HELPING ADVANCE DIVERSITY IN GENRE
(Application Deadline Oct 1, 2023)HORROR DEVELOPMENT LAB SUBMISSION INFORMATION
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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.
As a retired police officer, Keda brings a unique and authentic voice to her consultancy and content development work. After 27 years with Toronto Police, law school and an acting background in Film & TV, she's emerging as a producer with grit. Keda's driven by uncovering the under-told stories of underrepresented communities and amplifying the voices of underserved groups. Her content studio, Broken Whole Media, creates, develops and produces provocative scripted and unscripted content to transform the industry through A.R.T.S. (Amplifying diversity, Revolutionizing narratives, Transformative stories and Surpassing expectations).
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).
HORROR DEVELOPMENT LAB - JURY MEMBERS
Sarah-Tai Black's work has appeared on platforms such as Berlinale Forum, MUBI Notebook, Cinema Scope, Variety, Harper's Bazaar, and Refinery 29. They recently appeared as a co-host of Netflix Film's YouTube series Black Film School and they have worked as a part of the TIFF, Tribeca Film Festival, and True/False Film Festival programming teams. In 2021 they were a Curatorial Fellow at the Flaherty Film Seminar.
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.
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.
Rueben Martell was raised in Waterhen Lake First Nation in Northern Saskatchewan. Having heard Cree tall tales from his grandmother from a young age, he was enamoured with the oral tradition of storytelling. His imagination pushed him to make the images more physically represented in visual media. In January 2020, he finished principal photography on his first feature film, "Don't Say Its Name," for Chaos Films, which played Fantasia and BITS in 2021 and has been presold to Super Channel Canada. Rueben is currently developing a tv series "RedWater," a feature film script, "A Life Less Empty," and a feature film titled "Tied."
In the beforetime, Petula hosted her podcast at In a TIFF http://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. https://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.