June Giavanni

June Giavanni is an international film curator who has worked with the British Film Institute and the South African Film & TV Market.

She is currently the film programmer for “Planet Africa” at The Toronto International Film Festival.

Keith Shiri

Keith Shiri is a film curator and founder/director of Africa at the Pictures, a festival of African cinema based in London. He is a programme adviser to the London Film Festival and an advisory board member of the African Movie Academy Awards.

He is also a jury member of the Berlinale World Cinema Fund which was set up to provide production and distribution support to projects from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia and the Caucasus.

Dorothee Wenner

Freelance filmmaker and journalist Dorothee Wenner has lived and worked in Berlin since 1988. Wenner also works as a curator or the Berlin International Film Festival and has been on the selection committee of the International Forum of New Cinema since 1990.

She co-directed HOLLYWOOD KILLED ME (1988) with Christoph Janetzko and has directed a number of productions for German television. Recently, Wenner has worked as director of the Berlinale Talent Campus and has made frequent trips to Mumbai, where she is working on various projects.

Wenner made a documentary on the ladies special train in Mumbai and is co-curator for an exhibition on Bollywood-Indian cinema and Switzerland in Zurich’s museum of design. Her latest project is a multimedia exhibition on cultural transfer called import/export which explores the mutual perception between India and Germany/Austria in times of globalization.

Shaibu Husseini

My name is Shaibu Husseini, with Shaibu as my surname. I am first a performing artist and then a journalist. (I act and dance professionally). I report on arts and movies for Nigeria's flagship newspaper "The Guardian" published daily in Lagos, Nigeria's former capital city, and I have been at it since 1998.

Although I developed, right from early school, the passion for watching movies and making notes afterwards, the birth ofNollywood as the self-styled Nigerian Movie Industry is liberally dubbed and the corresponding boom in movie production in Nigeria further boosted my interest and if you like, incursion into film criticism and general coverage of filmic events.

Besides keeping the film culture alive and keeping the history of Nollywood alive on the pages, I delved headlong into film criticism because I believe that Nollywood has reached a stage where the growing movie crowd need to begin to desire to see and think about films beyond just glossing over them.

There is a growing appreciation of the role of film critics here. Although most practitioners are still averred to criticism and so would not invite a critic to their premieres, the response I have received to some of my published reviews, from some of those in the professional class has shown that the place of the critic in the overall value chain cannot be over emphasized. One is hoping that the vocation will be firmly rooted with the planned inauguration of the Nigerian Chapter of FIPRESCI.

Steve Ayorinde

I write to earn a living, but also because I enjoy it. Reporting is the most beautiful work in the world. I write because i was also trained to be a writer, a thinker - at Great Ife, Unilag and University of Leicester, UK. Kill all the lawyers is what have been said, not all the journalists.

The media is the world, and the world is the media, which is why I am forever grateful for the opportunities of the following fellowships: Fondation Journalists en Europe, Paris, France; International Visitors' program (IVP) to understudy the Media and the Arts in the US; Italian language studies at the University of Siena for foreigners and the Goethe institute, Berlin.

I am a member of the Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON) - first love and background in Classical Music as well as a member of the International Federation of Film critics (FIPRESCI) and have served on its Jury at prestigious festivals such as Cannes, Toronto, Stockholm, Mumbai, Cairo and Taormina.

In Nigeria, I also serve as a juror on the African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA).

Ayoko Babu

Mr. Babu is an international legal, cultural and political consultant specializing in African affairs. In addition to the Pan African Film Festival, Mr. Babu currently serves as a Director on the Board of the Palais de la Culture in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Notably, he has worked as a consultant to Bishop H.H. Brookins, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Mr. Dick Griffey, President of the African Development Public Investment Corporation and SOLAR Records. In 1977, Babu was a consultant to Stevie Wonder during Mr. Wonder’s participation at FESTAC (the 2nd Festival of Pan African Arts and Culture) held in Lagos, Nigeria. At FESTAC among other activities, Babu coordinated the satellite transmission of Mr. Wonder’s GRAMMY appearance from Lagos.

Always interested in politics and culture, Mr. Babu was a delegate to the 6th Pan African Congress in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 1974. In 1984, he brought Les Ballets Africains de la Republique de Guinee to the Olympics in Los Angeles. He was Co-Chair of the Program Committee for TheNelson Mandela Reception Committee at the Los Angeles Coliseum, in 1990.

An expert on African cinema, Mr. Babu has been invited to sit on the jury for numerous film festivals. In 1991 he was a jury member for the BestShort Subject at the 5th International Market for African Film and Television during FESPACO, (the world’s largest Pan African Film Festival held bi-annually in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, West Africa) In 1994, he was a member of the jury at the Cinema Africano Festival in Milan, Italy. Mr. Babu has sat on numerous panels and forums discussing the production, distribution and marketing of African American and African films. He has sat on the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Peer Grant Review Panel and the Los Angeles Arts Commission Grant Review Panel. He has been a member of the Los Angeles Arts Loan Fund review panel. He was a presenter at the UNESCO Conference on Images of the South and was a guest of Fund South at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival in Paris, France. In 2005 Mr. Babu was a presenter at the Nigerian film industry summit convened to introduce “Nollywood” to the American film industry.

Presently, Mr. Babu is a member of the board of the arts advocacy group Arts For L.A.. He was named a “Living History Makers” by the business and economic magazine, Turning Point in 2002, and one of Los Angeles’ most influencial leaders by the Los Angeles Times and the L.A. Weekly. Mr. Babu is currently working on several projects focusing on structuring and developing business and cultural links between Africans in the Diaspora and Continental-born Africans. He is particularly aware of the need for institutional relationships. Under his leadership the Pan African Film Festival has established institutional ties with the Pan African Festival of Cinema and Television (FESPACO) in Burkina Faso, the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, the Atibaia Film Festival in Brazil, the Africano Film Festival in Milan, Italy and the Zuma Film Festival in Abuja, the largest film festival in Nigeria, where he also recently served as a member of the jury. He is currently, an awards presenter and a permanent member of the jury of the annual African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), the world’s largest Pan African film awards presentation, broadcasted to an international audience. Additionally, he is developing formal ties with the Film & Video Foundation of South Africa.

Mr. Babu holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University, Los Angeles and attended the UCLA School of Law.

Asantewa Olatunji

Ms. Olatunji has practiced law in the Southern California area for 27 years. She has diversified experiences in entertainment law, civil litigation, immigration and labor law. Besides a private practice, Ms. Olatunji has been on the legal staff of Paramount Picture Corporation and the Wausau Insurance Companies, and was General Counsel for the Black Employees Association.

She has been involved in multiple community projects, including the Nelson Mandela Reception Committee, Les Ballets Africans de la République de Guinée performance at the 1984 Olympics Arts Festival, and the Youth Program for the South Central People's Federal Credit Union.
As one of the founders of the Pan African Film Festival, Ms Olatunji has been integrally involved with its programming for the past 19 years. Currently, the Director of Programming for PAFF, she is extensively traveled and attends film festivals throughout the world, many of which she has consulted on their programming.

She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History from the University of Southern California and a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from Southwestern University, School of Law. She has been a member of the California State Bar since 1975.

She currently seats on the Board of the Pan African Film Festival and the Black Employees Association in Los Angeles. She is also a member of the permanent jury for the African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA).

Berni Goldblat

Berni Goldblat is a Swiss citizen who was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. Since 2000, he has directed and produced films mainly in West Africa.

He was a Jury member at the 2008 and 2009 Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) in Nigeria, as well as at the 2008 Imagé Santé International Film Festival in Liege, Belgium. He is also a founding member of the CINOMADE association (www.cinomade.org).

"The Hillside Crowd" is his second feature film after "MOKILI," a fiction film released in 2006 (www.mokili-thefilm.com).