Dr. Alanna Thain

Alanna Thain is an associate professor of world cinemas and cultural studies at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, where she directs the Moving Image Research Laboratory (www.mirl.lab.mcgill.ca) dedicated to the study of the body in moving image media. She is the author of Bodies in Suspense: Time and Affect in Cinema (U. of Minnesota Press, 2017). She also leads the FRQSC research team CORÉRISC (Collective for Research on Epistemologies of Embodied Risk). Her current projects include Anarchival Outbursts: Movement Practices of Post-Digital Cinema, and Light Leaks: Outdoor Cinemas and the Ecological Art of the Encounter. She also runs the bike powered itinerant outdoor cinema Cinema Out of the Box.

Dr. Will Straw

Will Straw is Professor of Urban Media Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. He is the author of Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America (Andrew Roth Gallery, 2006) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook to Canadian Cinema (with Janine Marchessault, 2019) Circulation and the City: Essays on Urban Culture (with Alexandra Boutros, 2010), Formes Urbaines (with Anouk Bélanger and Annie Gérin, 2014), and Night Studies: Regards croisés sur les nouveaux visages de la nuit (with Luc Gwiazdzinski and Marco Maggioli, 2020). He has published over 170 articles on music, cinema, popular culture and the urban night.

Dr. Ipek Türeli

Ipek Türeli is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Architectures of Spatial Justice (Tier 2) at McGill University. She has many publications on visualizations of the city in photography, film, exhibitions, and museums. Her books include Orienting Istanbul (2010) and Istanbul Open City (2018). Over the past decade of teaching at the School of Architecture, she has consistently guided architecture students to use digital storytelling to explore how the design of the built environment relates to social justice. Her recent research interests include low-income housing and participatory design, civil protest and urban design, and campus landscapes and race.

Eve Cable

Undergraduate Student, McGill University

Professional Biography: Eve Cable is a fourth year Cultural Studies and World Cinemas student at McGill University, where she is pursuing Honours research in avant-garde 20th Century film. She has previously interned for the Regent Park Film Festival, and also works in illustration and graphic design freelance and in various organisations. Eve is working under Professor Alanna Thain at the Moving Image Research Lab, working as an archivist with past materials from the MIRL.

Twitter: @evecable_

Steven Greenwood

PhD Candidate, McGill University

Professional Biography: Steven Greenwood is a PhD Candidate at McGill University, where he studies the relationship between queer cultures and popular culture. His dissertation and recent work focuses primarily on queer relationships to musicals, as well as the connection between Broadway, queer community, and history. He is also a playwright, screenwriter, and director, and serves as the artistic director of Home Theatre Productions in Montreal. In the summer of 2021, he will also be working as an intern for the Inside Out Queer Film Festival in Toronto.

Website: Home Theatre Productions

Twitter: @steven_c_g

Astrid Mohr

Undergraduate Student, McGill University

Professional Biography: Astrid Mohr is a third-year undergraduate student at McGill pursuing an Honours in Gender, Sexuality, Feminism and Social Justice Studies with a minor in Indigenous Studies. Her honours thesis will detail a history of female and non-binary-led film festivals across Canada through the 20th and 21st centuries. In 2018 Astrid founded the Femme Fatale Film Festival, a Toronto-based film festival dedicated to screening shorts by young female and non-binary filmmakers. She believes film festivals are one of the best ways to strengthen creative communities and is excited to continue researching and working in the field.

Brandon Kaufman

Student, McGill University

Professional Biography: Brandon Kaufman is a filmmaker and student at McGill University, where his academic interests concern movements in the twentieth century cinematic avant-garde. He is a contributing writer to Cult MTL, for whom he covers music, and has published film criticism at various publications. He is currently working on three film projects, including an adaptation of a short story by the artist David Wojnarowicz. His participation with Light Leaks is generously funded by the Gregg Blachford and David McGillivray Internship Award.

Katherine Milazzo

Undergraduate Student, McGill University

Professional Biography: Katherine Milazzo is an undergraduate student at McGill University, where she is pursuing an honours degree in English, Cultural Studies. Her thesis will examine autobiographical experimental practices of female filmmakers in postwar American cinema. In addition to Katherine’s work for the Moving Image Research Lab, she will be conducting research on dance and cinema for Dr. Alanna Thain. For the summer of 2021, Katherine is also working as a Research Fellow for the Boston-based Design Studio for Social Intervention, a creativity lab born out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that works at the intersection of art and activism.

Ylenia Olibet

PhD Candidate, Concordia University

Professional Biography: Ylenia's interests of research focus on feminist film theory, transnational approaches to film studies, and reception practices. For her PhD research thesis she is focusing on contemporary feminist film culture in Québec from a transnational perspective, under the supervision of Professor Maule. Her research is funded by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture.