2021 Global Voices Film Festival Judges

Ariana Berenson

Ariana Berenson was born and raised in Los Angeles. She started acting professionally at a young age and became a member of SAG at age 6. She’s been in TV, film, and commercials. She went on to study English Literature at Columbia University and discovered her love of writing while there. She ultimately honed in on her aspirations to create her own acting roles. As a result, she attended the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts in order to study film production. She has also studied acting in Los Angeles, New York, and London at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Her films, which mostly tend towards comedy, have won various awards.

Because of the placement of her comedy pilot, she was invited to attend The Austin Film Festival. Her feature screenplay won Best Screenplay Feature at The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival. She also won Best Woman Filmmaker and Best Comedy/Dramedy Short at The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival. She has studied improv at UCB and Groundlings as well as sketch comedy writing at UCB. She has worked on such shows as How to Get Away With Murder, iZombie, and an unaired pilot by Kevin Kwan (Crazy Rich Asians). She also enjoys doing stand up.

Catherine M. King

A Creative Strategist and Impact Consultant to nonprofits locally and globally, Catherine King is passionate about the power of art, media and storytelling to catalyze awareness and action for social good. She is creator and executive producer of the recent award-winning global docuseries and impact campaign Fundamental: Gender Justice. No Exceptions. She is currently developing a storytelling series exploring racial and economic inequities in California. 

For over a decade Catherine directed storytelling and creative campaigning on women’s human rights as Head of Advocacy & Executive Producer at Global Fund for Women, and as Vice President of Exhibitions & Programming at the International Museum of Women. Previously, as Chief Curator at the San Francisco Public Library, she led community-based social justice exhibitions, publications and programming. Entrepreneurial by spirit, she also held leadership positions at media startups Visible Interactive, Antenna International and Hungry Minds and has produced storytelling content for clients including the Smithsonian Institution, Lucasfilm and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

Catherine is a board member of the West Marin Fund and the International Association of Women’s Museums and an advisor to the United Nations Association Film Festival and the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center. She holds an Art History degree from Smith College and studied at Université de Paris. Catherine lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner Lisa and their spunky pooch Bandruid (‘wisewoman’).

Esther Shubinski

Esther Shubinski is an Emmy-nominated documentary film editor based in Los Angeles. Esther edited the YouTube Originals series Defying Gravity: The Untold Story of Women’s Gymnastics, which won the Producers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Sports Program. Most recently, she edited the documentary Petit Rat, which premiered at the Miami Jewish Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary. In addition, she edited Alethea Avramis’ documentary Sundays (Thessaloniki Documentary Festival) and The Art of Observing Life (IDFA), a documentary by her mentor and veteran Russian filmmaker Marina Goldovskaya. Esther directed and edited the documentary Out of Love, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. Last year, Esther collaborated with Grammy-Award-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis on Elegy, a short memorial documentary honoring the lives of those lost during the pandemic. 

Esther received her BA from UC Berkeley and holds an MFA in Film Production & Directing at UCLA, where she has also taught Documentary Production. Esther’s sensitivity and approach to storytelling are shaped by her French and Native American background. She strives to tell personal stories that can create more empathy in the world.

JD Beltran

JD Beltran is an award-winning artist, filmmaker, journalist, writer, and cultural strategist whose work has been screened and exhibited internationally including at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Walker Art Center, the MIT Media Lab, the Kitchen NYC, Ars Electronica, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Getty Institute. She has been commissioned for public art projects worldwide, including in San Francisco, CA, St. Petersburg, Russia, and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Her “Downtown Mirror” public art film installation was awarded the Public Art Network award as one of the most outstanding public artworks in the United States. She’s achieved grants from Artadia, the MIT Media Lab, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Stochastic Labs, and Ars Electronica. She also was awarded a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Fellowship, and residencies at Skowhegan, the Pilchuck School, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Stochastic Labs, and the Lucas Artists Residency at Montalvo Arts Center. 

JD serves as a Commissioner on the San Francisco Arts Commission (since 2009), and was appointed as its President for 8 years, from 2011 to 2018. She has served as Film, Design, Art & Technology, and Critical Studies faculty at both the San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of the Arts. Beltran founded the non-profit Center for Creative Sustainability, which cultivates and implements groundbreaking creative collaborations, projects, initiatives, and legislation towards sustainability in the arts, the environment, and our society. 

Jennifer Coronado

Jennifer Coronado joined the team at Industrial Light & Magic back in September of 2000 as a coordinator before shifting into supporting the President of ILM. Since that time Jennifer has held several key positions within ILM including the roles of Talent Manager and Marketing and Development Manager. In the current incarnation of her career Jennifer is the Senior Producer of Art and Development, for ILM’s Global Studios.

In addition to her management role, Jennifer is also the key Moderator for Lucasfilm’s Speaker Series, and has been responsible for interviewing such talents as Paul Thomas Anderson, Dee Rees, Alfonso Cuarón, Martin Scorsese and George Clooney.

In her life before ILM, Jennifer was an Honors Graduate and Regent Scholar at the University of California at Santa Barbara where she received her B.F.A. from the school’s Conservatory Acting Program. She spent many of her post school years traveling around the country in search of acting roles in cities such as Seattle and New York before settling down in the Bay Area.

Jenny Ely

Jenny Ely is the Project Manager for ILMxLAB, Lucasfilm’s Immersive Entertainment studio where she focuses on the creative production process, operations and business development. Jenny started her career in professional theatre, working in stage production and as a Scenic Artist at several prominent regional theatres on the East coast including North Shore Music Theatre, The Arts Center of Coastal Carolina and The Barter Theatre. Prior to joining ILMxLAB, Jenny was the Department Manager for Academy of Art University’s School of Architecture and before moving to California, she served as the General Manager of Heartwood; Southwest Virginia’s Artisan Gateway, where she worked with over 300 local artisans, authors and musicians to develop, showcase, market and sell their work.

Jenny is a member of the Lucasfilm Diversity & Inclusion Steering Committee, a founding board member of Circuit (Lucasfilm’s employee resource group for women) and a former Communications Lead for Women@Disney. She is passionate about immersive theatre and storytelling and elevating diverse voices in the creative process. Jenny is a graduate of the East Tennessee State University communications and theatre program, a retired roller derby skater and a lifelong Star Wars fan. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband Adam and their rescue dog, Endor.

Lauren Gorski 

Lauren Gorski works in Talent Acquisition for Lucasfilm, supporting recruiting for Lucasfilm, Lucasfilm Animation, Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound, and ILMxLAB. Before Lucasfilm, she worked as a production and office coordinator for different independent studios and as an intern-turned-assistant at ABC Network. She has a Master’s in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California, with emphasis in Stage & Screen, and is a past playwright-in-residence with Playground-San Francisco, a leading playwright incubator. Lauren is passionate about community-building and serves on the Editorial Board of Exposition Review, an independent multi-genre literary journal, and on the National Board of Directors for Women and Youth Supporting Each Other (WYSE), a mentorship program that pairs college women with at-risk middle school girls.

Marina Romani

Marina Romani (she/they) is a multimedia writer and artist, translator, educator, cross-cultural communication expert, and performer of Western classical music and Afro-Caribbean music. She holds a PhD in Italian Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Film Studies from UC Berkeley. Marina taught courses on language, cinema, literature, music, writing and research, and critical thinking at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. She developed and taught original curricula that integrate culture and language teaching with music and artistic performance. She presented her original research at international conferences in Europe and in the US (Yale, NYU, University of Southern California, King’s College London, UCLA, among others). She was the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the UC Berkeley Arts Research Center, the Berkeley Language Center, among others.

​Since 2016, she has held the position of Resident Scholar and Expert for the UN Women’s Global Voices Film Festival. She is also a music and culture critic, and serves as a contributing writer for the San Francisco Opera. She currently resides between the tiny rural village where she grew up in Abruzzo, Italy, and the Bay Area, California, on the ancestral and unceded land of the Ohlone people.

Sarah Shewey

Sarah Shewey is an experienced economy pioneer with a background in film and tech. She is the Founder & CEO of Happily, a global media production company with a network of over 50,000 sustainable event producers, technologists and creatives who specialize in creating world-class virtual and live events. Sarah co-founded TEDActive, is the founder of EXP, and is the board president of dublab.com, LA’s first Internet radio station –  established in 1999. She recently “broke the Internet” with her cyberwedding, which was streamed live on every continent.

An environmentalist, Sarah has spoken about the importance of sustainable event practices on NPR, the Associated Press, and publications around the world. She also co-invented the world’s first underwater projector. Stay connected with Sarah Shewey on Linkedin.