HELPING ADVANCE DIVERSITY IN GENRE
(Application Deadline Oct 1, 2023)HORROR DEVELOPMENT LAB SUBMISSION INFORMATION
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OUR SPONSORS
HORROR DEVELOPMENT LAB TEAM
Kelly Michael Stewart (he/him) began his career as a contributing film writer to Fangoria Magazine and has more than 250 reviews, interviews and articles published online and in print for various websites and publications. As a filmmaker, he wrote and produced the short film "One More For the Road" and co-wrote and produced the horror anthology feature film "Late Night Double Feature". Kelly founded both Blood in the Snow Film Festival in 2012 and the Deadly Exposure Industry Conference in 2018.
Carolyn Mauricette (she/her) is a Toronto-based film writer and programmer for the Blood in the Snow Film Festival. Carolyn is the Director of Canadian Programming for Fantasia International Film Festival. She has written pieces on diversity, women in sci-fi, and film reviews for Graveyard Shift Sisters and Cinema Axis; both online and print editions of Rue Morgue Magazine and Grim Magazine, and is a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic.
Mariam Bastani (she/her) is a writer/producer based in Toronto. She is the operations coordinator of Rue Morgue Magazine and co-founder of QTIBIPOC focused multimedia horror creators Audre's Revenge Film. Mariam has curated Canadian, US and International horror screenings and was the Editor-in-Chief of Maximum Rocknroll Magazine. She has been on a number of academic speaking tours regarding PoC in punk culture and several Women in Horror panels.
Alison Lang is a writer/editor based in Toronto. She has written for Rue Morgue, ByNWR.com and Art of the Title, among others. Her book Women with Guts, a collection of essays and interviews with women working in horror, is available via the Rue Morgue Library and she has also contributed to Satanic Panic: Pop Culture Paranoia in the 1980s (Spectacular Optical) with a chapter on Geraldo Rivera's Devil Worship special. She has presented on topics related to horror and gender for the Ax Wound Film Festival (Vermont), Final Girls Film Festival (Berlin) and the DePaul University Pop Culture Conference (Chicago).
Jerri is an award winning Inuvialuit film director and television producer from the Northwest Territories of Canada. Her work is often centred within the Inuvialuit Settlement Region preserving language and culture with the Inuvialuit Communications Society since 2014. Outside of television she has co-produced films internationally working various roles on-set. In 2015, she joined the Arctic Film Circle consisting of circumpolar Indigenous film directors, this collaboration was created by the International Sami Film Institute (ISFI). Currently, she is working with ISFI on a second circumpolar anthology, Arctic Chills.
HORROR DEVELOPMENT LAB - JURY MEMBERS
Ophira Calof (she/they) is an award winning Disabled artist with credits including Generally Hospital and Literally Titanium. Ophira also works as a curator, educator, and consultant with projects including COVID-19 through a Disability Lens: Storytelling and Filmmaking Project, and Making Space: Stories of Disabled Youth in the GTA.
Thirza Jean Cuthand (she/her)(b. 1978 Regina SK) makes short videos and films about Indigiqueer issues. She completed her BFA at ECUAD in 2005, and her MA at Ryerson University in 2015. She is Plains Cree/Scots, and a member of Little Pine First Nation.
Katherine Connell (Katie) is a critic, programmer, and educator. She is a staff writer for the London-based feminist film journal Another Gaze and her writing has appeared in various publications including Bitch Media, Canadian Art, Cinema Scope, Hyperallergic, MUBI Notebook, Reverse Shot, Tor.com, and POV Magazine. Katie has participated in film programming for both Pleasure Dome and Inside Out. She writes most frequently about queerness and spectatorship, literary adaptation, horror, and the subversive pleasures of fandom.
Alex Hall is a writer based in Toronto, Ontario. She is the creator of, Lezzie Borden, an Instagram account that examines and archives depictions of queer women in horror. Her work specializes in the interplay of hauntings, queerness and theory. You can read her work in Room, Feels Zine, Gayly Dreadful, Anatomy of a Scream and Neon Horror. Most recently, she has contributed a chapter to a forthcoming book of essays on Queer Horror.
In the beforetime, Petula hosted her podcast at inatiff.com about films and the Toronto International Film Festival. Now she is the co-host for Back Issue Bloodbath, a podcast about comic books. You can enjoy those alone at home: geekhardshow.com/category/podcasts/bib
Victor Stiff is a Toronto-based film critic who has written for POV Magazine, The Playlist, Film School Rejects, Screen Rant, and the Canadian Academy and hosts and produces the YouTube series Dope Black Movies. Victor is the current news editor and senior critic at That Shelf, where he has covered TIFF, Sundance, Hot Docs and the Montreal Festival du nouveau cinéma. In 2020, Victor received the Toronto Film Critics Association's Emerging Critic award.