Programming Selection Committee
2023 Programming Selection Committee
Programming Committees are comprised of filmmakers, artists, and curators. They work to provide additional perspectives on individual titles, overarching themes, and the programming structure. imagineNATIVE’s Festival Director, Lindsay Monture, is joined by Adam Piron, Madeleine Hakaraia de Young, and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers to oversee the selection of the films, with Asha Veeraswamy and Pōhaikealoha Panoke joining us for the selection of Digital + Interactive and Audio works.
FILM + VIDEO
Adam Piron
Adam Piron (Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma and Mohawk) is a Southern California–based filmmaker, writer, and curator. He is the Director of Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program, where he oversees the organization’s support for Indigenous filmmakers globally, and a co-founder of COUSIN: a film collective dedicated to supporting Indigenous artists experimenting with and pushing the boundaries of the moving image. As a film programmer, he has served as a member of the Sundance Film Festival’s short film programming team since 2013 and was previously the film curator for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as a former member of the programming teams for AFI Docs, AFI Fest, imagineNATIVE, and the LA Film Festival. His films have screened at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight, MOCA Los Angeles, True/False Film Festival, ESPN’s 30 for 30, The New Yorker’s Documentary Series, BlackStar Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Camden International Film Festival, and various other festivals and programs. His writing has appeared in The Criterion Collection’s The Daily, Cinema Scope magazine, Documentary magazine, Metrograph, and CNN.
Madeleine Hakaraia de Young
Madeleine Hakaraia de Young (Ngāti Kapu) is a Producer and the Festival Director for Māoriland Film Festival – New Zealand’s International Indigenous Film Festival held each March in Ōtaki, Aotearoa (New Zealand). Māoriland Film Festival is the largest International Indigenous Film Festival in the Southern Hemisphere and is the showcase event of the Māoriland Charitable Trust – a centre of excellence for Māori and Indigenous film and creativity.
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers is a filmmaker and actor. She is a member of the Kainai First Nation and Sámi from Uŋárga. She starred in, co-wrote and co-directed The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open with Kathleen Hepburn which premiered at the Berlinale in 2019 and was awarded Canadian Screen Awards for Achievement in Direction and Original Screenplay. Tailfeathers’ feature-length documentary, Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy, premiered at the 2021 Hot Docs International Documentary Festival and won the Ted Rogers Best Documentary Feature Award at the 2022 Canadian Screen Awards. Elle-Máijá starred in Danis Goulet’s Sc-Fi apocalyptic film Night Raiders for which she won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She also stars in the independent feature Stellar, directed by Darlene Naponse, which premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. Elle-Máijá can be seen starring alongside Alfred Molina in Amazon’s latest series Three Pines, based on the best selling novels by Louise Penny. Additionally, Elle-Máijá directed the first three episodes of the Crave/APTN limited series Little Bird for Crave.
Digital + Interactive
Asha Veeraswamy
Asha Veeraswamy (Onöndowa’ga:’/Seneca) is a creative technologist, entrepreneur, and new media artist. By leveraging digital technologies, she strives to bridge virtual worlds and economies with the physical realm, creating positive impacts. Her innovative work, backed by organizations like A+E Networks, Time Inc., Oculus, Bose Corp., Mozilla Foundation Wampum.codes, and imagineNATIVE, showcases her ability to blend technology and creativity. With a business background that spans from grassroots initiatives to venture-backed startups, Veeraswamy currently focuses on transforming local supply chains. She creates vital connections between makers, communities, and digital solutions, driving sustainable growth and fostering community empowerment.
Pōhaikealoha Panoke
Pōhai is a Kanaka Maoli storyteller, interactive media producer, and emerging filmmaker from Waiʻanae, Hawaiʻi. While working on indie interactives and founding a cultural learning site for Kanaka to reconnect with ancestral knowledge, Pōhai landed a mentorship with Netflix to develop and hone her screenwriting skills. She went on to write and direct her first short film in May of this year alongside her first gig for directing story on a documentary in collaboration with her local waʻa (canoe) community. Whether storytelling in interactives, animation, or film, Pōhai weaves culture and iIndigenous resilience into her narratives, hoping to create works that portray the future as one of empowerment and abundance for nNative pPeoples.