2023 Jury
2023 Screening Committee & Jury
Tijah Bumgarner
Tijah Bumgarner is a filmmaker, scholar, and professor. She teaches narrative and documentary video production at Marshall University. Since writing and directing her first feature film, Meadow Bridge, in 2017, she has co-made the feature documentary film Picture Proof (2023); co-created the web series Quarantine Life (2020); served as the 1st Assistant Director for Occupational Hazard (2021) directed by Ursula Ellis; co-wrote and directed the pilot episode of Her Hope Haven (2021); co-directed the short documentary Patchwork (2022); and served as a cinematographer for The Quiet Zone (expected: 2023) directed by Katie Dellamaggiore.
www.herhopehaven.com
www.pictureproofthefilm.com
JJ Handley
JJ Handley grew up in the coal fields of Boone County, West Virginia. As he grew, Handley developed an interest in writing and art; choosing to attend after school art lessons. He had an affinity for film and would spend many hours as a teenager in the marquee cinema in Charleston. After graduating with high honors, he would go on to obtain a bachelor's degree in video production at Marshall University. Handley currently works as a sports commentator and freelance video producer.
Ron Hollingshead
Ron Hollingshead is an artist, curator, lecturer, and educator. He currently teaches at West Virginia University, where he graduated with an MFA in 2011. Using his personal experience as a springboard, Hollingshead wryly confronts the universal struggle with injury, disease, pain, and treatment. He has exhibited his work extensively in the United States, with shows in Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and West Virginia and internationally in Ireland, Mexico, and New Zealand. Hollingshead’s sculptural and mixed-media work can be found in the permanent collections of The International Museum for Collage, Assemblage, and Construction (Mexico), The Art House Gallery (Virginia), and in private collections.
www.ronhollingsheadart.com
Gerald Habarth
Gerald Habarth is an artist and animator currently serving as Associate Professor of Art at West Virginia University where he heads the Electronic Media program in the School of Art and Design. He holds an MFA degree from the University of South Florida and a BFA degree from Parsons School of Design. His works have screened at numerous national and international venues and festivals including the Tampa Museum of Art, the Huntington Museum of Art, the Festival Les Instants Vidéo and the Stuttgarter Filmwinter - Festival for Expanded Media. In 2010 he founded the West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival. In 2009 he founded the West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival and the program Space: Atacama, an adventure art course that takes students to the northern desert region of Chile to create works that focus on perception, experience, and multi-media art.
Student Juror:
Evan Clough
Evan Clough is a printmaker, photographer, and mixed media artist originally from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He received his BFA from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, concentrating in Printmaking and Photography; and is now currently a 1st year graduate student at West Virginia University working on his MFA in Printmaking. Evan’s abstract and digitally montaged artwork traverses multiple mediums and requires improvised digital solutions for rendering imagery with handmade printmaking techniques. He continues to explore studio and performative photography as parallel expressions of his digital montage making.
Caroline Rumley
Caroline Rumley is an American filmmaker from the South who combines solo-shot film, found and archival footage, text, and sound to illuminate a personal or public experience. Working in the short format, her documentaries and poetry films look at power structures and control, the resulting loss or lack, and possible moments of clarity. Her work has screened internationally at varied venues - from Melbourne’s Biennial of Video Art to Amsterdam’s IDFA to Berlin's Zebra Poetry Film Fest to Sundance. Caroline holds an MFA in Theatre from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MA in Film, Video, and Digital Imaging from Georgia State University. She taught filmmaking at Agnes Scott College from 2019-2020 as that year's Kirk Visiting Artist and is just now completing her first feature length documentary, Blood Street.
www.carolinerumley.com
Jason Zeh
Jason Zeh (born in 1980, Ohio, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work blends influences from long-time involvement in the underground, experimental music scene with performance art and computer programming. Zeh’s work grapples with the scraps at the edge of meaning: the noise and errors that are in the margins of any message. Current performance works deal with intimacy, confession, and identity. These works employ self-designed software, machine learning algorithms, and streaming platforms to create technological systems that offer the promise of communication. However, the unpredictable behavior of these hacked tools makes communication impossible. Zeh holds an M.A. in English Literary and Textual Studies from Bowling Green State University, an M.F.A. in Expanded Media from The University of Kansas Visual Art Department and has toured extensively performing solo and collaborative works throughout the United States and abroad.
www.jasonzeh.com
Michael C. Schwab
Michael Schwab is an animator and educator based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His animation journey started back in 1973 at the Kansas City Art Institute producing the “Channel 19 Auction Spot” as a senior and winning first prize Public Service TV Spot at the Long Island Intl Film Festival, 1975. From there he was hired at The Animators, a Pittsburgh, PA based animation studio, and contributed as an animation stand operator and asst. animator, 1977-1979. He moved on to co-found Kensington Falls Animation as a producer, director, animator, and production artist, 1979-present. The studio produced many successful commercials and scoreboard animations with the help of many talented artists and continues with Mike as a solo producer. Past notable works include: “Meet Your Liver”, Internet Web Series, (Feb 2021); “The Cowbell Shuffle”, Animated Short, (Sept 2020); “The Childless Woman’s Guide to Raising Children”, Internet Web Series, (Feb 2020); “Tom’s Life”, Animation Pilot, Network Cartoon Series for the FOX Network, (Feb 2011); Pittsburgh Pirates Scoreboard 2D Animation (1985-2011), Awarded Golden Matrix Award (1991); “Timmy’s Journey to Understanding MS”, AIP Production Team Project, Awarded Community Service Project by the PA Association of Private School Administrators, (2005); “Lou and Costa’s Burglar Welcome Mat”, debuted on MTV Cartoon Sushi (June 2000), appeared at the Sundance Film Festival (Jan 2001), and Nicktoons Cartoon Festival (Nov 2004); Pittsburgh Penguins TV Commercials, (1984-1995), Telly Award for Best Animation(1988-1989). kensingtonfalls.com. Youtube: Kensington Falls Animation, Mikey Moose Schwab, and Killer Moose Entertainment.