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Luke Bronin

Opening Night Introductions – Friday, June 3, 7:30 PM

Mayor, City of Hartford

Luke Bronin is the 67th mayor of the City of Hartford. He was sworn in on January 1, 2016. Mayor Bronin is a husband, a father, a veteran, and an attorney, and he is committed to building a stronger Hartford for all of Hartford’s residents.

Mayor Bronin has had the opportunity to serve in senior positions in both federal and state government. In 2013, he was appointed by Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy to serve as General Counsel. In his position as the governor’s chief lawyer, Bronin partnered with legislators and state agency officials to advance the Governor’s agenda, and he was deeply involved in developing policies to combat veterans’ homelessness, expand economic opportunities, reform our criminal justice system, and protect our environment.

Bronin earned his B.A. and J.D. from Yale University and his M.A. from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He and his wife Sara live in Hartford with their three young kids.

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Gabriel Carnick

INSTANT KARMA – Friday, June 3, 7:30 PM

Director

Gabriel Carnick is a director and writer, known for Wild at Heart (2015), One Night (2015) and Dakota Falling (2015). She studied directing and producing at Chapman University, and has been involved in several movie/music video projects with a local production studio called Neighborhood Pictures.

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Scott Sheppard 

AN ACT OF LOVE – Saturday, June 4, 3:00 PM     

Director, Editor, Producer, Writer

Scott Sheppard was raised the son of a United Methodist minister in rural Michigan. He comes from a long line of Methodist ministers and missionaries, and he chronicled much of that family history in his debut documentary, Planes, Trains & Autorickshaws.

As an editor, he worked on director Antoine Fuqua’s Showtime documentary about infamous gangster rap mogul, Suge Knight. He has also edited short documentaries, commercials, and short films for organizations such as American Heart Association, Harvard University, Canon, TEDx, GOOD, Open Society Foundations, Sheryl Sandberg, and Elvis Presley Enterprises. He currently resides in Los Angeles.

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Joe Seo

SPA NIGHT – Saturday, June 4, 9:30 PM

Actor (David)

Joe Seo is best known for acting roles in the films Gridiron Gang, Out of the Shadows and now Spa Night. Seo won the 2016 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance. The Jury described Seo as “an actor whose quiet and intimate performance is deeply moving.” Read more about it here.

William Mann

WOMEN HE’S UNDRESSED – Sunday, June 5, 7:30 PM

Hollywood Historian, Author

Founding member of Out Film CT (formerly Alternatives)

Connecticut native William Mann was a prominent figure in Hartford’s LGBT community, as the co-publisher of Metroline magazine and one of the founding members of Alternatives (which is the parent organization of Out Film CT).

William J. Mann is the author of Hello Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand, the story of Streisand’s first five years in show business. He is also the author of Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, called “definitive” by The Times of London and named a notable book of 2006 by The New York Times, as well as several other acclaimed studies of the film industry.

Mann’s most recent book, Tinseltown: Madness, Morphine and Murder at the Dawn of the Movies (HarperCollins, 2014), is the story of how the Hollywood studio system and the Hays Office were established during the early 1920s, told alongside the famous, unsolved murder mystery of director William Desmond Taylor, which Mann solves. Tinseltown was a New York Times bestseller and won the 2015 Edgar Award (presented by the Mystery Writers of America) as Best Fact Crime Book of the Year. NPR named it one of the best books of the year, adding “Brings the early days of the movie industry to sparkling life.”

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Leticia De Bortoli

TRENDING – Tuesday, June 7, 7:30 PM

Writer

Leticia is a brazilian filmmaker and screenwriter. She studied filmmaking at the Latin America Institute in São Paulo,Brazil. She continued her studies in several schools in different parts of the world, including Guionarte in Buenos Aires and Emerson College in the US. Since starting the craft she worked in several short films and music videos. “Call me Clint” (Carmel International Film Festival Official Selection) was the first short film written and directed by Leticia. In the last few years, she has been involved as a writer and director in two independent feature films, “Survallience”(2014) and “House of Others” (2014).

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Ephraim Adamz

TWERK B*TCH YOU A BOTTOM – Wednesday, June 8, 7:30 PM

Director, Musician, DJ

Hartford native Ephraim Adamz is an American musician, DJ, and filmmaker. His music brings a variety of sounds including, Pop, Hip-Hop, Baltimore Club, Miami Bass, Vogue, Ballroom, and RnB.

“I do a variety of things… one day you might meet Ephraim the DJ, the next day I’m a filmmaker that has a horror movie on YouTube with over 1 Million views. I’m counting my blessings and hope to conquer it all <3 ” – Ephraim Adamz-

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Sarah Wharton

THAT’s NOT US – Thursday, June 9, 7:30 PM

Producer, Actor (Alex)

Sarah Wharton is a producer and actor. She has collaborated on film, theatre and multi-disciplinary projects in New York and internationally, producing work that has showcased in Los Angeles, London, Oslo and Southern Africa. She is currently an Associate Producer for The Spangler Group, working on a new Broadway Musical about the life of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. She studied at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

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Elizabeth Gray

THAT’s NOT US – Thursday, June 9, 7:30 PM

Actor (Liz)

Elizabeth has studied at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (Stella Adler), Upright Citizens Brigade, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London. Her favorite recent credits include Blank Canvas (HERE Arts Center), Scissoring (The Signature Theatre), and Pamela/Margaret/Annabelle in The 39 Steps / Evelyn in The Shape of Things (Regional; Colorado). Coming up, she will be a writer/performer for a performance art installation going to the Brooklyn waterfront in the spring; after, she will be heading back to Colorado to play Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing.

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Stephen Cone

HENRY GAMBLE’S BIRTHDAY PARTY – Friday, June 10, 7:30 PM

Director

Stephen Cone is a Southern-raised, Chicago-based filmmaker. His film Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party was selected as one of only 23 films to screen in the prestigious BAMcinemaFest at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and was featured in the New York Times as a part of it’s “Anatomy of a Scene” series. Cone’s prior film, the award-winning, critically-acclaimed The Wise Kids, which the Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips called “one of the best coming-of-age pictures in a long time”, was a New York Times Critics Pick, and screened at more than 60 festivals worldwide, and won 8 awards, including the Outfest Grand Jury Prizes for Outstanding US Feature and Outstanding Screenwriting.

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Cole Doman

HENRY GAMBLE’S BIRTHDAY PARTY – Friday, June 10, 7:30 PM

Actor (Henry Gamble)

Raised in downtown Philadelphia, PA, Cole worked professionally throughout the city as a kid, which is where he discovered his shared passion for theatre with the rest of his family.

He is a recent graduate from the School at Steppenwolf, and received his BFA from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in the Spring of 2015.

Chris Jones from the Chicago Tribune named him one of the 10 Hot Faces of Chicago Theatre 2014.

You can also see him in the Season 5 finale of SHAMELESS on Showtime.

Check out his recent interview about his breakout Henry Gamble role with OUT magazine here.

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Michelle Ehlen

S&M SALLY – Saturday, June 11, 7:30 PM (Wadsworth Atheneum)

Director, Producer, Writer, Actor

Michelle Ehlen is a filmmaker and actress who landed her first leading stage role in the third grade playing a man, because she was the only one willing to memorize all of the lines. She immediately fell in love with acting and spent most of her youth on stage in a variety of roles, from tough girl Joe in “Up the Down Staircase” to the fair and dainty heroine in a community melodrama in honor of Swallow’s Day in San Juan Capistrano, CA, where she grew up.

After graduating from Smith College with a B.A. in Sociology and a minor in Film, she moved to Los Angeles to work as an editor and study at the L.A. Film School, where she graduated with a concentration in writing and directing. Her thesis short film, Half-Laughing, aired nationally on LOGO and Here TV and is part of the DVD compilation, “The Ultimate Lesbian Short Film Festival.”

Michelle then wrote, directed, and acted in her first feature film, Butch Jamie, which landed her a Best Actress award from the Outfest Film Festival. She followed up Butch Jamie with Heterosexual Jill, and now rounds out the series with S&M Sally.

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Matt Vance

LUNCH – Saturday, June 11, 7:30 PM (Spotlight Theatres)

Director, Writer, Editor

Matt Vance always knew he wanted to make movies. While a film student and after graduation, he shot 16mm film of Virginia Tech football games for the coaches. As the first Virginia Tech Athletic Video Director, he managed their switch from film to video against his will. In recent years, he used his cinematic skills for non-profit animal rescue to get adoptable animals in homes faster. His desire to tell stories never waned, and it manifested in short videos for entertaining family and friends. Lunch is his first professional, narrative movie.