SELECTION COMMITTEE

VLAFF is pleased to announce the selection committee, who will be in charge of selecting the films to be presented for our panel of experts during our Work in Progress. 

LUNA MARÁN

Luna Marán is native from the Zapotec community of Guelatao de Juárez, Oaxaca, Mexico. Luna is part of the second generation of filmmakers in her community. Luna is cofounder of CAI, Aquí Cine, Cine Too Lab, JEQO and Brujazul, with which she produced the film LOS AÑOS AZULES (2017), winner of 10 awards and nominated as Best directorial debut in the Mexican film academy awards, 2018. Luna’s first feature film as a director, TIO YIM (2019), had its international premiere at the BBC Documentary film festival.

HEITOR AUGUSTO

Heitor Augusto is based in São Paulo, Brazil, Heitor Augusto works as an independent programmer, film critic, lecturer and translator. He programmed Black Brazilian Cinema: Episodes of a Fragmented History, a retrospective hosted at Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival and focused on short films spanning the period from 1973 to 2017. He’s the head programmer for NICHO 54, an institute, of which he is a co-founder, working for the promotion of film education to Black Brazilians, as well as pushing for racial equity in the industry. Through this his work has helped to uncover systemic invisibilities perpetuated by traditional approaches to film history, providing healing to historically shattered subjectivities, as well as being an integral part of forging his own identity. Since 2015 Augusto has been mapping the presence of Black Brazilians in film history and such material will constitute an innovative research to be published in 2021. In constant exchange with the African Diaspora, his current curatorial research focuses on experimental films and queer cinema directed by Black filmmakers, with a special interest in bridging Brazilian with American expressions. In American film, his main object as a researcher is Blaxploitation cinema, with which he’s engaged from a formal, aesthetics, historical, racial and political perspective.

GERARDO BERROCAL

Gerardo Berrocal, is a producer of the Wallmapu (Mapuche territory), precursor and coordinator of the ADKIMVN initiative, through which he has carried out a work focused on the development of Cinema and Communication of the Mapuche people. Gerardo has produced a series of documentaries and audiovisual works focused on making the reality of the Mapuche people known, mainly from the process of recovery and territorial defense; the revaluation of ancestral knowledge, culture and spirituality; the strengthening of the traditional organization and the territorial structure. Gerardo’s works  have participated in various film festivals, national and international level. Gerardo is the producer of TUWUN Indigenous Film Festival of Wallmapu.