MEET THE 2024 HIFF TEAM

 
 


TARA THORNE

FESTIVAL COORDINATOR • hiff@afcoop.ca
Tara Thorne is a recovering journalist and multi-disciplinary artist. She hosts the arts and culture podcast The Tideline, leads the rock band Dance Movie, and has recently completed Compulsus, her debut feature as a writer-director. She lives in Halifax's north end with her cats Winston and Gertie (not pictured).

EVAN BOWER

PROGRAMMING COORDINATOR • evan@afcoop.ca
Evan Bower is a writer and film programmer living in Halifax, NS. Outside of HIFF, he’s on the programming team at the Atlantic International Film Festival and handles online projects at the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative. Previously, he worked as an arts reporter on Nova Scotia’s South Shore.


BRIELLE LEBLANC

FESTIVAL ASSISTANT • hiffassistant@afcoop.ca
Brielle LeBlanc is a filmmaker based in Kjipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki: Halifax, Nova Scotia. Their debut short, The Year Long Boulder (2022) played Telefilm’s Not Short on Talent: Clermont-Ferrand, TIFF Next Wave, and won the NewFest + Vimeo Award for First-Time Filmmaker at NewFest: New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival. In 2023, LeBlanc and their creative partner, Sean M. Galway, launched their production company Enodia Films and co-founded the underground film screening series, Fleapit Cinema.

 
 

 2024 PROGRAMMING COMMITTEE

 

The HIFF Programming Committee is composed of local filmmakers, artists and cinephiles. The committee meets regularly in the months leading up to the festival to select the visiting filmmaker content for the festival. The committee watched dozens of features and short films in order to select content for this year’s HIFF that is diverse, bold and contributes to the advancement of the discourse of cinema.

The Programming Committee is composed of Evan Bower, Rebecca Falvey, Tori Fleming, Kelly Li and Fallen Matthews.

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Tori Fleming is a media artist, programmer and curator based in Halifax, NS. Working primarily with 16mm Celluloid, Tori's practice also includes painting, installation, and animation. Her works have exhibited in Nuit Blanche Toronto, Art in the Open PEI, the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival, the Bus Stop Theatre, the Khyber Centre for the Arts and more. She has been awarded multiple grants and awards including the Starfish Properties Award for Film, the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative Celluloid Grant, and an Arts Nova Scotia Creation Grant.

Fleming’s curatorial work focuses on media arts, often centering on the space between media art and filmmaking. Fleming is currently the Director of Programming at the Centre for Art Tapes, a Media Arts based artist-run centre in North End Halifax. Through her independent curatorial practice, Fleming has recently worked with the Anna Leonowens Gallery, Nocturne Art at Night Festival, and the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival. Fleming works to promote the status of the artist and Canadian cultural institutions through volunteer work as a director on the boards of various arts groups including Halifax Ink, a Nova Scotia based artists publication non-profit, and as the Atlantic Canadian Representative for the Artist-Run Centre Association of Canada.

Rebecca Falvey is a writer, director, actor, programmer and ¼ of Phyllis Rising Productions. She is the creator/writer/lead actor of the web series The Crevice, a multi-camera sitcom which is shot and streamed in front of a live audience at The Bus Stop Theatre.

Kelly Li is a filmmaker and artist based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). She is the Managing Producer at the Prismatic Arts Festival, an annual, multidisciplinary arts festival that solely showcases the work of Indigenous artists and artists of colour. A graduate of Dalhousie University's Cinema and Media Studies program, she loves film theory and production in equal measure. She is excited by films which explore radical, language-breaking perspectives and experimental mediums.

Fallen Matthews is an Afro-L'nu graduate candidate from Dalhousie's interdisciplinary doctorate program. Although her project is anchored by psychoanalytic film theory in Cinema and Media studies, other disciplines of interest and relevance include History, English, and Contemporary Studies. Her interest in media was foreshadowed by her namesake—Fallon Carrington from Dynasty—and fostered through proclivities for animation, felines, and televisual narrative.