Filmmaker for Wikileaks documentary, Actor Gregory Jbara, award-winning shorts programmer, Northwest Film Center services manager, film critic at the Los Angeles Times and New York publicist will be in Bend October 11-14 to judge films.
BendFilm has selected a panel of jurors for its festival set to take place October 11-14. Orit Schwartz, festival director of BendFilm, said, “We are honored to have a fantastic team of jurors joining us for the 2012 festival. They will select the very best film in each of several categories including Best Narrative, Best Documentary, Best Short, Katie Merritt Audience Award and Best of Show among others.”
The six jurors are:
Andy Grieve, filmmaker ~ 2012 Documentary Juror
Grieve is currently editing Academy Award winner Alex Gibney’s new documentary on the Wikileaks scandal that is set for a festival run and release in the fall of 2012. He was accepted into the Director’s Guild of America in 2012 for directing and editing the feature length documentary Can’t Stand Losing You about the band The Police for The Yari Film Group. Credits include Jason Kohn’s Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), winner of the 2007 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Best U.S. Documentary as well as the 2008 Cinema Eye award for Best Editing, Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure, winner of the 2008 Berlin Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. Other notable credits include the feature documentaries Like Water, a behind the scenes look at MMA superstar Anderson Silva (2011 Tribeca Film Festival) and The Carter, an expose of rap-sensation Lil’ Wayne (2009 Sundance Film Festival) and Lionsgate’s horror/western The Burrowers, directed by JT Petty. 
Gregory Jbara, actor ~ 2012 Narrative Juror
Jbara won the 2009 Tony Award, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award for Featured Actor in a Musical as ‘Dad’ in Billy Elliot the musical. Film credits include Broken City, Big Miracle, Tangled, Remember Me, Out Of Step, Exit Speed ,Project 96b (48 Hour Film Project-LA Winner ‘07), Enchanted, In & Out, Jeffrey, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, One Fine Day and World Trade Center. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School and currently appearing as DCPI Garrett Moore on the CBS police drama Blue Bloods. 
Jon Korn, programmer ~ 2012 Shorts Juror
Shorts Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival and a Shorts Programmer at Outfest, where he was Programmer for the 2009 festival. Previously, He worked as an associate programmer at AFI FEST and as associate creative producer for CineVegas. As a writer, his work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Bold Italic, The Bay Citizen, McSweeney’s The Goods and Filmmaker. Korn is the co-creator of the Echo Park Time Travel Mart and a Jeopardy! champion. 
Thomas Phillipson, Northwest Film Center ~ 2012 Documentary Juror
Phillipson is the regional services manager for the Northwest Film Center, a sister organization to the Portland Art Museum. He is responsible for organizing the Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival, programming the Film Center’s “Northwest Tracking” series and is the Coordinator for Region One of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Student Academy Awards and administers the Oregon Media Arts Fellowship. He is the chief liaison from the Film Center to the community of Northwest filmmakers, which includes those in Alaska, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington State. 
Betsy Sharkey, film critic, Los Angeles Times ~ 2012 Narrative Juror
Sharkey is a veteran journalist who began her career with the Dallas Morning News. A graduate of Texas Christian University with a bachelor’s in journalism and a master’s in communications theory, she has written widely about entertainment for a diverse range of national publications among them The New York Times, TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly, where she is a contributing critic for Critical Mass. She joined the Times in ’98 as TV editor, then film editor and entertainment editor before being named film critic. She has co-authored two memoirs by Oscar-winning actresses: Looking for Gatsby with Faye Dunaway and I’ll Scream Later with Marlee Matlin.
Steve Wilson, publicist ~ 2012 Shorts Juror
Wilson is vice-president in the corporate entertainment division of B|W|R Public Relations in New York. He has been with the company for more than 12 years focusing on film festivals (including the Palm Springs and Seattle Film Festivals) and corporate entertainment and lifestyle brands. Prior to joining B|W|R, Wilson worked in the public relations departments at Universal Orlando in Orlando, FL and Home Box Office in New York, NY.
Tickets: www.bendfilm.org.