Pablo de Ocampo, President

Pablo de Ocampo is a curator whose practice is rooted in artists’ film, while also engaging more broadly with the moving image across a wider field of performance, music, and contemporary art. In his work, de Ocampo has continually prioritized risk and experimentation alongside an ethic of care, generosity, and support. de Ocampo’s curatorial position has always insisted that radical gestures in artistic practice must necessarily exist within, and in relation to, a radical re-orientation of how art institutions actively engage the many publics and communities around them. Currently, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he works at the Walker Art Center. He has previously worked at Western Front in Vancouver, Canada; Toronto’s Images Festival; Cinema Project in Portland, Oregon; and was Programmer of the 59th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, History is What’s Happening.

Dessane Lopez Cassell, Vice President

Dessane Lopez Cassell is a New York-based editor, writer, and curator who focuses on film and visual art concerned with race, gender, labor, and decoloniality. She is a Senior Producer for New Light Films at Art + Commerce. Dessane’s writing has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Film Comment, Hyperallergic, and in books and catalogs from The Studio Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Whitney Museum, among others. Additionally, Dessane has curated exhibitions and screenings at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Metrograph,  the Studio Museum, Anthology Film Archives, and the Black Women’s Film Conference. Previously, she was Editor-in-Chief of Blackstar’s journal, Seen, and served on the programming team for their film festival from 2018 to 2023.  Dessane is also an alumni of The Flaherty both as a team member for the 2019, 2021, and 2022 Seminars, as a Fellow for the 2018 Seminar, and as a programmer for the Fall 2018 Flaherty NYC.

Ted Kennedy, Treasurer

Ted Kennedy is an artist based in New York and Michigan. His moving image and installation work has been screened and exhibited at places like the Art of the Real, Microscope Gallery, VISIONS, Onion City Film Festival, BAM, Media City Film Festival, Orphans, 67 Ludlow and various psychology conferences. He has served on the boards of the Ann Arbor Film Festival and UnionDocs and co-programmed the Flaherty NYC fall 2014 series with David Dinnell. Ted received a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan and an MFA from Bard College. He is currently working on a documentary about the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner.

Juana Suárez

Juana Suárez is the Director of the Moving Images Archiving and Preservation Program (MIAP), and an Associate Arts Professor at NYU, Tisch School of the Arts. She is a specialist in Media Preservation, Cinema, Culture and Literature Studies with a concentration in Latin America. She has been an organizer and a participant in the Audiovisual Preservation Exchange Program (APEX) in Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Spain, Brazil and Puerto Rico (2013-2019). She has worked in different film preservation projects in Colombia. She is the author of Sitios de Contienda: Producción Cultural y el Discurso de la Violencia and Cinembargo Colombia: Ensayos críticos sobre cine y cultura colombiana, published in English in 2012. She is the co-editor of Humor in Latin American Cinema (2015). She is leading the collaborative digital humanities project arturita.net, aiming to facilitate exchange and collaboration for the safeguarding of audiovisual patrimony in Latin America. She is currently working on a book provisionally entitled Moving Images Archives, Cultural History and the Digital Turn in Latin America.

Ruth Somalo

A Spanish immigrant who left home at 17 but now speaks daily with her mother, she makes completely independent non fiction films, studies metaphysics and NLP, works as a curator and programmer for DOC NYC, DocumentaMadrid and The Architecture and Design Film Festival, and devotes a disproportionate amount of time looking into the eyes of her dog Mylo. She has attended the Flaherty seminar for many years in lieu of curatorial school and has made extraordinary friends at every one of them. She values the art of making films and its potential impact so much that spends most of her time watching other people's work to support it through festivals and independently curated programs. Her precarious finances and insistence in making her own films remain a mystery to herself, but every now and then one of her titles has a few good screenings and inspires deep conversations, and it makes it all worth it. She has been a director, producer, cinematographer and editor for 20 years and often mentors humans on their documentary projects, she teaches seminars and serves on festival juries. She is also a member of the research group Hist-Ex that focuses on Anthropology of Experience at the Spanish National Research Council, and, after way too many years, she is finally finishing her PhD dissertation about grief and mourning through first person filmmaking.

Steve Holmgren

Steve Holmgren is an Entertainment Attorney & Film Producer from the Midwest. Holmgren specializes in independent film & television legal through his boutique firm FILM ARTS LEGAL. As a Producer, he has worked with numerous filmmakers including Sky Hopinka (małni—towards the ocean, towards the shore ), Adam and Zack Khalil (INAATE/SE/), Matthew Porterfield (Putty Hill; I Used to be Darker), Marie Losier (The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye), Cory McAbee (Crazy & Thief), and John Gianvito (Far From Afghanistan ft. filmmakers Travis Wilkerson, Soon-Mi Yoo, Minda Martin and Jon Jost). He has also recently been part of the producing team for EMPTY METAL (Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer), WHIRLYBIRD (Matt Yoka), 499 (Rodrigo Reyes), as well as Anthony Banua-Simon’s CANE FIRE. He was at UnionDocs from 2009-2014. Holmgren has served on juries at film festivals such as CPH: Pix, Oberhausen, Black Maria, and the Riviera Maya Coproduction Lab. He has collaborated with film arts organizations in granting and professional development initiatives such as IFP NY, SFFilm, the Brooklyn Arts Council and Creative Capital. Holmgren previously worked in film production with Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner’s HDNet Films, film sales with Cactus 3, and in institutional distribution with Gartenberg Media Enterprises. He is an alum of the Cannes Producers Network program and has taught at Pratt Institute’s Film/Video Dept. He also likes to travel and collects shoes. BAR ADMITTANCE CALIFORNIA (2017); NEW YORK (2018)

Tracy Rector

Tracy Rector, Managing Director of Storytelling at Nia Tero Foundation, has a passion for amplifying and empowering Indigenous and BIPOC creatives. She brings two decades of experience as a community organizer, educator, filmmaker, film programmer, and arts curator, all infused with her deep roots in plant medicine. For the last 20 years she has directed and produced over 400 films including shorts, features, music videos, and virtual reality projects. Her work has been featured on Independent Lens, ImagineNative, Seattle Art Museum, National Geographic, and the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian, as well as at international film festivals including Cannes and Toronto. Tracy served as a Seattle Arts Commissioner for 8 years, sits on the board of the Mize Foundation and Working Films and was the co-founder of Longhouse Media and the founder of Indigenous Showcase.

Elected Board Presidents of The Flaherty

Ruth Somalo, 2020-2022
Pooja Rangan, 2018-2020
John Bruce, 2016-2018
Chi-hui Yang, 2012-2016
Ann Michel, 2009-2012
Patricia Bruck, 2004-2009
Patricia Bruck and Tom Johnson, 2002-2003
Lucy Kostelanetz, 2000-2001
Juan Mandelbaum, 1998-1999
Pearl Bowser and Juan Mandelbaum, 1996-1997
Richard Herskowitz, 1993-1995
Tom Johnson, 1990-1992
Jack Churchill, 1987-1989
Pearl Bowser, 1986-1987
Esme I. Dick, 1983-1986
Emile de Brigard, 1981-1983
Jay Ruby, 1977-1981
William Sloan, 1974-1977
Austin Lamont, 1973-1974
Dorothy Oshlag Olson, 1971-1973
Willard Van Dyke, 1968-1971
Erik Barnouw, 1960-1968

Executive Directors of The Flaherty

Jon-Sesrie Goff, 2018-2020
Anita Reher, 2012-2018
Mary Kerr, 2006-2012
Margarita de la Vega Hurtado, 2002-2006
L. Somi Roy, 1998-2001
Kiersta Gostnell, 1997-1998
Michelle Materre, 1995-1997
Bobbi Tsumagari, 1994-1995
Sally Berger, 1989-1994
Esme I. Dick, 1982-1988
Barbara Van Dyke, 1964-1982