WFA 2023 Speakers

Adesola ‘Des’ Thomas is a queer Nigerian-American TV writer, playwright, and community organizer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her reverence for dramedy, afrofuturism, and solarpunk writing developed during her adolescence in the boondocks of ethnoburban Georgia, where she divided her quality time between queers punks in the Atlanta DIY (do-it-yourself) music scene and her charismatic African Christian~Muslim polygamist immigrant family. In the words of Larry David, what a combo. Through her TV writing, Adesola aspires to create compelling, genre television that celebrates the particularities, bliss, slowness, warmth that pools through Black lives across the diaspora. She is especially keen to capture ...

With over 20 years of filmmaking experience, NYFA Filmmaking Chair Andrea Swift served as executive producer and director of PBS’ Emmy-nominated documentary magazine series, “In the Life.” Her films have been screened at the United Nations Earth Summit and honored by festivals around the world, including Berlin International Film Festival and Sundance’s Environmental Film Festival. She has created content for AMC, History, WE, the NY Knicks, Madison Square Garden, and Clearview Cinemas; and has written for and directed top talent including Oscar winner Susan Sarandon, Oscar nominees Laura Linney, Patricia Clarkson, and Lesley Gore, and Tony Award winners Alan Cumming, ...

Brit Fryer is a Brooklyn-based director and producer. His films focus on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, and his work includes Caro Comes Out, Across, Beyond, and Over, and trans·ience. He is an alum of the Creative Culture Fellowship and the Sundance Ignite Fellowship. He is currently in GLAAD’s Equity in Media and Entertainment Initiative and the Gotham and HBO Documentary Films Documentary Development Initiative ...

Crickett Rumley received her MFA in Film at Columbia University and is the founder and senior director of the Film Festival Department at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. With diversity, equity, and inclusion at the center of her work, she develops educational programs and festival strategy for a diverse student body. She has guided filmmakers to official selections at such esteemed festivals as Sundance, Tribeca, Slamdance, Austin, Hollyshorts, Rotterdam, Bronzelens, and Palm Springs Shortfest, to nomination and/or shortlisting for the BAFTA Student Film Awards, the Student Academy Awards, and the College Television Awards. A regular juror for ...

Soundview Media Partners Founding Member and CEO Dan Gurlitz entered the entertainment distribution industry in 1984. His career began in advertising, and includes over ten years in sales followed by 15 years in senior management within rapid-growth, independent environments. Prior to launching Soundview, Dan was the Senior Vice President and General Manager, Video, for Entertainment One U.S ...

Daphne Yeager-Ostendorf is an Independent Documentary Filmmaker based in New York. She holds degrees in Anthropology, Political/Social Science and Documentary Filmmaking. She was a Peace Corps development worker in a small fishing village in Sierra Leone, West Africa. She has worked in Germany, Italy and New York. Daphne has been a producer, cinematographer and editor for both short and feature documentaries. Currently, she is starting the edit to another feature verité documentary she has filmed over the last four years and helped produce. Her documentary Keeping Olivia is an official selection of this year’s Winter Film Awards ...

After choosing not to pursue a career in Academia teaching film studies, Dr. Rebekah Louisa Smith began her film industry career in 2009, working as one of the producers of Wales’ most successful national horror film festival; the Abertoir Horror Festival and during that time began to develop a great knowledge of the film festival business, which led her to become inspired to start her own innovative company in an industry she loved. Rebekah and the hard-working team behind her company The Film Festival Doctor, are creators of success and are committed to nurturing filmmakers in order to help them ...

Génesis Mancheren Abaj (b. 1992, they/them) is a Queer, Kaqchikel actor and filmmaker, born and raised in New York City. As a screenwriter and director, they are interested in exploring Kaqchikel contemporary stories that include the supernatural, the surreal and the absurd. Génesis completed their first short film called Terrible Angel in November of 2022, in which a young woman is reunited with one of her ancestors that guides her into the afterlife through a ritual of care. Upon graduating from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2017, they have worked extensively within film. Their written, produced and edited work ...

Ireashia M. Bennett is a storyteller, filmmaker, and writer whose work aims to create worlds, and document moments, where Black queer, disabled folks can exist in ease, complexity, and pleasure. Their work takes the form of new media, short and experimental films, as well as written and multimedia essays. They are a recipient of the two-year RaD Lab + Outside the Walls fellowship at Threewalls and the SPARK Grant from the Chicago Artists Coalition. Their artistic work has been exhibited in art spaces such as the Sullivan Galleries, Arts Incubator, Stony Island Arts Bank, and Chicago Art Department in Chicago ...

Laura Gilliar is a prop master in the New York City film industry. With over ten years experience in the field, Laura has established herself as a professional in the industry, and her work is renowned for its precision, attention to detail, and creative flair. Her work on Lisey’s Story, The Good Fight, Clifford [the big red dog], The Good Wife, and Hulu’s hit show Only Murders in the Building, has made her one of the most sought-after prop masters in the industry. Her ability to source, create and manage all the props for these shows has earned her a ...

Lauren Brickman is an actor, writer, and director who has been creating original work since childhood. Some of her earliest memories are of performing on her driveway and convincing the other neighborhood kids to put on plays in her basement. As a professional performer, Lauren has appeared on TV shows like Ghost: Book of Power II, Bull, Alterlatino, and in the feature film Gloria Bell. Her credits include numerous commercials, web sketches, and web series like Sitters (which she co-wrote and co-starred alongside @FatCarrieBradshaw), as well as One Horse Town, which she co-wrote and co-starred alongside Caitlin Bitzegaio, with whom ...

Ley Comas is a production sound mixer and educator and serves as an Adjunct Professor at Temple University. Their work as a filmmaker of trans experience is grounded in collaborating in the creation of films that highlight and empower the narratives of historically erased identities ...

Maria C. Miles is the founding partner of an entertainment law firm with offices in New York. Ms. Miles’ practice focuses on all areas of entertainment and media law, including, film (both documentary and narrative), music, literary publishing, fashion, sports and new media ...

Mars Roberge is a Canadian-American dual-citizen filmmaker from Toronto and living in Los Angeles ...

Meagan Miller-McKeever is a Film Set Decorator and Set Decoration Buyer with 20 years in the industry. She was educated in theater design at Scripps College in CA , where she received her BA. As well as at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, where she received her masters. Meagan spent a decade in theater working as a prop builder and prop master for Juillard, The Public, Shakespeare in the Park and various off Broadway Theaters before switching over to film production. Since joining IATSE, she has worked as a Set Decoration and Props buyer and ...

Randall Dottin directs both fiction and non-fiction films. His work focuses on how resistance, history and memory serve as either aids or obstacles in the creation of Black identity throughout the diaspora. He received his BA from Dartmouth and his MFA from the Columbia University Graduate Film Division. His thesis film A-ALIKE was licensed for a two-year broadcast run by HBO and won numerous awards including the Gold Medal at the 2004 Student Academy Awards. His second short LIFTED was sponsored by Fox Searchlight’s program for emerging directors - the Fox Searchlab. In 2009, INDIEWire named Randall one of the ...

Samantha Soule is an actress and filmmaker. Currently her work behind the camera can be seen in the films MIDDAY BLACK MIDNIGHT BLUE, TAFFETA, SHED, TELLING TIME and BIRDWATCHING. As an actress she can currently be seen in OUTER BANKS, GODLESS, TALES OF THE CITY and THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT on Netflix and CITY ON A HILL for Showtime. She is a graduate of The Juilliard School and an artistic associate of Rising Phoenix Rep Theater ...

Steven De Castro is a New York-based cinematographer and professor. Before he was a filmmaker, De Castro was a trial lawyer and served as Human Rights Commissioner of Jersey City ...