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.

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.