate ongoing identity crises amidst repatriation and restitution calls. Mikayla has presented her work at both national and international conferences, including in Canada and Australia. She served on the ethics review committee at Mutter Museum and her previous professional experience was in Marketing. Currently, Mikayla teaches critical media and identity studies at Temple University and Drexel University, engaging students with issues of culture, power, and representation. In addition, Mikayla is conducting research on Wikidata's ontology and Silicon Valley's weapons defense industry. 

ELISABETH GAREIS (writer/producer, 13 Driver’s Licenses, part of the Shorts+Cake program) teaches courses in intercultural communication at Baruch College, CUNY. Her research focus is on intercultural friendship and its role in prejudice reduction. Her research also explores refugee integration and Jewish/non-Jewish relationships in Nazi-era and modern-day Germany. She is currently working on a second documentary focusing on Jewish life in 1930s Lichtenfels, the deportation of Jewish citizens to be “exterminated” in East Poland, and the life of refugees from that town in the United States.  She received the Baruch College Presidential Excellence Award for Distinguished Service in 2018 and for Distinguished Teaching in 2021. She has authored the book Intercultural Friendship: A Qualitative Study, the textbook series A Novel Approach, and numerous journal articles.

MICHAEL GITLIN (director, The Night Visitors) makes work about some of the intricate conceptual and ideological systems out of which ways of knowing the world can be constructed. His films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Full Frame Documentary Festival, the London Film Festival, and the Whitney Biennial Exhibition. Gitlin’s experimental documentary, The Night Visitors, premiered at the 2023 New York Film Festival. His 2015 feature documentary, That Which Is Possible, screened at The Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. His 16mm film, The Birdpeople, is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Gitlin was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. Gitlin received an M.F.A. from Bard College. He teaches at Hunter College in New York City.

DAPHNE McWILLIAMS (director, A Boston (R)Evolution) is an independent filmmaker, who began her career producing music videos for such artists as Queen Latifah, Blues Traveler, and Notorious B.I.G. In 1995, at Spike Lee’s request, she produced the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning 4 Little Girls, about the murder of four Black girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham in 1963. Working on the movie changed her life and her career path: Documentary filmmaking became her passion. Daphne has since produced, among many other works, a pair of episodes for The Blues (Martin Scorsese, 2003), The Curious Case of Curt Flood (Spike Lee, 2011), Slavery by Another Name (Samuel D. Pollard, 2012), Maynard (Pollard, 2017), and Black Art: In the Absence of Light (Pollard, 2021). Her directorial debut, In a Perfect World, garnered several festival awards and premiered on Showtime in 2016.

ANDREW NADKARNI (director, Between Earth & Sky, featured as part of Selections from the Thomas Edison Film Festival)  is a documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. His directorial debut, Between Earth & Sky, was shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Awards. The film played more than 50 festival screenings, won Best Short at Big Sky and Hot Springs Documentary Film Festivals, and received nominations for two Critics Choice Awards and the Cinema Eye Honors. Andrew integrates community care and trauma-informed practices into his filmmaking process, exploring generational stories within diaspora communities. A 2023 BRIClab Artist in Residence, he also reads for grant organizations, and serves as a festival juror and programmer. He was an associate producer on Bel Canto (Peacock), production supervisor on the NY Unit of Glass Onion (Netflix), and produced the narrative feature, Actual People (MUBI).

THOMAS PIPER (director, We Start with the Things We Find) is an award-winning filmmaker specialized in documenting contemporary artists and designers. He has directed, photographed and/or edited more than 25 films on painters, sculptors, photographers, architects, and writers. Film Days audiences will remember his film, Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf, which was featured here in 2018. Five Seasons won the 2018 Polly Krakora Award for Artistry in Film from the DC Environmental Film Festival and was in global theatrical release through the pandemic. His film, Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments, won Best Film for Television at the 2008 International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) in Montreal. His feature length documentary, Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Reimagining Lincoln Center and the Highline, was broadcast on PBS affiliates around the country, and accepted for over 25 festivals around the world.

PETER RUTKOFF (discussion leader, Rutkoff Brunch: Robert Frank Centennial Celebration) is a founding member of the Department of American Studies at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. He is the author of Fly Away and other recent non-fiction works that examine African-American art and culture, as well as two novels, most recently Irish Eyes. He is a regular summer visitor to Cooperstown, which is also the setting of his book of short stories, Cooperstown Chronicles. He is a member of the Film Days Steering Committee.

KATIE SCHILLER (producer, Between Earth & Sky, featured as part of Selections from the Thomas Edison Film Festival) is a queer filmmaker based in Brooklyn. She has developed, directed, and produced projects ranging from short films and branded content to television and feature-length productions. Katie received the John Cassavetes Award at the 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards for her work on Shiva Baby (SXSW, TIFF 2020). Katie produced the narrative short film, Chaperone (Sundance 2022), co-produced the Netflix documentary series The Principles of Pleasure, and served as a segment producer on Lady Gaga's The Power of Kindness for Facebook Watch. Katie holds a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a Masters of Social Work from Fordham University. Katie owns and operates It Doesn’t Suck Productions.

JEF SEWELL (director, All Illusions Must Be Broken) was born in Dallas, a fourth-generation Texan with family roots in the Texas Plains. Before joining Two Birds Film, Jef co-founded the satirical publisher Despair, Inc. and Amplifier®, a fulfillment company serving artists and brands. For his work on The Unforeseen (2007), he was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Graphics & Animation at the inaugural Cinema Eye Honors. In 2017, Jef received the SXSW Jury Prize for Visual Design for his contributions to Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry. (Jef is pictured with his wife, Laura Dunn, who also directed All Illusions Must Be Broken.)

DONALD SOSIN and JOANNA SEATON (live performers, Speedy) specialize in silent film music for voice, percussion and keyboard. Film Days audiences enjoyed their 2023 performance accompanying the screening of Safety Last!, another Harold Lloyd film. Their scores for dozens of classic silents often include songs of the early 20th century and their own originals. They have appeared at Lincoln Center and MoMA, at festivals in Telluride, San Francisco, Seattle, Berlin, Moscow, Bangkok, Shanghai, and Jecheon (South Korea) and at dozens of venues across the U.S. A native New Yorker, Joanna began her career as a child model and Ivory Soap Baby. Called a "silvery soprano" by the New York Times, she has appeared in more than 80 shows. She founded and was artistic director for the Major's Inn Elizabethan Dinner Theatre in Gilbertsville, New York. Joanna holds a Theatre Arts degree from Cornell University. Donald grew up in Rye, New York and Munich, and has been composing and performing for 50 years. He has had commissions from MoMA, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, the Odessa International Film Festival, and, with Joanna, the Chicago Symphony Chorus. Their film music can be heard on more than 60 DVDs on various labels and frequently on TCM. They live in rural Connecticut and have two children. Website: oldmoviemusic.com

JANE STEUERWALD is the executive director of the Thomas Edison Media Arts Consortium-Thomas Edison Film Festival. She curates and presents film programs for colleges, universities, museums, cinemas, and arts venues across the country and abroad. Her films have screened at MoMA; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; Anthology Film Archives; and festivals across the US. Steuerwald was a professor and chair of the Media Arts Department, NJ City University, for many years, where she taught media production, history, and aesthetics. She has worked with film and video as an art medium since 1980, creating installations, documentaries, found footage works, experimental films, and single edition art books. In 2012, she was a Women’s History Month Honoree in New Jersey for empowering women through education.

OLYMPIA STONE (director, Under the Hat: The Complicated History of the Pith Helmet, part of the Shorts+Cake program) is an independent documentary filmmaker with a focus on art, artists, and collectors. Based in Chapel Hill, NC, her production company, Floating Stone Productions, creates films that explore the personal stories and creative processes of a wide range of artists and collectors, providing viewers with a deeper understanding of their work and inspirations. Her films have been recognized at numerous festivals, winning awards and receiving critical acclaim. Several of her works have premiered at prestigious events and gone on to be broadcast on PBS.  Olympia’s first project, which centered on her own family’s connection to the art world through her father, a New York gallerist, set the tone for her ongoing exploration of the impact of art on both creators and collectors.

RYOYA TERAO (director, 13 Driver’s Licenses, part of the Shorts+Cake program) has co-produced and/or directed documentaries focusing on human interest subjects. For NHK and PBS, stories include Sled-Dog Dreams about a sled-dog team from an animal shelter in Durango, Colorado; Go Achilles! on disabled athletes from around the globe; Gun Runners on gun-violence through the eyes of former gang members in New York; and Klavierhaus on immigrant brothers who import and restore antique pianos. With respect to environmental concerns, he worked on a documentary about asbestos litigations and in the process, discovered a groundbreaking historic document that led to compensations for asbestos-related diseases in Japan. He also directed Bamboo Bicycle, a story about an innovative bike studio in Brooklyn that hand crafts bamboo bikes for eco-friendly New Yorkers and people in the developing world.

ADA TOLLA and GIUSEPPE LIGNANO (film subjects, We Start with the Things We Find) have Master’s Degrees in Architecture and Urban Design from the Università di Napoli, Italy. After graduating they completed post-graduate studies at Columbia University as Visiting Scholars. They founded LOT-EK in Naples, Italy in 1993 and opened up LOT-EK's New York studio in 1995. LOT-EK is an award-winning architectural design studio renowned in the architecture/design/art world for its sustainable, innovative approach to construction, materials, and space through the upcycling of existing industrial objects and systems. Their work has been exhibited in major museums, including MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the Walker Art Center, the Guggenheim, and the MAXXI. Besides heading their professional practice, they also teach at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture and Planning.