*** Aarati Akkapeddi ***

Aarati Akkapeddi (they/them) is a cross-disciplinary artist, coder, and educator based in Lenapehoking (Flatbush, Brooklyn). They often use personal and institutional archival materials, combining computational and analog techniques like machine learning & printmaking to create artwork about collective memory. Their work has been supported by institutions like The Photographers' Gallery, ETOPIA Center for Art & Technology, Fotomuseum Winterthur, and LES Printshop. They sometimes teach at Parsons School of Design, Bard Experiential Lab, and Pratt Institute. They work as a designer/developer for The Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network, creating digital spaces and tools. Aarati first took Desktop Cinema at MONO in Spring 2023 and then helped teach it Summer 2023.

*** Paul Crucero ***

Paul Crucero (he/him) is a film projectionist, film programmer, chess fanatic, and almost linguist raised and based in Brooklyn, NY. He has programmed for Spectacle Theater and projected both analog and digital film in booths around NYC, including Maysles Documentary Center, Spectacle Theater and Firehouse Cinema. On occasion, he has also moderated Q&As for local releases and written long form reviews/analyses for films he is especially passionate of. Having worked in cinemas since 2010, he has worked in 10+ theatrical exhibition spaces all over NYC in most every capacity, enjoying the variety each brought along the way. He took his first class at MONO in 2023 and now helps teach 16mm film projection basics. He is most recently working on a recurring silent film series at Spectacle and can be found frequenting and contributing to Cinema Treasures’ website learning all he can about the history of movie theaters as physical spaces and can also be found rambling about less prominent international cinema and films pre-1980 on his letterboxd, username: Paulyglot.

*** Derrick Schultz ***

Derrick Schultz is a designer and post-AI artist. His artwork connects current technological trends with past scientific theory, experimental film history, and technology’s relationship to climate change. His work has been seen in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and for clients such as Sony and HP. He is currently an adjunct professor at NYU’s ITP program, teaching AI Art and algorithmic filmmaking courses. Derrick started taking classes at Mono in 2022 and currently teaches Desktop Cinema after creating custom software for the class.

*** Lauren Noelle Oliver ***

Lauren Oliver is a New York City-based multidisciplinary artist who uses photography, filmmaking and performance to explore her multicultural identity. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography from SUNY Purchase. Her photographs have been featured on i-D, Buzzfeed, F-stop Magazine, and The Luupe. Her first monograph, “Temple of the Self”, published by Monolith Editions in 2020, is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lauren works at the Gowanus Community Darkroom where she teaches and helps coordinate educational programming. Lauren took her first workshop at Mono No Aware in 2017 and now teaches projection basics and phytograms.

*** Pablo Eguía ***

Born in Spain in 1998, is fascinated by images of several kinds. Works as a video editor and archivist. Makes music under the name Plinio. He first arrived to MONO a few months after moving to New York in 2021 and currently teaches the Super8 workshop.

*** Shayna Strype ***

Shayna Strype (she/her) is a filmmaker and multimedia artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work utilizes puppetry and handmade mixed media techniques. Shayna’s latest film, ‘Our Mine,’ won Best Experimental Film at Brooklyn Film Festival and Dumbo Film Festival, and was screened at Palm Springs ShortFest, Nighthawk Cinema, and Ann Arbor, among others. Her short film, ‘Hearty Fluff’ is currently distributed by Heather Henson’s Handmade Puppet Dreams on Amazon Prime. Shayna frequently collaborates with Pig Iron Theater and Trusty Sidekick Theater Company. Shayna received her MFA in theater from Sarah Lawrence College.  She first took a workshop with Mono in 2018 and now teaches Super 8 Filmmaking. 

*** + Shrey Mendiratta ***

Shrey Mendiratta is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Ridgewood, Queens, born and [half-]raised in New Delhi, India. Shrey was the recepient of the Queens Council Arts Grant in 2021. With the support of MONO NO AWARE completed and exhibited जान की ओर (jaan ki or) in 2021, and has been an instructor with the org since taking his first class in 2020.

*** Vi Tuong Bui ***

Vi Tuong Bui (she/her) is a photographer and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. Born and raised in Annandale, Virginia, she is the daughter of former boat refugees from the Vietnam War / US War in Vietnam. Vi’s practice is in 16mm, and her work often explores memory; intergenerational loss / healing; diaspora; language / translation; and Vietnamese and Asian American identity. Vi was a 2022-2023 Production Workshop Fellow at Third World Newsreel. Her films have screened at Visual Studies Workshop, Mono No Aware, Anthology Film Archives, and The Museum of Modern Art. Vi first took a workshop with MONO in 2021 and currently teaches Intro to 16mm color film making.

*** Jordan Caroopmas ***

Jordan Caroompas [they/them] writes words & music and makes films & animations mostly on 16mm film. Their written work has been published by Bottlecap Press and Bright Lights film journal while their films and music have existed in many forms, both live and recorded. Jordan is a distance runner and salad enthusiast living in Brooklyn, NY, but dreaming of far away mountains and lakes. Jordan first took a workshop with MONO NO AWARE in the fall of 2021. Currently, Jordan is MONO’s office manager and teaches the Intro to 16mm workshop.

*** + Jean Carlos Malaret ***

Jean Carlos is a filmmaker and person interested in "Fotógrafo de cine analógico" based in Queens NY.

*** Lucas Kane ***

Lucas Kane is a brooklyn-based film and theater maker, whose work ranges from experimental documentary film to community-based forum theater. For the past year, he’s been exploring the ideological underpinnings and political implications of Brecht’s learning plays by staging them in collaboration with different Brooklyn based activist groups as a means to facilitate conversation around arts and organizing. Prior to this, she worked as an assistant director to Peter Brook at the Bouffes du Nord theater in Paris. They are currently working on a collaborative and experimental documentary with their neighbors which traces the history of the gentrification of their block and a short diary film about working with Peter Brook and his approach to theater. He also works as the Lab Manager at the cinema non-profit Mono No Aware.

*** + Nicolas Cadena ***

Nicolas “Nico” Cadena (he/him/his) is a Colombian-born filmmaker, independent producer, and film instructor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. After several years working with nonprofit media organizations including StoryCorps and The Redford Center, Nico is currently pursuing independent work exploring film’s poetic potential in both digital and analog formats. Nico first took a workshop with MONO in 2023 and is currently teaching Intro to 16MM Color Filmmaking.

*** Sonia Rosa Kahn ***

Sonia (she/her) is a London-born, NYC-based artist. Graduating with a BA from Columbia University in Art History and Visual Art, her conceptual practice engages with both personal and collective feminist histories through experimental film and printmaking. Exploring the intersection between print and moving image, she manipulates celluloid using procedures often associated with printed matter. Her work has been shown internationally including at the South London Film Dance, Postcrypt Gallery NYC, Anthology Film Archives, and as part of the London-based Nine8 Collective. She also works to bring hand-painted animation to music festivals including The Governor’s Ball (2023) and Brainchild Festival (2018-2022). Her writing has been published by the Journal of Art Criticism, Here Gallery Pittsburgh, and Phillips Auctioneers. Sonia first took a class at Mono in 2021 and currently teaches the Color Photogram class.

*** + Saif Al-Sobaihi ***

Saif is a Brooklyn based freelance cinematographer and gaffer who is originally from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He received a BFA in Cinematography from The Savannah College of Art and Design where he was a member of the - IHSA National Championship Winners - equestrian team. Saif has earned accolades for his film work, such as a Super 16mm single-projection performance at the MONO XI Festival. “Pinwheel” garnering him two Best Cinematography Awards at the Festigious International Film Festival and the Around International Film Festival in Berlin; “El Circo” earning the Southeast Regional EMMY Award for short-form fiction, “La Calvita” screened as one of “The Coming of Age Mixtape” films chosen by the Bushwick Film Festival. He has certifications in OSHA 10 Construction Safety and Health, Aerial Work Platform/Aerial Lift, and an American Society of Cinematographers Master Class (2017) attendee. Saif first took a workshop with MONO NO AWARE in 2019. www.TheSaif.com

*** Lily Jue Sheng ***

Lily Jue Sheng (They/them/theirs) is an artist/filmmaker, cultural worker, archivist, and organizer who started taking workshops at Mono in 2014 to stay engaged with analog filmmaking after school. They have co-taught 2D animation, mattes and multiple exposures, and steenbeck editing at Mono. Lily is a member of the greater community who uses equipment, work space, film, and actively participates in the events offered through Mono. Their work has screened in the festival and as part of the Open Air Screening Series.

*** Adrian Cebreros ***

Adrian (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist primarily working in printmaking, sculpture, and filmmaking. His art practice and creative research investigates the interconnections between art and ecology. Adrian first took a class at Mono No Aware in 2021 and since then he has taught Desktop Cinema and Direct Filmmaking. Adrian currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

*** + Vito Adriaensens ***

Vito Adriaensens (he/him) is a Belgian filmmaker and scholar. He holds a PhD from the University of Antwerp, an MFA from the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, and is Assistant Professor of Experimental Film and Media at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Vito has also taught at Columbia University, the VU University in Amsterdam, the Université libre de Bruxelles, the University of Antwerp, Ghent University, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Copenhagen and the Danish Film Institute. He is a co-author of Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema, the author of Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames: The Art of Early European Cinema, and he is currently finishing a book on the silent film Häxan for the British Film Institute, editing The Tableau Vivant: From Living Pictures to Moving Images for Edinburgh University Press, and writing From New Stagecraft to New Cinema: Silent Film Performs the Avant-Garde for Amsterdam University Press. As a filmmaker, Vito works mainly on celluloid and his experimental short films have screened internationally. His first feature is the Metamorphoses-inspired, 35mm anthology film Ovid, New York. Vito first took a workshop with MONO in 2018 and never wanted to leave, so he didn't, and has been teaching title workshops. 

*** + Željka Blakšić ***

Željka Blakšić AKA Gita Blak is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in New York City. She holds an MFA from The School of Visual Arts- Photography, Video and Related Media Department and BFA in Studio Art from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Over the last 15 years she created numerous projects addressing critical enquiries into the notions of collective, poetic and refusal using performance, social practice, and 16mm film. Blakšić often collaborates with members of different subcultures, activists, singers, urbanists, and students, creating sites and praxis of collectivity. She presented her work at Museum of Modern Art, NY; AIR Gallery, NY; BRIC Brooklyn, The Kitchen, NY; Framer Framed, Amsterdam; Gallery Augusta, Helsinki; Urban Festival, Croatia; Gallery of SESI, Sao Paolo; The Khyber Center for the Arts, Canada etc. She was a recipient of the Residency Unlimited & National Endowment for the Arts Award, NY; Fondazione Pistoletto, Italy; MuseumsQuartier Program, Vienna; Recess Session commission, NY; A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship Program, NY; The Immigrant Artist Program -NYFA, NY; Paula Rhodes Award, NY; among others. Most recently she was a resident at Alserkal Avenue in Dubai, UAE and Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in NYC. Željka first took a workshop with MONO in 2011 and currently teaches Macro Cinematography.

*** + Justine Lai ***

Justine Tamiko Lai (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist from Sacramento, CA working primarily in painting and animation. She received a BA in English and Studio Art from Stanford University and an MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her work has been exhibited at Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, CA), Asian Arts Initiative (Philadelphia, PA), and Gawker Media (New York, NY). In 2023, she was the Open AIR Artist-In-Residence at the Missoula Public Library Makerspace. Justine first took a workshop with MONO in 2015 and has taught 16MM Film Titles since 2019.

*** + Matt Whitman ***

Matt Whitman (he/they) is from Pennsylvania and lives/works in Brooklyn, New York. His 16mm and Super8 films have screened at the Mimesis Documentary Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival, Light Field 2023, CROSSROADS 2022, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, ANALOGICA, the Athens International Film and Video Festival, Fracto Experimental Film Encounter, Process Festival, and Light Work UVP at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. He teaches at Parsons School of Design. Matt first took a workshop with MONO in 2012 and currently teaches Intro to 16mm.

*** + C. Díaz ***

C. Díaz is an interdisciplinary artist and radical archivist from the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. Their work explores the relationship between cerebral landscapes and the natural environment through the weaving of social practice, experimental cinematic techniques, and the reimagining of archives. C. has worked on various film restorations, oral history projects, and home movie collections as a colorist, editor, and digitization specialist for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, NMAAHC at The Smithsonian, and The Estate of Ana Mendieta. In 2021, they co-founded ENTRE, an artist-run community film center and regional archive located in the Rio Grande Valley, where they hold roles as facilitator, programmer, and archivist. They serve on the board of the Center for Home Movies, a collective of archivists advocating for the preservation and cultural significance of home movies across the globe. They were an Interchange Artist Grant Fellow in 2021, awarded the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2019, and an Artist in Residence at the Echo Park Film Center in 2016. They are currently an Assembling Voices Fellow at Columbia's INCITE program focusing on Boca Chica, Corazón Grande, a community archival project facilitated by ENTRE and Flower Friends. C. took their first workshop with MONO in 2012 and presented their dual projection piece Frente a Frente at MONO NO AWARE X in 2016.

*** + Meryl Jones Williams ***

Meryl Jones aka "Curly" (they/them) is a sound artist, composer/singer, and actor who makes films. They came to filmmaking for its capacity to intermingle and complicate multiple self-expressions. They first took a workshop in 2019 and feel jazzed in a space that centers community and constant learning.They’ve made multiple short films centering queer voices including Dom, Goldilocks, and The Love Spell. They especially love blurring the boundaries between genres and their work aims to pre-aurilize as well as be interchangeably playful across narrative, experimental, documentary, and home video. Their films have screened at various festivals including Champs Elysses, Oberhausen, Newfest, and online for The New Yorker Magazine and No Budge. They are a co-founder of Sweet Potato Productions and work collectively alongside collaborator and friend Jane Stiles, amongst others! 

*** + Erin Neitzel ***

Erin Neitzel is a projectionist, filmmaker, and curator originally from Colorado and now residing in New York City. Her work is a synthesis of analog and digital mediums, playing with varied technologies and recycled media to create a delicious past-present-future layer cake of cinema. Since 2022 she has been running Saint Bimbo’s Film Church, which hosts events for local experimental & low-budget filmmakers and artists to share their work. Her first class with Mono No Aware was in 2019, and she now teaches 16mm projection basics.

*** + John Zhao ***

John Zhao (he/him) is a self-taught video editor, screenwriter and film director born in China to Korean diaspora and raised internationally.  He first took classes at MONO in 2017 where he currently teaches Steenbeck 16mm editing. He also serves on the advisory committee at Film Forum, and formerly worked for Wieden+Kennedy and other ad agencies. 

*** + Andrea Nappi ***

Andrea Nappi is a filmmaker born and raised in New York City. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Media Studies at The New School for Public Engagement. Andrea’s practice is in super 8, 16mm, VHS, and HD video work, which is influenced by her own personal truths and history. Her projects engage with the tactility of film in documentary, narrative, and experimental settings. Most of Andrea’s work focuses on gender, sexuality, mental & physical health, and dismantling patriarchal power through the lens of a queer millennial. Her work has been screened at Spectacle Theater, Anthology Film Archives, and several experimental film venues across South America.

*** + Erica Sheu ***

Erica Sheu is an experimental filmmaker who works with celluloid film. Her work often starts with events of everyday life to consider her origins and the concept of home. Sheu holds a BA in English from National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan. Her work has shown at Microscope Gallery, The Film-Makers' Cooperative in New York, Detour Gallery (ISFF) in New Jersey, Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, and 2018 Taiwan Biennial at National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Sheu is currently based in Queens, New York.

*** + Nora Rodriguez ***

Nora Rodriguez is a media artist and educator. Her work has screened at REDCAT in LA, the Block Cinema in Chicago, Pioneer Works, The Filmmaker's Coop, Anthology Film Archives, La Mama, and BRIC in New York, among other venues. She is currently the Assistant Director of Digital Strategy and Content at MoMA PS1 in New York.

*** + Julie Orlick ***

Julie Orlick (b. 1990; los angeles, california) is an american film maker, photographer, director, poet & artist based in brooklyn, new york. her films reflect upon the absurdity and contingency of existence & maintain a timeless feel through adhering to analogue techniques. the quirks and mishaps that happen while using film adds to the visual outcome of her craft that can truly be considered unique. common themes in her work (2014-2017) expand on diverting gender norms, women who resemble 1920's movie stars, flowers, cakes, mimes & love. her most recent work from her artists' residency in berlin, germany focuses on in-camera bolex tricks and the progression of time though abstraktion of the human mind, body and soul.

All of her films are shot on a bolex h16 REX5 & edited on a flatbed steenbeck. Julie continues to keep the spectacle alive of only screening her work on FILM. many of her films can NOT be found online. Much of her work is made possible with the facilities, equipment & support provided by mono no aware film.

*** + Isaiah Winters ***

Isaiah Winters’ (he/him) photographic and experimental films merge the archival or found with the contemporary to comment on nostalgia and indexicality. Through recontextualizing visual media and advertisements he asks that viewer to acknowledge their own biases or learned truths. By taking this approach, Winters is able to create associations and assemblages that comment on the visual arts. Isaiah received his BA in Sociology and MFA from Parsons School of Design in 2022. Winters’ work has been exhibited at Rotterdam Photo Festival, Parsons School of Design, Lincoln Center, Pingyao International Photo Festival and Photoville NYC. His work has also been featured in The New York Times, Baltimore Magazine, SNFCC, Parks Project and BmoreArt. Isaiah first took a workshop at MONO in 2020 and currently teaches photography and video at Parsons School of Design, as well as 16MM filmmaking at MONO.

*** + Brighid Greene ***

Brighid Greene (she/her) is a film and dance artist. Her producing projects include Yara Travieso’s “La Medea” (Creative Capital awardee, distributed by Sentient.Art.Film/Keisha Knight, Film at Lincoln Center), Sarah Friedland’s ”CROWDS” (Ann Arbor Film Festival, Performa 19); and “A Halal Bodega” (BRIC TV). In film she programmed and screened for Cucalorus Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and Dance on Camera, worked as an assistant for dance filmmaker Lily Baldwin, and was the Programs Director for Dance Films Association. Brighid was a long time performer in the critically acclaimed immersive dance theater production “Then She Fell” by Third Rail Projects (performing 800 shows) and choreographed for Josephine Decker's “Madeline’s Madeline” (Sundance). Her own work combining Super 8mm and live performance has been featured at the gallery Tiger Strikes Asteroid, the Works on Water Triennial on Governors Island, and written about in the NY Times. Brighid took her first Super 8mm workshop with Mono No Aware in 2015, and she is currently producing the feature length dance documentary “Everything You Have Is Yours.”

*** + Joel Schlemowitz ***

Joel Schlemowitz (he/him) is an experimental filmmaker based in Brooklyn who works with 16mm film, shadowplay, magic lanterns, and stereographic media. He is the author of Experimental Filmmaking and the Motion Picture Camera: An Introductory Guide for Artists and Filmmakers (Focal Press/Routledge). His first feature film, 78rpm, is an experimental documentary about the gramophone. His short works have been shown at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and Tribeca Film Festival and have received awards from the Chicago Underground Film Festival, The Dallas Video Festival, and elsewhere. Shows of installation artworks include Anthology Film Archives, Images Film Festival, and Microscope Gallery. He teaches experimental filmmaking at The New School, and was Resident Film Programmer and Arcane Media Specialist at the Morbid Anatomy Museum. Joel has taught double exposure and matte box workshops at Mono No Aware.

*** + John Klacsmann ***

John Klacsmann is Archivist at Anthology Film Archives in New York City where he preserves experimental film and artists' cinema. Before joining Anthology in 2012, he worked as a preservation specialist and optical printing technician at Colorlab, a film laboratory in Maryland. He is a contributing editor to INCITE: Journal of Experimental Media and runs a tiny tape label, ZAP Cassettes.

*** + Dena Kopolovich ***

Dena Kopolovich is a multimedia artist & filmmaker from New York. Her recent work uses past and present aesthetics to investigate the origin and continuity of meaning. She is interested in using cinematic forms to explore the derivation of instinctive human rituals & objects. In 2022 she completed a fellowship at LABA Laboratory for Jewish Culture, where she spent a year creatively interrogating ancient mythological texts. She is an adjunct professor in the Film & Media Department at Hunter College and a teaching artist at the cinema-arts non-profit Mono No Aware. Dena received her education from the Purchase College Conservatory of Theater Arts, with a concentration in Directing and the Integrated Media Arts MFA at Hunter College.

*** + Annie Ling ***

Annie Ling is a documentary photographer and artist based in Brooklyn. Select clients include The New York Times, The New Yorker, Fader Magazine, and New York Magazine. Her work has been featured in Frieze Magazine, American Photography, PDN Photo Annual, Tunica Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, among others. She has lectured at Columbia University, CUNY Brooklyn College, International Center of Photography, Ryerson University School of Image Arts, Asian American Writers' Workshop, and has appeared on Al Jazeera America and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism's pilot radio show. Annie's debut solo exhibition “A Floating Population” at Museum of Chinese in America in New York City featured over eighty images spanning four years of work. Annie is a recipient of the New York Foundation of the Arts fellowship for photography, the first Skammdegi AIR Award, and a Director’s Fellowship from The International Center of Photography. Previously, she was a fellow of Reflexions Masterclass, an international laboratory investigating the evolution of the language of visual representation. http://annielingphoto.com

*** Connor Lawson ***

Connor Lawson (he/him) is a NYC cinematographer specializing in analog film techniques. He's been working with motion and still film for the last 15 years ranging from Super 8 to S35 and has instructed on a variety of classes including Lighting and Exposing for 16mm Film, Intro to Aaton LTR and Flatbed Editing. He is currently developing a Rear Screen Projection workshop for the fall of '23. He first engaged with Mono back in 2013 with a hand-processing black and white reversal film via a bucket method workshop and continues to be a part of the Mono and NYC film community to this day.

*** + Jess Lynch ***

Jess Lynch is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Her films emphasize an unfolding, contemplative experience reflecting cycles of time, rhythms of life, deconstructions, and abstractions. Many finished works become raw material for live video mixing in collaboration with musicians and other artists. Jess holds a BFA from the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art and has exhibited her work at numerous festivals, galleries, bars, and DIY venues.

*** + Craig Scheihing ***

Craig Scheihing is a filmmaker, photographer, curator, educator, and the founder of Big Mama’s Cinematheque, a cinema arts organization in Philadelphia. His films have been screened in film festivals, basements, bars, galleries, and garages, both in the U.S. and internationally. Splitting his time between Philadelphia and New York he works freely between diary, essay, and abstract forms. Craig’s films emphasize experience over narrative, sentiment over drama, connection over concept.

*** Amina Gingold ***

Amina Gingold (she/her) is a photographer, filmmaker, and bookmaker originally from Syracuse, NY. She lives and works in New York, NY, and graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2020 with a BFA in photography and video. Her work was shortlisted for the Palm Photo Prize in 2022, featured in "The 2020 Lenscratch Top 25 to Watch", and exhibited at SoMad Studios. She volunteers at Mono No Aware and is immersed in analog and experimental techniques. These tools aid in exploring concepts of misremembering, gut instincts, and the complications of uncovering the truth. Amina first took a workshop with Mono No Aware in 2022 and currently teaches individual Bolex workshops and Phytograms.

*** + Avra Fox-Lerner ***

Avra Fox-Lerner is a filmmaker and lighting technician living in Brooklyn, NY. She has made 6 short films since 2020 and has worked professionally on film sets since 2003. She has a focus in horror, but loves all kinds of genre filmmaking and is inspired not only in making her own work, but helping others achieve their filmmaking goals as well. Avra first took a 16mm Bolex class with MONO in 2022 and currently teaches Lighting for 16mm film.

*** + Linh Vu ***

Linh Vu (she/her/hers) is an experimental documentary filmmaker based in NYC. Her works, often shot with a Bolex 16mm camera and Canon 514XL super 8, are inspired by the lyrical film theory developed by P. Adams Sitney, and Jonas Mekas’s agitated camera movement as an intermediate response to and documentation of fragmentary everyday images. She is drawn to the essence of personal filmmaking, especially the idea of in-camera editing. whose poetic and impressionistic elements are combined to evoke a floating consciousness, intertwining with the vicissitudes of thoughts, emotions, and truths. In addition, she is also interested in the hands-on manipulation of direct filmmaking by destroying and creating new materials on the emulsion with an effort to repurposing the footage that was shot in the past. In exploring the materiality of film celluloid, she has been experimenting with different frame-by-frame techniques such as bleaching, hand-painting, scratching, applying newspapers and stickers, contact-printing and photograms. Linh first took a workshop with MONO in 2019 and currently teaches macro cinematography on 16mm.

*** + John Klacsmann ***

John Klacsmann (he/him) is Archivist at Anthology Film Archives in New York City, where he preserves artists’ cinema and experimental film. Klacsmann holds a bachelor of science in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis and is a graduate of the George Eastman Museum’s L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. Before joining Anthology in 2012, he worked as a preservation specialist and optical printing technician at Colorlab, a film laboratory in Maryland. He co-edited two volumes of The Collections of Harry Smith: Catalogue Raisonné and Manuel DeLanda: ISM ISM. He attended his first MONO event in 2011.

*** + Cait Carvalho ***

Cait Carvalho is an up and coming media artist living in Brooklyn. She is currently working on her MFA in the Integrated Media Arts Program at Hunter College. She has created hand-painted + animated films, as well as surreal, fictional and non-fictional pieces. She has worked for organizations such as Anthology Film Archives, the Independent Filmmaker Project and the Made in NY Media Center by IFP. During her time with IFP, she organized and led community events and guided filmmakers through the process of attending IFP’s Independent Film Week in 2013. For the past four years she has been teaching 16mm and Super 8mm filmmaking with the New York State Summer School of the Arts. She has curated screenings in both L.A. and New York. Cait was also a participating artist during Creative Tech Week in 2015 and bits of her work have been screened at Anthology Film Archives. http://ccarval4.wixsite.com/ccarvalho

*** + Jason Harper ***

J.M. Harper is a writer/director living in Brooklyn. He's currently directing As We Speak, a documentary about rap lyrics and the criminal justice system (Paramount+). A multi-hyphenate documentarian, he's edited four features including the Emmy-nominated Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy (Netflix), A Kid from Coney Island (Netflix) about the life of Stephon Marbury and Down a Dark Stairwell (Criterion Channel) about the NYPD murder of Akai Gurley. He's also won Jury Awards at the Sundance Film Festival (Non-Fiction) and SXSW Film Festival (Fiction). As a commercial director at Park Pictures, he has accrued numerous awards at Cannes, Clios, UKVMAs, Adweek and beyond. He first took a workshop with MONO in 2017 and has since taught 8mm, s16mm and 35mm workshops.

*** + Maya Edelman ***

Maya Edelman is an animator and illustrator who was born in Kiyv, USSR and moved to New York in 1993, where she studied animation and film at Pratt institute and is currently living and working. Her animation work includes collaborations on award winning projects, including the Mushrooms episode of Broad City for which she won an EMMY award, and animation direction and design for award winning animated documentary shorts including The Shawl and More Than I Want To Remember which made the 2023 Oscar shortlist. Her installation “Dream City” for MTA art and design was recently on view at Fulton Center in lower Manhattan. She works as a visual development artist and animation director, and teaches animation classes at Parsons and Pratt Institute. In fall of 2022 she filmed her frame by frame animated project "The Meadows" at Mono No Aware, where she currently teaches 2D animation.

*** + Gabriel Acevedo ***

(He/Him) Gabriel Acevedo is an independent mixed media artist,filmmaker,and editor based out of the Bronx, NY, widely known for incorporating analog as a catalyst to his style of filmmaking. His raw and abstract approach to the moving image accompanied by his passion for editing has propelled him to receive worldly recognition, collaborating with fortune 500 companies such as Pat McGrath Labs® and Condé Nast - along with an an eclectic list of artists.

*** + Chris Knudsen ***

Chris Knudsen 1983-2017. In memoriam. Chris was a cherished member of our community who is credited with the research and development of our non-toxic processing recipe. Chris was a former workshop participant and filmmaker who led several of our workshops and will be remembered always for his kindness and generosity.

+ Courtney Muller

Courtney Muller is a film maker, educator, the co-founder of the Rockaway Film Festival and currently curatorial staff at Le Cinema Club.

+ Stephanie Gray

Stephanie Gray has been making experimental and documentary Super 8 films (and videos) since 1998. Prolific and active in the Super 8 scene, Gray has made more than 57 short films, many diaristic or city-symphonic. Her work often deals with the city (or vanishing city), along with queer, feminist, and hearing loss themes.

+ Steve Cossman (Founder/Executive Director)

Steve is founder and director of Mono No Aware (est. 2007); a non-profit cinema-arts organization whose annual event exhibits the work of contemporary artists who incorporate live film projections and altered light as part of a performance, sculpture or installation. In 2010 he helped the organization establish a series of analog filmmaking workshops that has grown to include an equipment rentals program, imported film stock distribution service and an in-person screening series entitled Connectivity Through Cinema. Steve’s first major work on film, TUSSLEMUSCLE, earned him Kodak’s Continued Excellence in Filmmaking award at F.L.E.X. and has screened at many festivals and institutions internationally. In 2013, he completed residencies at MoMA PS1’s Expo 1 and the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto. In 2014, Brooklyn Magazine named Steve Cossman one of the ‘Top 100 most Influential persons of Brooklyn Culture.’ He has been a visiting artist at Brown University, Dartmouth, the New York Academy of Art, Yale, SAIC, and UPenn. Steve’s recent work on film, W H I T E C A B B A G E (2011-2014), a collaboration with Jahiliyya Fields of L.I.E.S., had its U.S. premiere at Anthology Film Archives. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn as a director, curator, visual artist, educator and activist.

+ Ross Nugent (Board Chair)

Ross is a moving-image artist creating experimental, observational documentary and expanded cinema works. He earned an MFA in Film Production from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and currently teaches both media production and history courses at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. Ross has worked extensively as a film and video programmer. This fall he joins the faculty at Thiel College (Greenville, PA) as Assistant Professor of Communication.

+ Laura Major

Received her Masters in Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina in 2009. She is currently the Film-to-Film Project Coordinator at Colorlab Motion Picture Film Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland. She has been involved with the Orphan Film Symposium and Home Movie Day for many years, and has worked on the summer staff of the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar since 2006.

+ Becca Keating

Becca Keating is currently the Development officer at the Museum of the Moving Image and also serves on the Board of the Los Angeles Filmforum. Becca has held positions at Sundance, Art Center College of Design and was the Director of Development at Ann ARbor Film festival for 4 seasons.

+ Ayanna Dozier

Ayanna recently completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies from McGill University. Her dissertation, Mnemonic Aberrations traced the history of Black feminist experimental short film in the United States and the United Kingdom from 1968-Present. In that work, she constructs a new method for reading experimental films, specifically work that follows a Black feminist aesthetics. Select Publications include; Artforum, Performa, Another Gaze, and Non-Fiction. Her work has been exhibited at Westbeth Gallery, Evening Hours, and Anthology Film Archives. She is the author of The Velvet Rope as part of the 33 1/3 music series for Bloomsbury Academic Press. She is currently a lecturer at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Fordham University in the Department of Communication and Media Studies. She was a 2018-2019 Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies at the Whitney Independent Studies Program and a filmmaker in residence at MONO NO AWARE. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

+ Annie Ling

Born in Taipei, Annie is a Canadian documentary photographer and artist currently pursuing an MFA in Photography at Yale. Select clients include The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Fader Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, and New York Magazine. Her photography has been featured in publications such as Frieze Magazine, PDN Photo Annual, American Photography, Magenta Flash Forward, GEO Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Internazionale, Fast Company, South China Morning Post, and Courrier International, among others. She has lectured at Columbia University, CUNY Brooklyn College, International Center of Photography, Ryerson University School of Image Arts, Asian American Writers' Workshop, and has appeared on Al Jazeera America, Sino Vision, "Where I'm From" CUNY Graduate School of Journalism's pilot radio show, and National Public Radio / RÚV Iceland. Annie is the recipient of the first Skammdegi AIR Award (Iceland) and a New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) fellowship for photography. Previously, she was a fellow of Reflexions Masterclass, an international laboratory investigating the evolution of the language of visual representation and photography. She is also a recipient of a Director’s Fellowship from The International Center of Photography.

+ Yto Barrada

Yto Barrada is a Franco-Moroccan multimedia visual artist living and working in Tangier, Morocco and New York City. Alongside producer Cyriac Auriol, Barrada cofounded the Cinémathèque de Tanger in 2006. Barrada also works an artistic director for the Tangier art house movie theatre. She was previously a member of the Beirut-based Arab Image Foundation.

+ Bill Brand

Bill Brand's films, videos and art installations have been exhibited extensively in the US and abroad in museums, film festivals and microcinemas. His 1980 Masstransiscope, an animated mural installed in the New York City subway, is in the MTA Arts for Transit permanent collection. Bill Brand lives in New York City and is Professor of Film and Photography at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts as well as Adjunct Professor of Film Preservation at New York University's Moving Image Archiving and Preservation graduate program. His company BB Optics specializes in archival film preservation of small gauge films and films by artists. In 2006 he was named an Anthology Film Archives Film Preservation Honoree and given a month long retrospective to celebrate BB Optics' 30th anniversary. Brand’s films and videos have been featured at museums including Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, National Gallery of Art, and Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art as well as at major film festivals including the Berlin Film Festival, New Directors/ New Films Festival, Tribeca Film Festival and Rotterdam Film Festival. The work is discussed in histories of cinema including the books Documentary, A History of the Non-Fiction Film, (1992) by Erik Barnouw; Allegories of Cinema, (1990) by David James and in a chapter by Robin Blaetz titled “Avant-Garde Cinema of the Seventies” in Lost Illusions, American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam 1970-1979 by David Cook. Brand’s work has also been written about in news and journal articles by Janet Maslin, Paul Arthur, J. Hoberman, B. Ruby Rich, Ian Christie, Noel Carroll, Brian Frye and Randy Kennedy among others. Bill Brand founded the showcase and workshop Chicago Filmmakers in 1973, and served on the Board of Directors of the Collective for Living Cinema until 1991 in New York City. He co-founded Parabola Arts in 1981 and is currently an artistic director. He has served as a member of the board of trustees for The Flaherty and is an advisor to the Orphan Film Symposium.

+ Nashwa Zaman

+ Terri Francis

Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University. Terri Francis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. Professor Francis specializes in the history and aesthetics of African Diaspora cinema, literature and culture. Her current project is “The Josephine Baker Body–Museum: Blackness, Power and Visual Pleasure,” which foregrounds her concern with race, gender and cinema. Further research includes studies of Jamaican film culture and African American home movies. Professor Francis’ courses include “American Experimental Cinema,” “Blaxploitation Re–examined,” and “Close Analysis of Film and Spike Lee.”

+ Nandini Sikand

+ Violet Lucca

Violet is a film critic, filmmaker, and web producer living in New York City. She is Digital Editor at Film Comment Magazine, managing online content for the magazine, blog, and all social media outlets. She graduated with honors from the University of Iowa with a degree in Cinema and Comparative Literature, focusing on film production and writing about film. She attended New York University’s graduate program in Cinema Studies, focusing on third and national cinemas, as well as new media.

+ Andrew Lampert

Born in the mid-70s in the Midwest, Andrew Lampert has created an extensive body of films, videos, photographs and performances since the late 1990s. His work is regularly exhibited in a variety of contexts around the world at venues including: The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Getty Museum; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; The Art Gallery of Ontario; The International Film Festival Rotterdam; The Toronto Film Festival; The New York Film Festival; The San Francisco International Film Festival, The Viennalle, Austria; Visual Arts Center, University of Texas at Austin; The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen; The Drawing Center, NYC; Mitchell Algus Gallery, NYC; PS1/MoMA; The Kitchen; The Center for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, Visual Art Center at the University of Texas at Austin, The Images Festival; Issue Project Room, NYC; Pacific Film Archive/Berkeley Art Museum; Aurora Picture Show, Houston; The Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, and elsewhere

Lampert lives in Brooklyn. As Archivist and later Curator of Collections at Anthology Film Archives from 2003-2015 he was responsible for directing the archive, preserving the film and video collections, and co-programming public screenings. He has been a Visiting Lecturer in the School of Film and Media Studies at Purchase College and taught at the Eugene Lang College at the New School. Over the years he has served as a visiting artist and guest teacher at schools including: New York University, Yale University MFA program, Bard College, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, Pratt College, University of Texas at Austin, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Massachusetts College of Art, Oslo National Academy of Arts, FAMU (Prague), York University along with many others.

+ Jodie Mack

Jodie Mack is an experimental animator who received her MFA in film, video, and new media from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. Combining the formal techniques and structures of abstract/absolute animation with those of cinematic genres, her handmade films use collage to explore the relationship between graphic cinema and storytelling, the tension between form and meaning. Musical documentary or stroboscopic archive: her films study domestic and recycled materials to illuminate the elements shared between fine-art abstraction and mass-produced graphic design. The works unleash the kinetic energy of overlooked and wasted objects and question the role of decoration in daily life. Mack's 16mm films have screened at a variety of venues including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Images Festival, Projections at the New York Film Festival, and the Viennale. She has presented solo programs at the 25FPS Festival, Anthology Film Archives, BFI London Film Festival, Harvard Film Archive, National Gallery of Art, REDCAT, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale, and Wexner Center for the Arts among others. Her work has been featured in publications including Artforum, Cinema Scope, The New York Times, and Senses of Cinema. She currently works as an Associate Professor of Animation at Dartmouth College, where she co-organizes an experimental media series, EYEWASH, and serves as the 2015-16 Sony Music Fellow.

+ Leslie Thornton

Leslie Thornton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Thornton) is an American filmmaker and artist. Currently she lives and works in both New York and Rhode Island. Leslie Thornton was born in 1951 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Leslie Thornton creates vigorously experimental film and video. All her work delves into the mystery and ongoing investigations into the production, creation and distribution of meaning through and within media. One finds that with Leslie Thornton both form and content are critical and inform each other. Thornton is the Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. From a young age, Leslie Thornton was engaged in avant-garde cinema due to weekly screenings of experimental film at a Unitarian church in Schenectady, NY that she regularly went to as a teenager in the 1960's. This unlikely event helped guide Leslie's aesthetic. In the early 1970s Leslie Thornton used her artistic talents in the world of painting. Although she painted for less than ten years she produced a large body of work. Leslie Thornton attended the State University of New York in Buffalo, New York. While studying she worked with filmmakers such as Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Stan Brakhage and Peter Kubelka. She also studied with Richard Leacock and Ed Pincus at MIT in Cambridge, MA. Leslie Thornton has received many awards, including the Maya Deren Award, the first Alpert Award in the Arts for media, a nomination for the Hugo Boss Award, two Rockefeller Fellowships, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Jerome Foundation, and Art Matters. Leslie Thornton's film and media works have been exhibited across the world, in venues including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Biennial Exhibition; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Rotterdam International Film Festival; New York Film Festival; capcMusée, Bordeaux; Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley; and festivals in Oberhausen, Graz, Mannheim, Berlin, Austin, Toronto, Tokyo and Seoul, among many others. Leslie was the only female experimental filmmaker noted in Cahiers du Cinema's '60 most important American Directors' publication. Leslie Thornton's project Peggy and Fred in Hell was awarded in numerous in annual best lists including: The Village Voice and The New York Times.

+ Thomas Zummer

Thomas Zummer is an internationally acclaimed independent scholar, writer, artist, and curator. He is a professor of philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS and an artist and lecturer at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. He has been a visiting professor at many institutions including Brown University, New York University, The New School, Transart Institute (Linz), and Hogeschool Sint-Lukas (Brussels). He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. As an artist Thomas Zummer has a unique focus on process that expands notions of media. It has been said that for him, “it doesn’t matter whether one draws a grain of sand, a blade of grass, a motion-blur, scan lines or pixels, since in his hands the process of drawing is subjected to the same kind of scrutiny and unrelenting auto-deconstruction as the consideration of other, technically reproduced, shadows.” Starting in 1976, Zummer’s drawings, media, and sculptural works have been exhibited internationally including shows at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst (Antwerpen), Fundación Antoni Tapiès (Barcelona), Mütter Museum (Philadelphia), Frederieke Taylor Gallery (New York City), Marcel Sitcoske Gallery (San Francisco), and WhiteBox (New York City). Other exhibition venues have included Exit Art, Thread Waxing Space, and The Dia Foundation (all in New York City) as well as the CAPC in Bordeaux and Wigmore Hall in London. With his partner Leslie Thornton he has had a long collaboration with The Wooster Group, acting in many of their performances. In 2007, Thomas Zummer was an Artist-in-Residence at the haudenschild Garage in La Jolla, California. Additionally, Zummer has curated many exhibitions including exhibits at CinéClub/Anthology Film Archives, Thread Waxing Space, Wexner Center for the Arts, the Katonah Museum of Art, and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. His exhibition CRASH: Nostalgia for the Absence of Cyberspace, co-curated with Robert Reynolds in 1994, broke new grounds in the possibilities of digital exhibitions.

+ Antonella Bonfanti

Antonella Bonfanti has worked in the moving image archives and preservation field since 2008. Committed to building community around film, she has organized screenings and events across North America. Antonella graduated from the University of Toronto with an Honours BA in Cinema Studies in 2003. For over a decade Antonella worked as a technical manager and projectionist for southern Ontario’s premier independent cinemas and film festivals, including Cinematheque Ontario, Images Festival, Media City and the Toronto International Film Festival’s Wavelengths program. Through this experience she began to understand film as a material object, a medium with its own distinctive characteristics, and spurred her to pursue a career in film preservation. She received her MA from the Selznick Graduate Program in Film and Media Preservation at the University of Rochester and George Eastman House in 2008..

+ Tara Nelson

Tara Merenda Nelson is a filmmaker, curator, programmer and lecturer with 15 years experience working with film and digital media. After seeing a program of experimental Super 8 films at Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo, NY, she started making films of her own. She later moved to Pittsburgh PA, where she became involved with the Jefferson Presents Film Collective (and met/married her frequent collaborator, Gordon Nelson). In 2011 she earned an MFA in Film/Video from the Massachusetts College of Art, where she studied with Erica Beckman, Luther Price and Joe Gibbons. Her graduate studies also included working with the Harvard Film Archive and programming a three-city US tour for filmmaker Rose Lowder. Her film, performance and installation work was included in the 2010, 2012 and 2014 MONO NO AWARE exhibitions. Tara has taught Digital Media and Video and Film Production courses at Montserrat, Ithaca College, Cornell University and the University of Rochester. Currently she is the Curator of Moving Image Collections at Visual Studies Workshop, where she oversees the inventory, cataloging and digitization of 5,000 16mm films and 6,000 magnetic media titles, and programs the VSW FILM SERIES.

+ Gordon Nelson

Gordon Nelson is the Digital Technician for the Moving Image Department at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. Prior to this, he has worked as a filmmaker, educator and curator. His films have been screened at many venues, including MONO NO AWARE, MoMA and Anthology Film Archive. He has taught film and video courses at MassArt, Pittsburgh Filmmakers and the University of Rochester. He programmed 35mm film screenings for the Carnegie Museum of Art and he helped establish and operate Jefferson Presents, a Pittsburgh-based experimental microcinema collective active from 2000-09.

+ Jeanne Liotta

Jeanne Liotta is an American visual artist who is primarily known for her experimental films. She is also currently a professor of film studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. She lives between New York City and Colorado.

+ John Mhiripiri

John Mhiripiri is Director of Anthology Film Archives and responsible for the overall operations and development of this non profit cinema, film archive, and research library. John also serves as Secretary on Anthology’s Board of Trustees, and has been a jury member for numerous film festivals and media arts grant panels. He has presented public programs at film festivals and other venues throughout the U.S., and has screened his own work in Super-8mm since the mid-1990s.

+ Matt McWilliams

Matthew McWilliams is a filmmaker and inventor from Massachusetts. He graduated with a BFA from Emerson College and works as a software developer. Matt was a member of the AgX Film Collective, a non-profit that operates an artist-run film lab located in Waltham, MA. His work there consisted of teaching workshops and assisting in the construction and management of its darkroom. He is focused on building open-source, open-hardware tools for analog filmmaking with projects that include a modular platform for building and controlling optical printers and a series of animation motors for the Bolex. All of his current work and designs for 3D printing are all freely available on his site sixteenmillimeter.com.

+ Dan Streible

Dan Streible is Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University and Associate Director of its Moving Image Archiving and Preservation master's program. He is also director of the Orphan Film Symposium..