Actor, Black Friday

Devon Sawa is an actor, and a damn good one at that. From his breakout role as the title character in Universal’s Casper, to popular roles in Now and Then, Little Giants, and Wild America, Sawa was a 90s cinema icon. Leading roles in Idle Hands, SLC Punk, Final Destination, and Slackers further cemented his fame and skill.

After a break from the industry, Sawa can now be seen in Black Friday, as well as Chucky on USA & Syfy. During his spare time, he runs one of the internet’s best Twitter accounts.

• Devon joins us for an exclusive recorded Zoom Q&A, following the screening of Black Friday.

Writers/Directors, Hellbender

John Adams, Toby Poser, and their daughters, Lulu and Zelda are a film making family under the creative marquee of Wonder Wheel Productions. Before Hellbender (to be released by Shudder/AMC in early 2022), they made 6 previous features: The Deeper You Dig (2020), which premiered at Fantasia Film Festival and is distributed by Dark Sky Films and Arrow Video; Halfway to Zen (2016); The Shoot (2014); Knuckle Jack (2013); Rumblestrips (2012) - all earning a hearty reception on the festival circuit, including Best in Show and Audience awards. For each they've employed the same DIY ethic: as a collective team they write, direct, produce; they shoot, edit, act, and compose. The family lives in the Catskill Mountains of New York. WonderWheelProductions.com

• John, Toby, and Zelda will join us for a live, in-person Q&A after the screening of Hellbender.

Spearheaded the New York Ninja reconstruction project.

After taking film classes at NYU, Kurtis M. Spieler made several short films that played at genre festivals throughout the country. In 2013, he completed his first horror feature, a unique take on the werewolf genre entitled Sheep Skin which was then followed by a found-footage feature The Devil's Well which was released in 2018. His third feature film The Dead Girl in Apartment 3, a paranormal thriller starring horror icon Adreinne King, has been picked up for distribution and is slated for release in 2022. Kurtis started working for the company Vinegar Syndrome in 2018. Vinegar Syndrome is a film restoration and preservation company that re-releases genre films to the home video market. Kurtis's passion for film restoration led him to taking on the difficult task of completing and restoring the unfinished 1984 film New York Ninja.

• Kurtis joins us for an exclusive recorded Zoom Q&A, following the screening of New York Ninja.

Writer/Director, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Jane Schoenbrun (they/she) is a non-binary filmmaker and the writer/director of the upcoming A24 feature film We're All Going to the World's Fair, produced by Emma Stone & Dave McCary's Fruit Tree Productions. Their first narrative feature film We're All Going to the World's Fair premiered in the NEXT section at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. We're All Going to the World's Fair recently played at the 50th annual New Directors/New Films, and will be released in theaters soon by Utopia Pictures and then made available for streaming via HBOMax. Jane's previous projects include co-creating the touring variety series The Eyeslicer (Tribeca 2017), creating the Radical Film Fair (a film flea market and mentorship event that drew thousands of attendees), directing the feature documentary A Self-Induced Hallucination (Rotterdam 2019), producing Aaron Schimberg’s Chained for Life (Kino Lorber 2019), EPing season one of Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness (HBO 2018), and creating the omnibus ‘dream film’ collective:unconscious (SXSW 2016). Jane sometimes publishes the column “Continue Watching” for FILMMAKER Magazine, and has previously worked as the Senior Film Lead at Kickstarter and as the Associate Director of Programming at IFP.

• Jane will join us for a live Zoom Q&A after the screening of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.