PETER BELSITO
Peter Belsito grew up in New York City and graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and from the Masters film program at UCLA. He was a founding member of the Independent Feature Project (IFP) in New York City in 1981 and opened the IFP office in Los Angeles (now FIND). He was also a founding member of the Chicano Cinema Coalition. After graduating from UCLA, he worked professionally as a cinematographer, produced feature films and documentaries and wrote screenplays. He produced the documentary Valley of Tears, which played the festival circuit and was distributed in the US by Seven Arts. Today, Peter is a guest blogger on SydneysBuzz, which is on Indiewire covering the international independent film business. He lives in West Hollywood, California and travels extensively throughout the year to film festivals and markets worldwide.

SANTIAGO LOZA
Santiago Loza was born in Córdoba, Argentina. He studied film at the National Institute of Cinema and at the School of Dramatic Arts. His first feature-length film, Extraño, won the Tiger Award for Best Picture at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2003. He wrote his second film, Cuatro mujeres descalzas, at the Cannes Film Festival residency program. He also directed the experimental film Artico and the documentary Rosa Patria, for which he won the Special Jury Prize for the Argentina competition in BAFICI 2009. His next film, La invención de la carne, was an official selection at the Locarno Film Festival in 2009 and screened at MIFF in 2010. Los Labios, whom he co-directed with Ivan Fund, was an official selection of the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. Santiago is also an accomplished screenwriter and playwright.

JULIA SOLOMONOFF
Argentine-born, New-York-based writer, director and producer Julia Solomonoff holds an MFA in Film from Columbia University, where she currently teaches Film Directing. She wrote and directed The Last Summer of la Boyita, produced by Pedro Almodóvar's El Deseo production company, which was the winner of over twenty international awards. Her first feature, Sisters, debuted at the Toronto Film Festival 2005 and was partially developed at the Sundance Writers' Lab. Solomonoff also produced Alejandro Landes' documentary Cocalero following Evo Morales during Bolivia's historic Presidential election. She is Associate Producer of Todos tenemos un plan (to be shot in Summer 2011 in Argentina) by Ana Piterbarg, starring Viggo Mortensen. She was the 1st AD on Walter Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries and has collaborated with such well regarded directors as Isabel Coixet, Fabian Bielinsky, Dan Algrant, Luis Puenzo, Carlos Sorin and Martin Rejtman.

Sylvain Auzou
Born in 1970, Sylvain Auzou has degrees in International Trade, Public Law and Political Science. He started to work for the French business daily La Tribune as an advertising salesman, and then for Le Film Français, a movie business weekly, as well as for the Cannes Market since 1999. In 2004, he was part of the team who created Venice Days, the independent side section of the Venice Film Festival, and was appointed vice director in 2008 of this section. He was also a part of the new Rome Film Festival, launched in 2006, where he set up the industry section, known as Business Street, and acts as the International Manager. He is based between Rome and Paris.

Peter Debruge
After kicking off his career freelancing for the Miami Herald, Peter Debruge relocated to Los Angeles, where he now serves as a senior film critic and features editor for Variety (of "Sticks Nix Hick Pix" headline fame). His areas of expertise range from animation to foreign language cinema to "sprocket operas" (as film festivals are dubbed in the showbiz trade paper's unique "slanguage"). A member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn., Peter has written for a range of outlets, including Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, Life, Creative Screenwriting and IndieWire. As far as jury duty goes, he is a veteran of the SXSW, Annecy and ColCoa fests.

Gregory Allen Howard
Gregory Allen Howard is an award-winning screenwriter, producer, author, playwright, and essayist whose credits include, Remember The Titans, and Ali, and the stage play, Tinseltown Trilogy. Mr. Howard is the first and only African American screenwriter in the history of film to script a $100 million movie. He is a two-time NAACP Image Award Winner for Titans and Ali, winner of the prestigious Christopher Award for Titans, and the Howard University Paul Robeson Award for artistic excellence. As a writer/producer, Mr. Howard's most recent projects include The Chaos, a 6-hour mini series for Epix that involves the CIA's attempt to subvert the anti-war movement in the late 60s; and Better Angels, a social drama starring and directed by Forest Whitaker that begins shooting in June '11 in Uganda and New York.

Heather Croall
Heather Croall is the Director for Sheffield Doc/Fest, the premiere documentary event in the UK. Doc/Fest is a film festival, a conference and a major marketplace - it is regarded as one of the best documentary events in the world. Heather was previously the director of the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC), where she developed the innovative matchmaking pitching initiative MeetMarket. MeetMarket is now also a central part of the Sheffield Doc/Fest marketplace activity. Heather has been one of the documentary industry's leading proponents of the emerging field of new media. Croall began to develop a conference program called DigiDocs in 2000 along with international partners and this is now a major strand (known as Crossover 360) of programming in Sheffield Doc/Fest. Doc/Fest is also a co-producer of the Crossover Lab that encourages traditional film and TV producers to collaborate with new media and interactive producers.

Jeremy Kay
Jeremy Kay lives and works in Los Angeles as the US editor of Screen International. For the past seven years he has reported on all aspects of the film business for the company's website screendaily.com and the print monthly magazine. Kay is a familiar face on the festival circuit where he is part of Screen's global network of correspondents reporting on developments from such events as Sundance, Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and the American Film Market in Santa Monica. Prior to joining Screen International Kay was situated in his native London. After training at an award-winning regional newspaper he worked as a freelance news and sports reporter for Time Out, The Independent On Sunday and The Irish Times. He also contributes film articles to The Guardian in the UK.

AJ Schnack
AJ Schnack is a filmmaker and writer based in Los Angeles. His films include the ensemble documentary Convention (2009), which was released by IFC Films/Sundance Selects, Kurt Cobain About a Son (2006), for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and received the inaugural Cinematic Vision Award at AFI Silverdocs, and Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) (2003). He is currently in post-production on a new film about the music and tourism mecca of Branson, Missouri. He's also producing The Art of Making Money, a new film about art and currency directed by Nathan Truesdell, and was an editor on Beats, Rhymes and Life, Michael Rapaport's new documentary about A Tribe Called Quest that premiered at Sundance 2011. Schnack is the founder and co-chair of the Cinema Eye Honors for nonfiction filmmaking, which recently celebrated its 4th annual event at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria New York.

Konstantia Kontaxis
Konstantia Kontaxis is the Program Director of the Motion Picture Program at the University of Miami. As a filmmaker, her work has screened at museums, galleries and festivals including Venice (Art Biennale), New York (Tribeca Film Festival), Montreal (Art Fifa), Paris, Athens, Ankara, Lleida, Taipei and Miami (Art Basel). She has received public art commissions from Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Kontaxis has served as an adjunct film curator for MAM and Miami Art Central. She was associate producer of the Miami Short Film Festival from 2007-2009 and is committed to promoting the art of the short film.

Lucas Leyva
Lucas Leyva was born and raised in Miami, Florida. Twenty-one of his short plays have been seen in seven states and one has been a Heidenman Finalist. Lucas is the founder and Minister of the Interior of the Borscht Film Festival, given a "Best Of Miami" award for Best Film Festival and called the "hippest, most eclectic and electric movie festival" and "Miami's alt culture summit" by the Miami Herald. In 2009 Lucas contributed his poetry to a collection of "Hialeah Haikus," published by Editorial Ultramar and was named one of "33 Emerging Creative Minds" by SoFi Magazine. In 2010 he directed the avant-garde musical "Mrs. Ms" as part of the Here and Now Festival at the Arsht Center in Miami, FL and directed the short film titled "Day N Night Out" by acclaimed playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival.

Dennis Scholl
Dennis Scholl is the Vice President / Arts and Miami Program Director for the Knight Foundation. With assets in excess of US $2 billion, Knight Foundation is among the largest, private foundations in the United States. He is responsible for the foundation's national arts program and South Florida based initiatives, including the Knight Arts Challenge. He has had a long involvement in philanthropy in the visual arts. Over the last dozen years, he was the founding chair of the Guggenheim Photography Committee, the Tate American Acquisitions Committee and the Miami Art Museum Collectors Council. Each group raised funds and acquired contemporary art for these museums. A three-time regional Emmy nominee, he wrote and co-produced a short film "Sunday's Best" that recently won the Emmy Award and screened at Aspen Shortfest.

Michael Dagnery
Cuban born of French and Spanish descent, Michael Dagnery grew up in Miami and received his degree in TV and Film Production from Miami Dade College. Dagnery began his career in Los Angeles in the 1980's, producing and directing various shows for the Univision Network such as Mundo Latino, El Show de Paul Rodriguez and the 6 o'Clock Evening News. Michael is now the Vice President of Content Services and Development for MTV TR3s, where he has developed and executive produced various productions such as Unplugged: Julieta Venegas (2008 Latin Grammy winner), Mis Videos Locos with Paul Rodriguez and Bust-A-Ritmo. He has also executive produced various projects for MTV International such as MTV At The Playground, featuring Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams,
Marilyn Manson and Will.i.am.

Rhonda Mitrani
Rhonda Mitrani began her career in film working for Miramax Films until she started editing for independent films and television in New York. She later edited with MTV Networks Latin America in Miami and founded a socially conscious film festival called the Florida Room Documentary Film Festival. After years of learning the craft of telling a story through film editing, she made her first documentary, Cuba Mia, which premiered at the Miami International Film Festival. The film later aired on PBS. In 2002, Rhonda began to explore video art as digital technology became more accessible and allowed her to shoot and edit her work in different formats. Rhonda continues to focus her work on telling socially conscious and inspiring visual stories as both a video artist and as a filmmaker. She is currently working on a screenplay.

Viviane B. Spinelli
Viviane B. Spinelli is an architect, graduating from Santa Ursula University in Rio de Janeiro. She has dedicated most of her life to her passion for cinema. She directed and produced the short film "Pioneers" and the musical documentary Orchestra on the Road. She also worked as the Assistant Director for the documentary Smoking I Wait and is currently producing the film Time. Viviane is also the Director and Founder of Inffinito, created in 1995. Inffinito produces the Brazilian Film Festival of Miami, part of the Inffinito Festival Circuit that is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year and taking place in 9 countries around the world. Thanks to Viviane's leadership, a great platform was created for the commercialization, promotion and exhibition of Brazilian films in the United States.