2023 SHORTS IN COMPETITION JURY
The Shorts in Competition program began in 2005 and we are thrilled to keep supporting the work of many up-and-coming as well as established filmmakers. The 15 shorts in this year’s competition in Program 1 and Program 2 were selected from over 150 entries by Dani Rodríguez and Ana Tonso.
We are excited to welcome Lisa Marr, Paolo Davanzo, and Dora Prieto,
as the jury members for the Short Film Competition of the 21st edition of VLAFF.
Lisa Marr is an award-winning filmmaker, musician and writer whose work is a catalyst for creative collaboration and community empowerment. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Lisa is the Operations Director and Youth Film Coordinator at Echo Park Film Center Los Angeles, and a 2014 Visual Arts Fellow of the California Community Foundation. As The Here & Now, she travels the world with her partner Paolo Davanzo, sharing handmade movies and music with everyone. Since 1996 she has been working between Los Angeles and Vancouver. In 2019, Marr and Davanzo opened a chapter of EPFC in Canada called EPFC North located at the Moberly Park Fieldhouse, part of the City of Vancouver’s Fieldhouse Activation Program.
Paolo Davanzo is a filmmaker, educator and co-founder of the Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles, California. He was born in Italy to an Italian father and a Canadian mother and then emigrated to North America as a child. His parents were both social justice activists who died very early in his life and their passing became the impetus for opening EPFC in 2001. He believes in the power of cinema to create change, love and harmony in the world. Since 2003 he has been working between Los Angeles and Vancouver. In 2019, along with his partner Lisa Marr, he opened a chapter of EPFC in Canada called EPFC North.
Dora Prieto is an emerging writer and cat mami currently completing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. Her work appears in publications including Acentos Review, Capilano Review, and Catapult. Her poem “the withholding map” won the 2022 Room Magazine Poetry Contest, and her poems “Notes on the Non-Place” were a finalist for the 2023 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Raised between rural Nova Scotia and southern Chiapas, Dora now divides her time between central Mexico and the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Sḵwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver).