Every year an esteemed panel of judges from a variety of backgrounds and experience in the film industry reviews all the films in the GBFF program. Scores from the panel are brought together and averaged to award the highest scoring 2SLGBTQIA+ projects.
Meet the 2024 festival judges below:
Tab Ballis
Tab received the National Association of Social Workers Media Award, for the 2013 short documentary film, “My Marriage Isn’t Threatened By Gay Marriage in North Carolina.”
Capturing the remembrances of LGBTQ elders in coastal North Carolina for a national advocacy group, Tab directed over twenty interviews for the SAGE Story grant program in 2014.
Researching the hate crime that took the life of 32-year-old lesbian Talana Kreeger in 1990, Tab brought the documentary feature “Park View” to completion in 2020.
Tab served on the Screening Committee for Out at the Movies Film Festival 2022, 2023.
Rani Deighe Crowe
Rani Deighe Crowe is an independent filmmaker and screenwriter as well as theater and interdisciplinary artist. Her short films including Safety State, Quiet on Set, Trying to Remember, Heather Has Four Moms, Welfare Check, Texting: A Love Story, Beautiful Eyes, The Test, Just in Case, and Unmasked, have screened in hundreds of festivals all over the world including Athens International Film and Video Festival, BFI Flare, QFest St. Louis, Final Girls Film Festival Berlin, Female Eye Film Festival Toronto, Southampton Film Festival UK, Sapporo Short film Festival Japan, Provincetown Film Festival, and Northern Wave International Film Festival Iceland.
Emmalie El Fadli
Emmalie EI Fadli is a part time writer/director and full time editor based in London who started off back in 2018 when she made her first short film called ‘The Date’. She made this as an answer to the lack of positive lesbian representation in media and it took her all over the world. It’s been selected and screened at BFI Flare in London, Inside Out in Toronto, Roze Filmdagen in Amsterdam and many more. About a year or so later she wrote and directed her second short called ‘From A to Q”. That film was also screened at the above but also at Frameline and Iris Prize, which meant it ended up being screened on Channel 4 and AlI4. In post-production she assisted on shows such as “Deadwater Fell (Channel 4), “DES” (ITV), “Angela Black” (ITV), and “The Rising” (SKY Studios) and has edited over 40 shorts and 3 features.
Rick Hamilton
Rick Hamilton, Managing Director of the Chain Theatre and the Chain NYC Film Festival, is an award-winning filmmaker whose short films, including “Seeing Glory,” “Choices” and “The Fear Inside” have screened around the world. He directed the hit Off-Broadway show Fabulous! The Queen of New Musical Comedies, the AUDELCO-nominated Gypsy and the premiere staging of The Orbit of the Soul. At the Chain Theatre, he directed the world premiere of What Passes for Comedy and the workshop production of Georgie D., following their development in the Chain Play Writing Lab. His work Off-Off Broadway includes Geeks! The Musical and Sophia. Other play development work includes staged presentations of Candy Hearts, Sarah was Mine and A Retail Carol. Rick also directed the steampunk burlesque cabaret Suave and the Boner. For more information on past and current projects, please see www.rickhamilton.nyc
Rosa Sungjoo Park
Rosa Sungjoo Park is a media artist and sound designer whose research interest is centered on the study of the physicality of sound, experimental film and sound, and expanded cinema. Park’s creative practice is deeply grounded in her cultural identity, memories, and religion, and her work has been exhibited in galleries and theaters internationally. Park’s film music and sound design have screened at more than twenty film festivals, including the Cannes World Film Festival, Toronto Documentary Feature and Short Film Festival, and São Paulo International Film Festival, among others. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University.
