16.04. ‐ 21.04.2024

LICHTER Jury 2021

The Jury of the Regional Feature-Length Competition

Anna Böger

Anna Böger, an actress living in Frankfurt am Main, completed her education at the Max Reinhardt seminar in Wien. In addition to numerous stage performances, including at the Schauspielhaus Zürich, the Berliner Ensemble, and the Munich Kammerspiele, she has made her film debut in director Ralf Westhoff’s feature film Shoppen (2004). She has also appeared in more than 30 television productions since 2005, most recently in Tatort. In 2002, she received the Special Prize for Performing Arts from the Berlin Academy of the Arts.

© Birgit Gudjonsdottir

Connie Walther

Connie Walther grew up in Riedstadt-Erfelden in Hessen. She completed her vocational training in commercial photography and studied film directing at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. Her works have already won several awards, including the German Television Award. The nationally and internationally successful director/screenwriter is also a founding member of the Pro Quote Regie, a member of the DFA, EFA, and a member of the short film jury ( Animations-,Experimental-Documentary, Special Award) at the BKM.

Sebastian Brose

Sebastian Brose studied German, Art and Philosophy in Gießen und Bremen. After his studies, he worked as a freelance cultural manager and project manager in literature, film and new media.

In 2005, he founded the achtung berlin Filmfestival with Hajo Schäfer. He is a curator for feature and documentary films with a focus on German film, creates film programmes for international events with institutions such as the Goethe Institute, Kulturprojekt Berlin, be berlin and also works as a producer for diverse film festivals, such as the Zebra Poetry Film Festival. He is on the board of the network of Berlin film festivals, Festiwelt, and has been heading the achtung berlin Filmfestival as the co-director and artistic director for 16 years. He lives in Berlin.

The Jury of the Regional Shortfilm Competition

Simone Wagner

Simone Wagner, who grew up in Unterfranken, completed her acting studies in Aschaffenburg at the Actors Company and completed her traineeship as a radio and print media editor in 2001.

With a love for her homeland, Wagner realized her own screenplay "Mord unter Franken" ten years later - here she was not only active in front of the camera as an actress, but also behind the camera as a producer.

Simone Wagner also promotes the training of young talent in her self-founded children's and youth acting school in Aschaffenburg. In addition, she has been an honorary board member of the Bundesverband Schauspiel (BFFS) since 2016.

Dennis Mill

Dennis Mill, born in Erlenbach am Main is a lighting cameraman for scenic and documentary productions. He completed his media education at the SAE Institut in Frankfut and studied Digital media with a focus on Video at the Hochschule Darmstadt. He began a second degree at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in 2011 focusing on image composition. His works have received numerous nominations and awards - amongst them his graduation film “A Bike of A Boy”, nominated for the Student Etudes Competition at the Cameraimage 2019 and awarded the prize for “Best Cinematography” at the Wegiel Film Festival in Poland in 2020.

Hannes Karnick

Hannes Karnick began as a producer and editor for the ZDF youth magazine "direkt." In 1972 he founded the production company docfilm with Wolfgang Richter in Darmstadt. In addition to many joint TV-Pproductions, he was co-author of international award-winning cinema documentaries such as "Martin Niemöller: Was würde Jesus dazu sagen?", "Radio Star - die AFN Story" or "Wenn Ärzte töten – Über Wahn und Ethik in der Medizin", which was already shown in 2010 at LICHTER in the regional feature film competition. Hannes Karnick is a founding board member of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Dokumentarfilm (AG DOK), the Kinobüro Hessen and a member of Netzwerk Recherche. He is one of the speakers of AG DOK Hessen / Rhein-Main, co-organizer of the Hessian Documentary Film Day and he teaches at the Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences in Salzgitter.

The Jury of the 5th VR Storytelling Award

Jimmy Cheng

Jimmy Cheng is focusing on the acquisition and licensing of XR content as the Director of Content at Digital Domain Holdings Limited in Hong Kong. He represents over 160 studios (Atlas V / Lucid Realities / Secret Location / etc.) and engages with 10 global telecoms (Orange / Deutsche Telecom / LG U+ / Softbank / etc.) for finding suitable distribution / licensing opportunities. From 2018 till now, Jimmy has signed over US$ 2M licensing fee from telecoms to support the XR ecosystem to grow faster. Prior to in charge of content licensing, Jimmy was hired by Digital Domain Holdings Limited as Director of Business Operations, mainly focused on daily operation, and restructuring for subsidiaries under DDHL. He was deployed to Beijing, Shanghai, and Taiwan for the integration between corporate and subsidiary.

Rahel Demant

Rahel Demant is Co-Founder of VR First, a global network organization of over 850 universities and 410 Science Parks. Since its foundation in 2016, she has led the program to a network of thousands of developers. The mission: to democratize VR/AR development worldwide through VR First’s various support programs. Since 2020, she's heading XR Bootcamp, an academy for advanced VR/AR development. XR Bootcamp is a global online academy, offering cutting-edge VR/AR development courses to experienced developers and researchers. Their masterclasses are engaging and reinforcing deep learning through hands-on real-world projects and digestible bite-sized content. Curricula are developed by professionals and taught by the world's best experts. XR Bootcamp further supports the XR Creators community with free and open access to knowledge, peer-to-peer learning, and networking opportunities. XR Bootcamp alumni work at companies like Accenture, Boeing, Magic Leap, Microsoft, Siemens, Riot Games, IBM, and Dell.

Georgy Molodtsov

Georgy is a producer and director of classic film and VR content. He is the Co-creator of the Russian VR Seasons initiative (www.russianvrseasons.ru), programming director of the swedish VR_Sci Fest and Curator of the Open Frame Award for VR within the german goEast Film Festival. He is also working as a programmer and festival manager for various VR events in Russia and other CIS states (Moscow IFF, FANK - Contemporary Science Film Festival and others).

Georgy directed 360 commercial projects for international brands – Mazda, Miller, Samsung as well as created several independent works in mixed 360/VR format. In 2015 he started the VRability project for people with disabilities. From 2008 to 2017 he was programmer for documentaries at the Moscow International Film Festival. Georgy graduated from VGIK (All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography) and holds a M.A. in Film and Video (American University'15, Fulbright graduate fellow).

The Jury of the 11th LICHTER Art Award

© Alex de Brabant

Jeremy Shaw

Jeremy Shaw works in a variety of media to explore altered states and the cultural and scientific practices that aspire to map transcendental experience. Often combining and amplifying strategies of verité filmmaking, conceptual art, music video and scientific research, he creates a post-documentary space that complicates expectations of the moving image as a form of testimony. Shaw has had solo exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris, MoMA PS1, New York, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, and MOCA, Toronto, and been featured in international surveys such as the 57th Venice Biennale, and Manifesta 11, Zurich. In 2016 he was awarded the Sobey Art Award and in 2018 was artist-in-residence at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Tate Modern, London. He grew up in Canada and now lives in Berlin.

© Diana Pfammatter

Carina Buktus

Carina Bukuts is an editor, writer and curator. She studied art history and philosophy at the Goethe-University Frankfurt. She joined frieze magazine in 2018, where she works as an editor. She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online art and culture magazine PASSE-AVANT. Her writings have appeared in numerous publications and artist monographs. She lectured at Kunsthochschule Mainz and worked at Goethe-University Frankfurt, where she supervised the exhibition project and seminar Studiengalerie 1.357. She curated exhibitions at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Center for Contemporary Art, Tel-Aviv; Frankfurt Airport, among others, and is organizing an exhibition in the public space of Berlin-Charlottenburg together with curator Liberty Adrien in summer 2021. She grew up in Santa Barbara, USA and now lives in Berlin.

© Avi Dehlinger

Saul Judd

Saul Judd is an independent curator based in Frankfurt, Germany. Since 2010 he has been responsible for the video art section of the LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International. He conceived exhibitions with artists such as Keren Cytter and Mike Bouchet in the context of the festival until he created the LICHTER Art Award in 2011. He started to curate the LICHTER Short Films International program in 2015. Among his projects BLANK SLATE a publication about art, architecture and design he started in 2016 with SCHAUT! - a series of exhibitions of contemporary art film and video art at the MAL SEH’N movie theater in Frankfurt. In 2017 he presented the artist John Skoog as a guest curator for Double Feature at Schirn Kunsthalle.

>