ALEXANDRA BYER

Alexandra Byer is a producer living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She is a co-founder of the production company RATHAUS FILMS that creates narrative, documentary, music video, and commercials/branded work.

Recent work includes:

2020 Funny Face, dir. Tim Sutton (Berlinale ‘20)

2020 The Mountains Are a Dream That Call to Me, dir. Cedric Cheung-Lau (Sundance ‘20)

2019 De Lo Mio, dir. Diana Peralta (BAMCinemaFest ‘19)

2018 Sollers Point, dir. Matt Porterfield (Oscilloscope)

For more information about Alexandra and her work, click here.

e: alexandra.byer at gmail

JOSHUA GLEASON

Joshua Gleason is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker whose work tackles alienation, anti-individualism, and American capitalist culture through the lenses of gesture, repetition, and time. His graduate thesis film for CalArts, A PLACE OF OUR OWN, premiered at the Indie Memphis Film Festival in 2014 and he was named Best Emerging Writer at the Oaxaca Film Festival in 2017. Josh was also a recipient of the inaugural Flies Collective Film Grant for his forthcoming debut feature WHERE THE BOYS ARE.

Aside from his directing work, Josh has worked in film production for over a decade on films like Andrew Ahn’s SPA NIGHT, Matt Porterfield’s I USED TO BE DARKER, and Amazon Studio’s docu-series LORENA. Most recently, he served as creative consultant and associate producer on Diana Peralta’s debut feature DE LO MIO.

Josh now teaches film history and production at CSU Channel Islands. He received a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and holds his M.F.A. in Film Directing from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

e: joshua.gleason at gmail

JASON HOFFMANN

Jay Hoffmann is a New York based sound designer and web content developer.  Originally from Long Island, he moved to Baltimore in 2006 where he met The Spirit Farm crew.  

Armed with a laptop rig and some ingenuity, he tries to blend the natural world with the cerebral in any type of design context.

Jay has produced work for Sesame Workshop and Penguin Random House.  He also founded Tiny Repo, a site specializing in WordPress plugins.

MATT KAISER

Matthew Kaiser is a writer, illustrator, web designer and filmmaker from Long Island, NY who has returned to NYC by way of North Carolina. While his undergraduate experiences tend to the study of romanticism, contemporary American fiction and Journalism, he considers his education to have originally stemmed from a borderline-unhealthy childhood fascination with horror, grindhouse and fantasy.

As his tastes matured, he obsessed with broadening his experience with film and media, finding there a consistent escape from the apathy of mundane, day-to-day existence. The restlessness of his writing style is mirrored in the broad scope of interests he indulges in, as well as his general approach to the world.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I love that which is hyperbolic; ornate material, bright colors, deeply layered sound, intricate design. I want to use these things to produce beautiful and spectacular eyesores. I want to tell stories that convey truths using exaggeration of reality. Aesthetics should always come first in my opinion.

DIANA PERALTA

Diana Peralta is an experimental filmmaker, film programmer, and digital strategist.  Her short films have been featured in several festivals and theatrical productions across the US.  Her work as producer on the short documentary LA FERIA CONCRETA was screened as part of the Dominican Republic's first pavilion installation at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. Her first feature entitled DE LO MIO premiered as the closing night film at BAMcinemaFest in 2019.

She graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2011 with a B.A. in Film & Media Studies and currently works as a digital strategist and creative content producer where she specializes in developing and producing web content with a focus on developing brand identity for startups.

When she's not making or watching movies, she plays Capoeira and relaxes in the Dominican Republic with her family. 

CV

CLARE RICHARDSON

Originally from Los Angeles, Clare Richardson currently works as Programming Coordinator at BBC America  Previously, she has worked for companies such as Sony Pictures Classics, IFC Films, Creative Capital, and most recently Independent Filmmaker Project in New York City.

In 2015, Clare completed her Masters in Film Studies at Columbia University. Her thesis, "Director's Directors Directing Director's Directors", juxtaposed star theory and auteur theory by examining the roles of auteur directors acting in other auteur director's films.  

She is in New York by way of Baltimore, where she completed her undergraduate studies at Johns Hopkins and received her B.A. in both Film & Media Studies and Writing Seminars.  

 She's also a Sundance vet with ten plus years under her belt. 

A STATEMENT

Some of my earliest memories are of running around movie theaters in the final days of construction before their grand opening. I remember racing up and down aisles of the empty auditoriums over and over, watching the mammoth film projectors being installed, and sneaking into the concession storage room to find bags of popcorn kernels taller than I was. I’m indebted to my father for bringing his work home and introducing me to film at a young age. 

At nine years old, I was way too young to understand the greater meaning of why an old man would ride a lawnmower across the country in The Straight Story, but the fact remains that I saw my first Lynch before my 10th birthday. Film has always had an important, pivotal role in my life.

Theory and practice are inextricably linked. I believe those who make films and those who watch films ought to be more preoccupied and conscious of this relationship, to embrace it and attempt to understand it in all of its peculiarities. It’s certainly something I strive for in all aspects of my work, and I seek others who want to complicate this relationship with me.

CARLOS VALDES-LORA

A NYC-based freelancer from Miami, FL
who has a B.A. in Film & Media Studies from The Johns Hopkins University

View my CV

A STATEMENT

Interested in gestures, optics, memory, and natural light.