2018 Judges
John michalczyk
Professor John J. Michalczyk is a professor of film history and Director of Boston College’s Film Studies Program. Over the past 25 years he and his wife Susan have produced and directed more than 20 documentaries, many of which have been broadcast on national and international television. Three have been Emmy nominated. Prof. Michalczyk completed his graduate studies in French literature and film at Harvard University in 1972 and has taught at Boston College since 1974. Besides focusing on documentary filmmaking, he has also lectured and published widely on WWII, the Holocaust and conflict resolution.
Ruth Lingford
Ruth Lingford is a filmmaker and a professor in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She has been making short animated films since studying fine art and art history at Middlesex (1987–1990) and animation at the MA level at the Royal College of Art (1990–92). Her films have been broadcast by Channel 4 in the UK, and have won many awards all over the world. She taught in the MA animation program at the Royal College of Art and at the National Film and Television School. Her films are made using 2D digital techniques, often combining drawing and treated live footage. She is known for making “feelbad films” which use the seductive medium of animation to draw the audience in and take them to uncomfortable places. Such films include The Old Fools (2002, 6 min.), An Eye for an Eye (2002, 5 min., 30 sec.) and Pleasures of War (1998, 11 min.) , a retelling of the Biblical story of Judith and Holofernes that explores female aggression and the links between war and sexual desire. It was devised in collaboration with the novelist Sara Maitland, and was featured as one of the 150 Best Films Ever Made in Film: The Critic’s Choice, edited by Geoff Andrew. Lingford has also animated sequences for the film Secrecy by Peter Galison and Robb Moss, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2008, and for the award-winning documentary We Still Live Here, directed by Anne Makepeace. She was the recipient of a 2008–09 Harvard Film Study Center Fellowship for Little Deaths, a short animated film using recorded interviews, which has won awards at three international festivals and been shown in over 40 festivals and theaters around the world. Recently she has worked on documentaries for PBS and NBC.
Michael Burke
Michael Burke is an Associate Arts Professor in the departments of Undergraduate Film and Television and Grad Film and the Associate Dean of the Kanbar Institute of Film & Television. He also served as Chair of the Grad Film program at Tisch Asia (2010 to 2015) and Associate Dean of Tisch Asia from 2013 to 2015. Michael’s feature film, The Mudge Boy (Showtime Independent Films/Strand Releasing) was produced by Stanley Tucci and starred Emile Hirsch and Academy Award nominee Richard Jenkins. The film premiered in the Dramatic Competition at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, won the Outfest 2003 Grand Jury Award, and was released theatrically to critical acclaim in May 2004. Michael was selected for both the Sundance Institute Writer’s and Filmmaker’s Lab 2000. Awards include the 2001 RICHARD VAGUE PRODUCTION GRANT, the American winner of the 2000 SUNDANCE/NHK INTERNATIONAL FILMMAKERS AWARD, SPECIAL JURY AWARD at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival and the 1999 NYU FIRST PRIZE WASSERMAN AWARD. Michael has developed projects for Pretty Matches Productions (Sarah Jessica Parker) and recently wrote QUAD (2013) starring Aaron Paul, Lena Olin, and Jeff Daniels, for Gilbert Films. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America.
Shaun clarke
Shaun Clarke works primarily as a Director of Photography. His cinematography work ranges from short narrative films, to nationally-broadcast commercial spots, to feature-length narrative and documentary films. Clarke has also directed a number of dance films, exploring how dance can be transformed through the tools of cinema. He has previously taught at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi, Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Wentworth Institute of Technology. Shaun is currently the Assistant Professor of Film and Digital Production at Emerson College.
Timothy Reckart
Timothy Reckart, an Academy Award-nominated animator and director from Tucson, Arizona is a graduate from Harvard University, where he studied History and Literature, along with some explorations in Animation in the Visual and Environmental Studies department. He continued these studies at the National Film and Television School, where he directed the Academy Award-nominated stop-motion animated short, Head Over Heels (2012). Since then, Mr. Reckart has worked in Hollywood on films such as Anomalisa (2015) and his directorial feature debut, The Star (2017), for Sony Pictures.