R3:VOLVE | Curatorial Justice

In recent years, the film festival community has been shaken to its core by calls from filmmakers and industry alike for more responsible, ethical, and transparent curatorial practices. And while many legacy institutions continue to resist progress, programmers of color, community-rooted film festivals, and new distribution initiatives have for years been advancing justice-centered programming practices, responsibly uplifting stories about historically marginalized communities, and are designing the future of film curation. Join writer Karim Ahmad, VC’s Eseel Borlasa, WIF’s Maikiko James, and AFMI’s Serge Bakalian in a transformative conversation about the future of film programming.

PANEL

Karim Ahmad (Moderator)
Karim Ahmad is a writer, producer, culture strategist, and founder & CEO of UTOPIA STUDIO, a narrative change studio dedicated to building just and beautiful futures through cross-platform cultural production. He is the writer of the speculative fiction graphic novel, DIVIDE, creator of the Muslim Futures anthology, founder of the Restoring the Future consultancy, and was the Creator and Showrunner of the groundbreaking science fiction series, FUTURESTATES. He is a current OSF Soros Equality Fellow, member of the Guild of Future Architects, and can be found on most social media platforms as @thatkarimahmad

Maikiko James
Maikiko is Senior Director of Programs of WIF, overseeing member programs including Fellowships, Emerging Careers, and the WIF/Black List Episodic Lab. She co-founded INSIGHT, a WIF community for women of color in entertainment, in 2018. She previously produced impact campaigns with Active Voice, including those for Food Inc., Welcome to Shelbyville, Gideon’s Army, and Kids for Cash, and was a Special Project Advisor on the WIF-supported documentary Seeking Asian Female.

Eseel Borlasa
Eseel Borlasa loves mixtapes, films & community. She is an arts programmer/producer and film publicist. She currently serves as one of the Directors and one of the Sr. Programmers for the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF), presented by Visual Communications (VC) -the first non-profit organization in the US dedicated to the honest and accurate portrayals of the Asian Pacific American peoples, communities, and heritage through the media arts. In 2020 she produced VC’s Asian Pacific Virtual Showcase, and the Suite VC programming presented as part of VC’s official partnership with the Sundance Film Festival. In 2021 she helped produce the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum’s virtual learning series, PASIFIKA TRANSMISSIONS.
In her PR work, she is a co-founder and partner of After Bruce, boutique PR agency. 

Serge Bakalian
Serge Bakalian is a non-profit leader, science advisor, and the founder of the Arab Film and Media Institute (AFMI), serving as its Executive Director. The California-based AFMI is a unique ecosystem to find, nurture, connect and develop Arab film and media projects, and home to the Arab Film Festival, the largest and oldest festival of its kind in North America.  He also works as a science advisor for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Serge caught the artist bug in 2007 and moved to San Francisco to develop and produce film and theatre projects, the latter dedicated to exploring Middle Eastern cultures and identities.  Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, Serge holds degrees in Chemistry and International Relations.