11 GRAND JURY MEMBERS Announced for the 2010 South Asian International Film Festival!

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The 2010 South Asian International Film Festival - Presented by HBO, will be held from October 27 - Nov 2 in New York City. The Seventh Annual South Asian International Film Festival (SAIFF) announced a diverse and accomplished line-up of jurors who will select the winners of the eight Grand Jury Awards at the weeklong festival. Juror Alison Willmore is the Managing Editor of IFC.COM. She is also the founder of IFC.com's film blog and co-hosts the weekly IFC News podcast.

Juror Grady Hendrix, Co-Founder and Co-Programmer for the NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL, joins the SAIFF jury again. For five years he was a regular film critic for the New York Sun and has written for Slate, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Playboy Magazine and Variety, as well as starting Kaiju Shakedown, Variety's popular Asian entertainment blog. He was also the scriptwriter for the Asian Film Awards, a Hong Kong-based awards show for its first three years. He is also a frequent guest commentator on the BBC and NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO.

Juror, Jonathan Howell holds a his M.A. in Cinema Studies from New York University, and taught film history and theory in Prague for two years before returning to New York, and joining the fledgling Ocularis film collective in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 1998, as a programmer of short films, special programs and feature films. In 2000, he founded The World According to Shorts, which became an annual series of the best in foreign short films, screening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's BAMcinematek, through 2007. For most of the current millennium, he has worked as a Film Booker at pioneering foreign/indie film distributor NEW YORKER FILMS-with a year off for good behavior, which he spent at Oscilloscope Laboratories.

Juror Mark DeFrancis is a relative newcomer to the world of indie film, having worked in INDIEPIX'S acquisitions department for two years. As such, he has negotiated the acquisition and managed distribution strategy for films such as Loins of Punjab Presents, Love In India, Welcome to Nollywood, Artois The Goat, No Sweat and, most recently, Skeletons. Additionally, Mark is responsible for INDIEPIX's festival coverage. As such, he has screened well over 100 films at top festivals such as Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca and Silverdocs so far this year. He will never get tired of watching films, can watch up to six a day, and plans to have doubled his current tally before 2011.

Juror Micheal Lermen is the Director of Acquisitions for THE FILM SALES COMPANY. He is also the Artistic Director of the Philadelphia Film Society and an Associate Programmer for Fantastic Fest as well as a frequent contributor to several acclaimed independent film publications including indieWIRE, Spout and Hammer to Nail. Coming from a diverse film industry background, he has worn many hats including one as the Co-Director/Co-Producer/Co-Writer of the 2008 SXSW premiere Natural Causes and the Co-Founder of the production company TIGER INDUSTRY FILMS.

Juror Michael Winton has worked as Marketing Manager at IFC FILMS for the past two years. In his time there, he's worked on the campaigns for a wide variety of films including Gomorrah, Che, In the Loop and Joan Rivers: a Piece of Work. Prior to joining IFC FILMS, Mike worked at SONY PICTURES CLASSICS where he started as an Acquisitions Intern, and then was an Assistant to the Head of Marketing. Prior to working in distribution, Mike spent a year as an English teacher in Marseille, a port town in the south of France, where he once got shot in the face with a bb gun. Mike is a 2003 graduate of Williams College, where he majored in American Studies.

Juror Nadja Tennstedt is Director of Theatrical Marketing at independent art-house distributor ZEITGEIST FILMS. Since January 2007 she has worked on releases of several landmark documentaries including Yung Chang's Up the Yangtze, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's Oscar-nominated Trouble the Water, Laura Poitras' The Oath and Lixin Fan's Last Train Home; as well as acclaimed foreign films such as Sergey Dvortsevoy's Tulpan and Gianni Di Gregorio's Mid-August Lunch. She holds a BA in film production from Hunter College. Born and raised in Berlin, she's lived in New York since 1989. Juror Paul Rachman is the Co-Founder and East-Coast Director for the SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL. He began his film career making underground punk films and music videos for bands such as the Bad Brains and Gang Green in the 1980's. He later rose to become one of the of the industry's top music video directors at PROPOGANDA FILMS in Los Angeles where he worked with Alice in Chains, Roger Waters, Joan, Jett The
Replacements and the Pearl Jam / Soundgarden collaboration "Temple of the Dog" . By 1999 he had directed several award winning short films and made his feature directorial debut in 2000 with Four Dogs Playing Poker starring Forrest Whittaker, Balthazar Getty and Olivia Williams. In 2006, his seminal punk documentary American Hardcore premiered at Sundance and was theatrically released by Sony Pictures Classics. He is currently in pre-production on a new documentary called Lost Rockers.

Juror Rebeca Conget is currently the VP of Acquisitions and Distribution at FILM MOVEMENT. Her recent titles include Mexican award winner Alamar, German drama Storm, and French sleeper hit The Grocer's Son. Ms. Conget is a veteran in the independent distribution world, having previously worked at boutique distributor NEW YORKER FILMS for almost ten years, where she headed the theatrical department, handling such hits as the Oscar nominated My Architect and the re-release of Godard's Breathless, among others. Between 2002 and 2005, she was also an integral member of CINEMA TROPICAL, the non-profit organization that distributes, programs and promotes Latin American Cinema in the U.S. She joined FILM MOVEMENT in 2007 to create, develop and oversee their theatrical and non-theatrical departments. She also heads their acquisitions team and is individually responsible for choosing and programming the twelve shorts the company acquires on an annual basis.

Juror Peter Van Steemburg is the Director of Acquisitions at MAGNOLIA PICTURES and MAGNET RELEASING. Prior to Magnolia, Peter assisted in international distribution and operations for MIRAMAX FILMS and worked for the film finance department at CINETIC MEDIA, run by John Sloss. He is a regular attendee to festivals and markets worldwide and participated in the negotiation of the film Bronson, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. He graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in Art History.

Juror Vincent Musetto has worked at The Post since 1973, and currently is the Post's Film Editor and a Film Critic. He specializes in foreign and independent American films, with an emphasis on Asian films. He is a member of the NEW YOK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE and frequents international festivals from Rotterdam to Transylvania to Tokyo. His favorite director is Wong Kar-wai, and his favorite film of all times is Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.

The Grand Jury will pick the winners for the following awards: Narrative Feature Award, Documentary Feature Award, HBO Short Film Competition Award, Director Award, Acting Performance Award, Cinematography Award, Music Award and the Emerging Talent Award. In addition there are three audience choice awards for narrative feature, documentary feature and a short film.

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