November 13-
November 20,
2025
OnLine
Arati Misro
Brings 20 years of experience in the Entertainment, Tech, Education & lifestyle business from a global perspective. Her expertise includes Feature films, TV, Culinary, Wine product sales & startups. She thrives on recognizing & prioritizing short and long-term goals to greenlight a show or scale a business from a holistic approach. Passionate about developing a good story with writers and envisioning our characters who bring authenticity to voice.
Arati’s love of Entertainment is producing from script to screen or stream. Her experience in foreign and domestic sales allows her to have a mindset of a businesswoman while having a strong sensitivity to good storytelling.
She thrives on leadership and self-development to do and be better. Her experience chairing Women in Film International has allowed her to home in on her passion for mentoring and giving voice to countless women worldwide who strive to pursue their goals. Chairing is one of her most meaningful accomplishments. She has programmed and produced multiple events for the Los Angeles film community and was recognized by President Obama.
She thrives on being a part of building a vision via startups. Project Management, Operations, and business strategy are skills she learned that cross over from Producing Film & TV. She loves working in collaborative environments & connecting the dots between art, commerce, education & technology with leaders. She founded a podcast and women’s platform called EkWomen, also has developed an animation IP for children in developing countries. She was a juror for the Asian World festival and various international Film Festivals in Los Angeles.
Arati is currently pursuing an MBA with a focus on Entrepreneurship and Finance. She holds an MFA in Producing from the prestigious American Film Inst.
Bijan Tehrani
Bijan Tehrani a film director, film critic and writer, works as Editor in Chief of Cinema Without Borders and CineEqual, while teaching Language & History of film workshops and organizes film screening events and festivals. Bijan has won several awards in international film festivals and book fairs for his short films and children’s books.
For the tenth anniversary of Cinema Without Borders, Bijan has received Ambassador of International Cinema Award from South east European Film Festival, Friend of the Festival Award from Polish Film Festival, LA and Gateway to International Cinema Award from Hungarian Film festival. Bijan Tehrani is recently working on a few new children books, a screenplay for a feature film and organizing an international film festival on immigration.
Catherine Portuges
Professor Emerita- Founding Program Director and Founding Curator of the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival
Catherine Portuges is founding director of the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies and founding curator of the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and professor emerita, Program in Comparative Literature/Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. She is a frequent lecturer at international conferences, an invited programmer, curator, juror and consultant for film festivals and colloquia, and a delegate to international film festivals. Her books include Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 (Temple, 2013); Gendered Subjects (Routledge, 2012); and Screen Memories: the Hungarian Cinema of Márta Mészáros (Indiana, 1993). Her essays have appeared in Cinematic Homecomings: Exile and Return in Transnational Cinema; Cinema, State Socialism and Society in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1917-1989: Re-Visions; Bringing the Dark Past to Light: the Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe; Projected Shadows: Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Representation of Loss in European Cinema, and A Companion to Eastern European Cinemas. Prof. Portuges serves on the editorial board of Studies in Eastern European Cinema (UK), Jewish Film and New Media, and Hungarian Cultural Studies; she is associate editor for film for American Imago. She is a member of the Academic Advisory Board, Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies, and Film Consultant for Eastern Europe, European Psychoanalytic Film Festival (UK). She was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for “The Subjective Lens,” the Pro Cultura Hungarica Medal from the Republic of Hungary for her contributions to Hungarian Cinema, and the Chancellor’s Medal for Distinguished Teaching.
Géza Sinkovics
He was born in Budapest, Hungary and worked at the Hungarian Television as a camera assistant and later as a cameraman on many documentaries and feature films. He came to the United States in 1982. He attended the American Film Institute in 1983-84 and since he has been living in Los Angeles, California. His feature film credits as Director of Photography include: Delusion with Jennifer Rubin, Undertow a ShowTime movie with Lou Diamond Philips, The Crew with Vigo Mortinssen and The Last Seduction II. with Joan Severance which was filmed in Barcelona and Wales, UK. For parts of many years he was filming – on location in Lithuania – the TV series: The New Adventures of Robin Hood for Warner Brothers.
Back in Los Angeles, he photographed A Carol Christmas and The Long Shot for Hallmark Entertainment and recently completed a feature film, Metamorphosis with Christopher Lambert, filmed on location in Hungary, Austria and Germany. Besides a number of other feature films he has been involved with a few documentaries, some which were recognized at film festivals in Europe and in the U.S (Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan).
He is a member of the Hungarian Society of Cinematographers – HSC and the Digital Cinema Society.
Jacqueline Rush Rivera
Jacqueline holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction in Ceramics and a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Hawaii. Her background in Irish Culture, coupled with extensive travel and a studio practice in a remote island location, contribute to a unique world view that has shaped her thinking and making. She is the recipient of awards and residencies that have supported and extended her studio practice into other areas of enquiry and is most recently a recipient of a 2022 Djerassi Artists Program Residency Award and a 2018 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship. As a Visiting Artist and Lecturer she has presented her work at Academic institutions nationally and internationally. Her work is in private and public collections that include the Allan Chasanoff Book Art Collection, Yale Art Gallery (CT), the Honolulu Museum of Art (HI), and the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Art in Public Places (HI). In addition to her mixed-media works, Jacqueline is the founder and Artist-in-Residence at ‘Ohe Kiln House, HI, where she makes one-of-a-kind studio art pottery and ceramic sculpture.
Narges Samadi
Narges Samadi, born in Iran, is a former emergency physician with over twenty years of experience in Tehran. Following her immigration to Canada, she transitioned into the field of cinema studies, culminating in her recent graduation from the Cinema Studies specialist program at the University of Toronto. Currently, she is the founder of “Narges Cinema House” in Toronto, which serves as a venue for film screenings, education in film history, and the production of critical writings.
Vladek Juszkiewicz
Born in Glasgow, Poland. He graduated from the Szczecin Technical University with a degree in Engineering. While attending the University he became a member of The Szczecin Technical University Choir, serving as a President and manager of the group. His travels with the choir to 18 counties including the United States where he visited the White House.
When he moved to Warsaw, he became the manager of the Polish international star singer Maryla Rodowicz. After immigrating to the United States, he worked on 11 films with the late Paul Leder. In 1999 he founded the Polish Film Festival Los Angeles and served as a director till 2019. Now is serving as the Festival’s Programmer.
Served on the juries of the Los Angeles Hungarian Film Festival, the Los Angeles South East European Film Festival, New York Polish Film Festival and Palm Springs International Film Festival. Awarded by the Polish Government with the Cavalier & Officer Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland and Gloria Artis for promoting Polish culture abroad.
