Mentors ~ YCP 2022
Raised in Hamilton and Burlington, Ontario, Elder began his critical and creative work while an undergraduate student in philosophy at McMaster University in the late 1960s. There he learned from the celebrated political philosopher George P. Grant, who introduced Heidegger’s discourse on technology to a generation of Canadian poets and thinkers and whose thoughts on nationhood, love, and technology would inform Elder’s work as an artist and writer.
Since 1975, R. Bruce Elder has been building two formidable bodies of work, as an artist working in the experimental tradition, and as an author of critical texts on art and cinema. His role as an author has in recent years assumed the task of charting the relationship between cinema and art movements through the twentieth century, as we see in his recent book, DADA, Surrealism, and the Cinematic Effect, his previous, Harmony & Dissent: Film and Avant-garde Art Movements in the Early Twentieth Century, and the forthcoming Cubism and Futurism: Spiritual Machines and the Cinematic Effect.
http://rbruceelder.com/
MK Raghavendra is a writer on culture, literature and politics, specializing in film, particularly its political side. After getting a Master’s degree in science and working in the financial sector for over two decades, he has become a full-time writer.
He won the National Award, the Swarna Kamal for Best Film Critic in 1997, and received a Homi Bhabha Fellowship in 2000.
He has also published four volumes of popular film criticism for Oxford University Press and HarperCollins. He has written on a variety of political and cultural issues for Firstpost and Deccan Herald in the past few years.
Bedatri wanted to be a dancer growing up, but ended up writing her first “culture criticism” at age 6 and fell in love with the sweet feeling of seeing her name in print. It was on The Jetsons and it asked where the service class disappeared if robots took over all housework.
Whatever it is she writes on, she writes from the intersections of post-colonialism, race, and gender. Her day jobs, too, emerge out of the same intersections. She has managed documentary projects at various non-profits.
An alumna of the NYFF Critics Academy, Sundance and SXSW Press Inclusion Initiatives, the National Critics’ Institute, and Berlinale Talents, she grew up in India and now lives in New York City. Presently, she is the Managing Editor of Documentary magazine and an Associate Programmer at DOCNYC and IFFLA.
https://bedatri.com/
Mohammed Tarek is an Egyptian film critic and member of the Egyptian Film Critics Association (EFCA). who writes for many online websites, and prints newspapers and magazines such as Ida2at, El Film Magazine, and Daily News Egypt.
In addition, he served (and still) in different positions in various film festivals such as a Film Programmer and the Head of film review committee at El Gouna Film Festival (2021) Q&A coordinator and programmer of the Mexican retrospective program at Cairo International Film Festival (2019-2020).
He is also managing the Cinema project held by El Nahda association for cultural renaissance.
Sucharita Tyagi is one of India’s most popular film critics and interviewers.
Her YouTube show ‘Not a
Movie Review’ garners millions of views and has built a community of dedicated fans over the years. She’s one of the first members of the nationwide Film Critics Guild.
Sucharita launched her own eponymous YouTube channel in 2020. He is a certified film critic at Rotten Tomatoes with 10+ years as an RJ. She is a writer and an emcee for live events and a voice-over artist.
Adefoyeke Ajao is a journalist and researcher who writes about arts and culture in Nigeria.
She holds degrees in Psychology and Communication and Language Arts. Adefoyeke is interested in how the arts embody cultural identities and social constructs and has written on film, gaming, internet memes, literature and visual arts.
She is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talents and Durban Talents and is currently mapping Nigeria’s gaming industry with Enter Africa Lagos.
Founded MADE IN MADRAS ink, the film production company that produced That Four Letter Word, Good Night Good Morning and X – Past is Present. Conceived, Directed and Wrote a collaborative experimental feature film called X – Past is Present with ten Indian filmmakers starring Rajat Kapoor.
Produced, Directed and Wrote a feature-length English film called Good Night | Good Morning starring Manu Narayan (Bombay Dreams, Love Guru) and Seema Rahmani (Sins, Loins of Punjab Presents).
As an independent film movement activist, organized the first-ever Independent Film Festival in India in 2007.
https://madrasink.com/
Aderinsola Ajao is a film curator, journalist and cultural projects manager. Her writing has appeared in publications including Chimurenga, Africiné, Awotele, The Notebook, Glänta, The Sun, and La Furia Umana.
She was previously Program Officer at Goethe-Institut Nigeria, where her work cut across the cultural and creative industries.
She is currently part of the cinidb.africa project team (a Goethe-Institut initiative cataloging audiovisual professionals from Africa and its diaspora), and is also on the editorial committee of Awotele, a bilingual pan-African screen journal. In partnership with Alliance Française Lagos, she runs Screen Out Loud, a film screening series.
Cecilia Barroso is a journalist and film critic. In 2001 she founded the website Cenas de Cinema where she is currently the editor-in-chief and film critic.
She is a member of the Brazilian Association of Film Critics and of Elviras Women Collective of Film Critics. She has already been part of the selection committee for film festivals and events, where she also participated in panels, thematic exhibitions and other parallel activities as a debater and mediator.
She has also taught courses of film criticism, film history and about specific directors. She participated as an author in books like “Mulheres atrás das câmeras: As cineastas brasileiras de 1930 a 2018” and “Trajetória da Crítica de Cinema no Brasil”.
https://cenasdecinema.com
José Sarmiento Hinojosa is a Bachelor of Communication Sciences and Arts and a candidate for a Master’s in History and Curatorship of Art at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Programmer and curator at MUTA International Festival of Audiovisual Appropriation.
Alumnus/fellow of Berlinale Talent Press (Berlin, 2014), Images Festival (Toronto, 2020), Flaherty Film Seminar (NYC, 2021). He is director, curator and film critic for Desistfilm.com.
He is a workshop facilitator and seminarian of experimental cinema (Cultural Center of Spain, Fundación Telefónica, BAFICI), and has been a visiting professor at the Faculty of Arts / PUCP.
https://desistfilm.com/
Taryn has worked in film since 2010, with a focus on film programming, film criticism and film distribution.
She is a Film Curator at Encounters South African International Documentary Festival, a Film Programmer for France-based African streaming platform Cinewax and a Content Writer and Editor for UK World Cinema distribution company New Wave Films.
Taryn is also an Advisory Panelist for the National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa (NFVF) and she was an Evaluator for the Netflix-UNESCO African Folktales Reimagined Short Film Competition in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Taryn Joffes’s Web