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2024 AMERICAS AWARD JURY

The Americas Award for this year's Short Films in Competition in the categories of Animation, Documentary, Experimental, & Fiction will be announced on Friday, June 21 @ 6PM at the National Museum of the American Indian as part of TAFFNY's Closing Night Ceremony 

ANIMATION & DOCUMENTARY

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Sergio Adrada Rafael

Sergio Adrada Rafael, PhD (Georgetown University, 2014) is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics at Fairfield University, where he also serves as Director of the Spanish Language Program. At that university, he is an affiliated faculty member of the Latinx, Latin American and Caribbean studies program.

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David Little

David Little is an AP Spanish teacher, Spanish tutor and host of online radio Latin music show “A New Latin World”. He holds an M. A. in Spanish Language and Linguistics from Middlebury College and has taught Spanish at several highly regarded high schools in New York and Massachusetts. He also taught English for four years in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic after completing his B.A. in Spanish and communication at Goshen College in Indiana. As an undergrad student, he studied Dominican Spanish and culture for three months in Santo Domingo. Additionally, as an undergraduate, he hosted his first radio show on the campus station and pursued his interest in film through elective courses. Through the years, his passionate interest in Latin American music and film led him to take graduate courses in the region’s film and literature at Tufts University, Harvard and eventually at Middlebury College, where he completed his master’s degree. Since 2016, he has hosted the 2-hour weekly radio show “A New Latin World” on Radio Free Brooklyn, which promotes modern Latin music with roots in Latin American traditions. Since moving to New York in 2005, David has viewed hundreds of feature films from Latin America in cinemas and at film festivals across the city. He has also traveled in Colombia, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Costa Rica and Honduras and has traveled along the Texas-Mexico border.

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Catalina Santamaría

Catalina Santamaría has directed, produced, photographed and edited the following short films: UMBRELLA HOUSE, documentary selected at Corto Circuito Film Festival New York, and received the Director’s Choice Award –- at the Black Maria Film Festival. LUMINESCENCE, an experimental film, was awarded a Jerome Foundation grant. EXCEPT MY SOUL…, a fiction film, was awarded Best Film - Best Director - Best Cinematography at the V International Short Film Festival "El Espejo”, Bogotá Colombia. DERAIL received a Kodak Cinematography Award and the First Place Audience Award at The New Haven Film Festival. SQUATTERS, her first feature documentary, has been screened in several festivals around the world, gathering awards including Best International Feature Documentary at the Puerto Rico Film Festival and a Special Jury Mention for Best Documentary at the Havana Film Festival New York.

FICTION & EXPERIMENTAL

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Marina Fernandez Ferri

Marina Fernandez Ferri is a creative producer and director based in New York with experience producing narrative and documentary films, including Cannes award-winning documentary Rafael Guastavino: Architect of New York, by Eva Vizcarra; La Noche Buena, the first US narrative short film shot in Cuba after the embargo, or FICG premiered Juan of the Witches by Andrew Houchens. Her work as producer starts in Spain, creating compelling content for TV. She followed her passion for filmmaking moving to NY and becoming an active member of Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective organization which she collaborated for her directorial debut of Temblor, exploring the feelings of an outsider in a foreign land. In 2019 she launched her company Brisa Pictures and co-produced Son of Monarchs, by Alex Gambis, line produced No Land's Man, by Mostofa Farooki. She is a Senior Producer for Branded Content at Univision Así Studios.

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LoperaSánchez

Andrés Lopera Sánchez (LoperaSánchez) is a screenwriter and expert in creating, developing, and writing content for multiple formats: feature films, documentaries, TV series, web series, advertising, theater, and literature. The projects produced with his scripts have received over 30 selections and nominations and have won 12 awards, nationally and internationally. Speaker, facilitator, teacher, advisor for audiovisual projects, jury member for calls for entries.

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Armando Russi Espitia

Armando Russi is a cultural journalist specializing in cinema for the National University of Colombia’s program Alucine 98.5fm. He holds a Master's degree in Cultural Management from the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University and a Film and Television Director from the Film and Television School of the National University of Colombia, where he also studied German Philology. He studied Film Theory and History at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil and at the HFF-Superior Film School in Munich, Germany. From 2020-2022 he was a member of CNACC and represented the Artistic/Creative sector. He has taught Theory, History, Criticism, Analysis and Film Screenplay at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, the Universidad del Magdalena, the Universidad Javeriana, the Universidad Agustiniana and the Escuela Nacional de Cine. He has served as programmer and juror of various film festivals including the International Festival of Documentary Film of Buenos Aires, Argentina (FIDBA) and the Santander International Festival of Independent Film (SANFICI), among others.

 ORGANIZERS

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SUPPORTERS

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TAFFNY is a brainchild of the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at 

the Center for Worker Education of the City College of New York

(The City University of New York - CUNY)

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