Rose Kuo
Film producer, writer and festival director
Rose Kuo career spans two decades in film production, film festivals and film journalism.
Rose is the former executive director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center which presents New York Film Festival; New Directors/New Films; New Fest; New York African Film Festival; New York Asian Film Festival; New York Jewish Film Festival; Latin Beat; Open Roads: New Italian Cinema; and Rendezvous with French Cinema. Rose produced the annual Chaplin Award Tribute for Sidney Poitier, Catherine Deneuve and Barbra Streisand. Rose served as publisher of Film Comment from 2010 to 2013.
As the American Film Institute's AFI Fest Artistic Director, Rose was the architect of AFI's "free festival" model which continues today. Rose was the Co-Director of Santa Fe Film Festival, and a programmer for Santa Barbara International Film Festival and Mill Valley International Film Festival, and a programming consultant for Los Angeles County Museum of Art and AFI Dallas, and a consultant for San Francisco International Film Festival.
Experienced with independent films as well as large studio projects, Rose began as an assistant to editor Thelma Schoonmaker and as a camera assistant to cinematographer Haskel Wexler, working under renowned directors Michael Mann, Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese.
Abby Sun
Documentary curator, critic and filmmaker
Abby Sun is the Director of Artist Programs and Editor of Documentary Magazine at IDA. She is a 2022 Warhol Foundation Curatorial Research Fellow.
Most recently, Abby was the Curator of the DocYard. As a graduate researcher in the MIT Open Documentary Lab, she edited Immerse from 2020-2022. She also co-curated My Sight is Lined with Visions: 1990s Asian American Film & Video with Keisha Knight. Expanding on the latter's programmatic urges, Abby and Keisha launched Line of Sight, a suite of artist development activities, in 2021.
Abby has bylines in Film Comment, Filmmaker, Film Quarterly, MUBI's Notebook Magazine, Sight & Sound, Hyperallergic, and other publications. She has served on festival juries for Hot Docs, Dokufest, Cleveland, Palm Springs, New Orleans, and CAAMfest, as well as nominating committees for the Gotham Awards and Cinema Eye. Abby has reviewed artist and project applications for Brown Girls Doc Mafia, National Endowment for the Arts, SFFILM, LEF Foundation, Sundance Catalyst, IDFA Forum, Princess Grace Foundation, and spoken on and facilitated panels at TIFF Doc Conference, NYFF Talks, EFM, Locarno's Future of Attention, and other film festivals. Her latest short film, “Cuba Scalds His Hand” (co-directed with Daniel Garber), is streaming on the Future of Film is Female.
.png)
Ryan Swen
.png)
Film critic
Ryan Swen is a Los Angeles-based freelance film critic, a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Douglas Edwards Experimental/ Independent Film/ Video Award Committee, a Juris Doctor candidate and Master of Arts in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California, and holds an undergraduate degree in cinema and media studies at the University of Washington, Seattle.
He hosts and produces the podcast Catalyst and Witness and co-hosts the podcast 24 hours don’t make an ideology, and has written for Reverse Shot, Criterion, Film Comment, Filmmaker Magazine, Slant Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Film Stage, Seattle Screen Scene, In Review Online, MUBI Notebook, and the BFI.
Ran Ma
Film scholar on Asian studies and film
Ma Ran is an Associate Professor at the International Program of “Japan-in-Asia” Cultural Studies (JACS) and Screen Studies (eizogaku), Nagoya University, Japan. Her research interests revolve around the intersection of inter-Asia studies, transnational film and screen cultures, and film festival studies.
Besides research, Ma has also curated screening events of Asian independent films in Osaka, Beijing, Nagoya, and Tokyo (the 36th Image Forum Festival in 2022).
Ran is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University.
.png)