meet the judges for the 54th humboldt int’l film festival
Monique Harper-Desir
Mo is a multi-racial visual artist from the Pioneer Valley, Western Massachusetts. She currently is a mother, an artist, an arts educator and works at Access Humboldt as their director of Admin & Development. She also utilizes her knowledge around Media Literacy to lead antiracist & equity based workshops and trainings. She first fell in love with visual arts around 8 with a 35mm camera and got her first video camera around 14. She mainly has created creative fiction or documentary style narratives. She loves writing & directing the most in productions.
Mo got her Associates in Media Production from Greenfield Community College and immediately started teaching AV Tech to middle and high school youth upon her graduation. She also led an "arts for change" film program from 2011 - 2016 at Amherst Media, where youth were taught film techniques as well as media literacy to recorrect the misrepresentations we often find in media creation. She has worked with a number of organizations creating film or supplying media based education like The Ford Foundations, Fractured Atlas, The Allied Media Conference, The Tulane University Black Arts Festival and SXSW.
isley reust
Isley Reust is a German/American photographer, filmmaker, and composer who is based in Isafjordur, Iceland.
Isley has been working in film and music for the last 20 years. She has composed music for 2 Emmy & Glaad nominated shows, “Her Story & Razor Tongue”, as well as various other theatrical releases such as Mark Ruffalo’s “Anything”.
Isley also had her fair share of on-camera moments as well, appearing in Glaad nominated Aol’s True Trans, and some guest appearances on CNN’s Dr. Drew and various other digital platforms as well as toured as a musician for 10 years
After spending years working in Los Angeles, she followed her lifelong passion for creating work in the Arctic where she currently resides.
Isley is currently working on short digital documentaries in the arctic, guiding adventure trips, and teaching workshops in the arctic.
Woodrow hunt
Woodrow Hunt is a Klamath/Modoc and Cherokee filmmaker and artist. He grew up in the Indigenous community of Portland, OR. Growing up in the Native community and in a family of artists gave him the experiences which shaped his interest in visual storytelling. He founded the Indigenous film production company Tule Films when he began his work as a freelance filmmaker working in the Pacific Northwest and realized his desire to solely work with Indigenous people. Tule Films works with Indigenous owned businesses, Tribes, and Non-profits or projects which collaborate directly with the Native community. The majority of his work, through Tule Films, is focused on education. In 2017 during the implementation of Oregon’s Senate Bill 13: Tribal History/Shared History Tule Films began working with the Confluence Project. Confluence connects people to the history, living cultures, and ecology of the Columbia River system through Indigenous voices. Together Woodrow, through Tule Films, and Confluence created a series of short documentaries called Stories from the River. The short documentaries share personal stories and insights about the history, culture, and ecology of the land and its people as told by community elders and tribal leaders from along the Columbia River. The specific themes were chosen so that they may be incorporated into school curriculums focused on Indigenous people. They continue to make short documentaries centered around the Columbia River.
Woodrow is also an experimental artist working with his creative partner Olivia Camfield. His focus explores the functions and relationships between digital video and memory. Their films have appeared in the print and online publications of Artforum and Hyperallergic. Their work has screened at film events such as the Camden International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Portland International Film Festival, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, MoMA DocFortnight and others. They are featured artists at COUSIN Collective, a collective supporting Indigenous artists expanding the form of film.